It's not so much the distance of this ride, since I've already done 4 longer rides than this in 2009. The big deal is that this one was my first official ride with the Seattle Int'l Randonneurs, and I finished with time still on the clock.
Only one minute... but I made it!
This was my first ride back outside after a week-long battle with some respiratory illness which confined me to about a 20 mile max on my trainer before I felt like I was going to lose a lung. And, what an introduction to SiR it was!
I arrived to the start shortly after the registration began, got my bike and gear ready, and wandered over to the registration tent. The rain gave way to sleet, which eventually gave way to big, heavy snowflakes. I got my card and finished my coffee, and talked with some of the riders hanging around the start.
Shortly before 9am, the snow turned back to sleet and we gathered about for the ride instructions. I should have been more on-the-ball about this, because after the instructions I still had to remove and stash my wind pants, put on my helmet, and get rolling; which in conjunction with asking some questions, cost me 3-5 minutes.
I headed out from the start with another rider who was also a first timer. He and I stuck together for the rest of the ride, which is good since he and I worked well togther for navigation (with a couple minor mishaps. *d'oh!*) Getting from the start out to the B-G Trail was easy, and so was the nav up through the residential areas. A word of warning: When the cue sheet says "steep hill, granny gear" Boy Howdy, they ain't foolin' around. The crest over 91st was a slushy, get-your-climbing-harness-and-ropes slog which had me stopping for a breather mid-way up. After hacking up much of the remainder of my cold (sorry Andy, I know it was pretty gross) we continued on. We hit the secret control, grabbed a cookie and rolled further. We nabbed the info control, snapped a picture, and kept moving. As we approached the 2nd control at Golden Gardens, we had to crank a little harder to make the timepoint since we were running close; but we made it with about 3 minutes to spare. Kept the stop to a minimum and rolled on out.
We (I) flubbed the nav at the Ballard Locks and had to backtrack about 400 yards so that cost us some time. Then we had a tough time figuring things out at the other side to find the trail up to Discovery Park. Once we did, we were all good, even into the driving headwind on the Alki Trail down to the next info control (which we made a 50 yard wrong turn and 4 other people followed us. Sorry 'bout that.)
Past the info there was more headwind then a muddy hardpack dirt/gravel trail to the next control. Somehow we made up 15 minutes in all that wind, so we had some cocoa and soup to warm up. Should have skipped the cocoa and just kept going, because from that 40 mile point on I was getting wicked leg cramps and had to make a few stops to work out the kinks; like on Barton and Henderson roads... Hoo boy, those are some EVIL hills!
Without much issue (one missed turn, only about 50 yards backtrack) we made it to the 4th control at Seward Park, grabbed some grub, hit the head, and rolled out just behind mattm and his merry band of holy-cow-are-they-fast riders who totally dusted us to the finish line
. No more nav errors to the finish, and with some cramping and hammering up the final hill Andy and I rolled into the last control with 1 whole minute left on the clock.
The downhills and road grit finally took their toll on my rear rim and wore it thin, so the bead is splayed (I'm amazed it didn't fail yesterday; dang!) So I need to pick up a new wheel on my way home today so I can go back next week for the ACP 200k and get my first medal to go with my spiffy SiR 100k pin from yesterday.