Planning to truck through the overnight control and into the morning, with a bail out at 400k (my house). I’m not too worried about the hills and the total elevation for the route is 15k ft.
Randonneurs (randos), use metric for distances; it'll make them feel like a longer ride: rando chat‽
On one hand home is warm and comfortable
On the other hand home is warm and comfortable
Do you have a supportive partner or discipline to kick your ass out of bed and get you on the road?
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yep, that’s a reason I’m opting out of the hotel
I’m in decent riding weight and feeling pretty good when the road goes up, the last 250k or so is pretty flat along PCH all the way to SD though
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horse_mafia_mafia
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I am crashing out on a complainy complainer on the pnw rando slack. That is all
Just rode the fastest 200 of my life. Details to come. But I’m stoked!
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nice! mine took all fuckin day
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OK… so not actually my fastest. I forgot about the time we did the (almost) all bike path nighttime thing at an absurd pace two years ago (6:06 moving time over 124.16 and average speed of 20.3).
So fastest in two years and fastest over a “real” route.
Set out at 9am on a rolling course of 126.69 with about 4200 feet of climbing. The weather was perfect. Started in the low 60s and was overcast and in the 70s until late in the ride when the clouds finally burned off and temperatures crept up to about 80. Almost no wind to speak of.
Three mostly evenly spaced store stops along the way made it easy to plan for. I went with two standard-size bottles with carbs in them, a hydration pack of water, two gels, and two egg McMuffins with the intention of grabbing snacks at the 2nd and 3rd stop.
We had around 40 people start. Kept it pretty tame rollout north east out of town and through the higher traffic areas of Mechanicsville. The party pacers slowly dropped as the pace started to climb as we got into more rural areas.
By the first store stop at mile 21 things were whittled down to around 20 in the main group. We kept the store stop to 5 minutes. A few stragglers rolled in, but once we got moving, they were shed again. By mile 35, what would be the core group had been reduced to the dozen riders that would end up doing the rest of the route together. We had a perfect mix of experienced diesels and exuberant youths to drive the pace.
This was the first time on this route as a whole with the middle 40 or so miles being mostly new to me.
North east of Richmond is King William and Caroline County, which are largely low traffic back roads, including some narrow twisty ones with good tree cover right up to the ditches.
By mile 70, I was starting to feel the large block of time off last year and early this year, but I kept a cool head and carefully measured my efforts. Sagging on the hills, aerotucking on the descents, rolling on the flatter sections, but staying out of the wind.
For a large portion of the ride, I didn’t actually know where I was, which is always a good feeling. At mile 78, we turned onto Old CC road to hit the main gravel sector of the ride. I’d ridden this part before, and from here in, I knew exactly where I was and could count off landmarks as we went in.
I was starting to fade pretty hard, but at mile 90, the final store stop came just in time. Drank a can of Coke and ate a pack of sugar wafers, and once I shook off the heavy legs of standing around the store, I started feeling really good.
We had been hovering around 19.8mph average most of the day, and we were all pretty motivated to keep it over 19, knowing that it would be a bit slower going once we got back into the city.
Everyone stayed motivated as we worked our way back through Hanover County before picking up the bike path in Ashland for a few miles of fresh pavement away from cars, before the final leg through Henrico County into Richmond proper.
We managed to finish out the day at 19.3mph with a rolling time of 6:34 and elapsed time of 7:15.
I was properly cooked by the end, but wrapped up the day feeling really good.
This week had a hard training ride on Tuesday and a short-track race on Thursday. So, a good block of work. My return to riding is off to a really good start.
The only thing I could have done differently is still taken on more calories. I’ve gotten better about this, but I’m still underestimating my needs. Next ride, I’ll bring a few extra gels and another pouch of carb drink to mix into a bottle instead of relying on gas station beverages.
Oh yeah… and equipment check:
Nightmoves bike
50/34 11/34 gearing
700x32 GP5kSTR
40mm Nexti carbon rims
Uswe pack
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Good job
I always forget to eat
What club?
What’s a club?
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free solo rando
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four triangles, frilly toothpicks, potato chips
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I’m finding it hard to pack caloric density and thinking about loading a rotisserie chicken in my bag á la Harriet Fell
Anyway I am trying to ramp volume in the last minute before my 600 next month, and had planned on a 200 last weekend but sleep debt overruled that. Left late yesterday morning at 8am and arrived home 12 hours later.
First stretch was the SGRT up to the Rio Hondo, which was fairly uneventful besides joining up with a small paceline of MUP warriors. I had skipped coffee so I stopped in Whittier for a gas station creme donut and a Celsius. The route called for cutting across a wash on the Rio Hondo trail, but it was flooded so I had to backtrack and find another way over to Pasadena. Stopped at Velo Pas, did a lap at the Rose Bowl where it’s always fun to troll roadies on the Big Box Bag Bike (and saw a troop of brush-clearing goats), and shopped for sales at Around the Cycle. Scarfed a pizza in Arcadia before heading east through the Valley to West Covina and Walnut.
It was overcast all morning but I didn’t think it would start raining. Once I hit Walnut a storm started catching up with me, and it was incredibly frustrating to try to smoke weed from a pipe with all the wind. I also thought once I started pointing back south that the grades would point down, but the canyon between the Puente and Chino Hills was more rolly, and with a headwind I wasn’t pushing more than 13-14mph for the most of it. I spent a good 20 mins taking videos of helicopters doing water drops over a wildfire that had just sparked.
The rain started coming down once I rolled onto the SART at hour 10, light small drops but more annoying headwinds. The clouds passed just as I entered a prescribed burn area along the trail, and I exited the brush smoke right before PCH and hordes of teens partying with bonfires at Huntington Beach. More headwinds for the last push home, at this point I was feeling pretty OK but just ready to be done.
About 2 miles from home there’s a sketchy merge from the right-most bike lane across a 45mph exit lane to continue straight, and it was precisely at this point I was enveloped by a group of ebike kids. One of them beeped at me and I nearly lost it. I merged, they passed, and I arrived home safe and sound.
Just under 9 hrs solo riding time with 3 hrs of pit stops, photo ops, and safety breaks. Edibles would probably help to cut that down.
I got a puncture right after this pic, thanks obama
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I prefer my McMuffins closed
Let stalk caloric density
I find on shorter rides (200-300) I can eat a gu+half clif bar+1/4 bottle water gets me about 30-50km. I can only do this once before I have to eat a real food item.
On anything over 60 I bring real solid foods to snack on every 40 or so miles. I’ve had good luck with Maurten and Gu Roctate for my bottles alternating between the two. Maurten gels for later in the ride when I need a little bump.
I really need to actually crunch the numbers and come up with a proper schedule for this though.
Skratch comes in packable bulk so I just buy that (mix, bars, and chews). I’ll drink a bottle of drink mix over an hour supplemented by chews or Clif Blocks, then switch to bars/gels the next hour, aiming for 250-400 cals/hr depending on what I can stomach and how hard I’m going. I ordered the hi-carb mix recently and I can’t tell the difference besides that it’s harder to mix and looks gross when it dries. Trail mix, Fritos, Cokes, and other packaged 7-Eleven goods fill in the gaps.
Rode a 3k200 yesterday in 13:xx, made the cutoff
Very difficult beautiful route
New meds are weird
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wow this is DUMB
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