abshipp 

Looks like I will be doing my first populaire this Sunday with Great Lakes Randonneurs. I haven't done more than 45 miles on a bike in a couple of years, so while I would really love to start things off with brevet with their "Bring a Friend 200K" on Saturday, I'm going to start out slowly with a 102K.

At the moment it looks like I'm the only one registered, so it might be a little lonely

Should be a nice ride though!

GadgetGirlIL

I'm with Great Lake Randonneurs but this weekend I'm further north in Wisconsin staying in Elkhart Lake and doing my cycling in the early morning on the lovely country roads.

Hope someone else shows up so you aren't completely by yourself. Good choice to start with a 102K!

brockd15 

Take heart in knowing that I think you'll do fine.
After a multi-year brevet break myself, I did a 600k a couple weeks ago without issue. I have been bike commuting for the last 3+ years, ~16 miles a day, but no weekend rides and nothing longer than about 8 miles at a time. Not the greatest long ride prep but I guess it was good enough. I was nervous going into it but it all worked out fine. I actually have another 600k this coming weekend.

unterhausen

I really like riding alone, company is over-rated.

Okay, so I like riding with other people too, but I'm perfectly happy riding alone.

I just finished my 8th 600k with less than 5 minutes left on the clock. I was pretty happy when I realized I was going to finish, it definitely looked iffy with 10 miles to go. Fortunately, the last bit is reasonably fast riding.

abshipp 

Well, I appreciate the show of support, but I ended up not doing this ride. It was scheduled to start at 8AM, and at 8AM a series of thunderstorms began moving through the area. I have no experience riding in rain, and don't have the clothing to be comfortable with heavy rain and 45 degrees. The morning of the ride, I was still the only person registered, so I texted the ride organizer saying that I was not going to attend, and I think that they were a little relieved given that they were planning on riding the route with me.

I think both of us were quite happy to return to a warm bed.

So now it looks like my next option is a 200K on June 9!

kingston 

The RBA rode the 200k instead, and it ended up not really raining at all, just a little mist in the morning and a pretty nice day after that. I rode the 300k

abshipp 

In that case, only I was happy to return to a warm bed

It rained all morning in Poplar Grove, and I didn't get out on a bike at all that day.

brockd15 

I rode the Surf City 600k this weekend. My second 600k this month.

Surf City starts in Santa Cruz, goes north up to Half Moon Bay, then east into the hills before heading back south again through Santa Cruz to the turn around point in San Ardo. At that point, it goes back up to Santa Cruz.

The big kicker on this one that had me worried was the wind...about 80 miles of it are known to have a brutal headwind. This particular weekend we saw some pretty strong winds on the initial ride from Santa Cruz up to Half Moon Bay, which isn't normally the case. Then in the hills we had a couple of good climbs, kinda long, sorta steep, but not terrible. The highlight was after that, riding on Hwy 1 with a tailwind back south to Sant Cruz.

San Ardo is at just about 400k and has nothing there, so I had planned to go there and head back to the previous control in King City and get a few hours of sleep. But I only had about 3 hours of sleep the night before the ride, and by the time I got to King City outbound, I was cooked. I needed a break, some food, some warmth, and some electricity (to charge my wahoo and tail light). The mistake I made was not booking a room in advance. I thought I'd play it by ear and if I was ready to get a room there'd be no problem finding one. That was a bad decision. I called every hotel and motel in that town and they were either 100% booked or didn't answer. So I did what any desperate rando would do and headed to the post office. I kinda sorta dozed for a couple hours and was able to charge my stuff before heading back out again.

From there, the short (40 miles) ride to San Ardo and back was pretty nice. Not much climbing and the wind was pretty calm. It gave me hope for wind for the rest of the day, but that was short lived. Leaving King City again we were greeted by a ridiculous headwind. I'm sure there are worse headwinds out there, but I haven't ridden in them. So it was just a slooooow slog for mile after mile of relentless wind. What made things worse was that I didn't have much food on the bike, and because of how long it took to cover distance in the wind, I was hurtin'. Twice I had bouts of nausea because of lack of food. The first time I had Payday and was good for a while. The second time I got lucky. I had no food with me, was riding solo, and hadn't seen anything resembling a store or restaurant for lots of miles. I was getting to the point of being nauseous when a food mart popped up about 10 miles from the next control. Between that stop and the next control 10 miles later, I put away almost 1700 badly needed calories, and had about 1100 on the bike in reserve if I needed it (I did). From that control to the finish in Santa Cruz was much better. There was some climbing but the wind was much less of a factor.

Overall, it was a hard ride. Definitely harder than the one I did a few weeks ago, due in big part to my sleep situation, but also, of course, the wind. I don't know if I'll do this one again...maybe. As always, I got to meet, chat, and ride with a bunch of nice people. One of the best parts of doing all this riding.

I just jumped back into the rando scene very recently and I'm glad to get this one behind me. I'm thinking about doing 3CR 1000k or 1200k in August (if it's not full) but need a full series this year to qualify. There's no local 400k in time but a longer ride can be substituted, so I needed two 600k, which I now have. Next up is doing a 200k and 300k, which I'm planning on doing with the SFR 2 brevet weekend. That would be a 300k on Saturday followed by a 200k on Sunday, but I have a good month and half before then.

Here's my Soma Smoothie at the stop about 10 miles before the control in Marina. I know, it's non-drive side but it's all I've got.
I packed light, as you can see, and there was no drop bag service. Just a tool roll under the saddle and a small handlebar bag with all my stuff. The bag has loops on the front and I use reflective ankle straps to velcro my jacket or reflective gear up there if I don't need it.

unterhausen

rhm and iTrod both finished the BR2B1200k run by the DC randonneurs. Congrats to them. I dropped out after 400k due to knee pain. I forget if anyone else that posts here regularly rode.

skiffrun

One of the best naps / sleeps I can recall in the last 8 years, and I mean rando or just at home, was in 2011, at the post-office in Currie on the Raleigh Region 600. ( Irregular Velo Adventures: May-14/15: Morrisville 600 km Brevet )

Pertinent extract:

skiffrun

^

Another effing editor that refuses to do what it pretends it is doing.
Refuses to put in a blank line after "Pertinent extract:",
Refuses to indent said extract to the right.

Whatever happened to WYSIWYG?

skiffrun

Ditto on the congrats.

unterhausen

which editor are you using? I think you can choose from 4. The new default one seems to have some issues and I'm not using it

brockd15 

Awesome, congrats @rhm and @iTrod!
I told my wife over the weekend that there were some guys from BF doing a 1200k and I was hoping it was going well.
@unterhausen, what a bummer. What kind of knee pain? I'm dealing with some myself that I'm hoping clears up by my next planned ride.

rhm

Yup, as @unterhausen mentioned, @iTrod and I both finished the BRB 1200k, a first for both of us. We rode together for a fair proportion of the ride, and finished within a few minutes of one another. My finish time (if I recall correctly) was 88:48. I'd like to publicly thank @jlippinbike who also started, after giving me a ride down to Leesburg; sadly, he had to quit after the first day due to IT band issues, the result of pre-riding the PA 600 a month ago.

The weather was, for the most part, extremely uncooperative. We had rain every day, some of it extreme. I'm talking about the wettest rain I've ever seen. We also had extreme heat, though only on the second day. I had two flat tires; the first due to a failing innertube (the whole valve separated from the rest of the tube). I didn't bother to diagnose the second one; it happened at a point in the ride when we were all feeling rather low, and I just wanted to deal with the problem as quickly as possible so the kids I was riding with wouldn't leave without me. So I replaced the tire and tube without looking either very closely.

I spent a lot of time riding my brakes while screaming down rainy hills into complete darkness, sometimes leading a few other cyclists, sometimes following them (I prefer to follow... seeing someone tuck into an aero position and rocket down the road like a boulder going down a mountain doesn't exactly fill me with confidence, but it makes me leave off the brakes for fear of getting dropped). On the last day I noticed my rear brake had developed a disconcerting pulse. Cleaning up the bike yesterday I found the braking surface of the rim is worn down to a dangerous degree, and is in fact cracked on both sides. Fortunately I don't run very high tire pressure, so it hadn't blown apart completely, but I still feel like I dodged a bullet. I have ordered new rims.

All in all a great ride! Not easy, but rewarding. I heard very little complaining (come to think of it, I think I was the only one complaining). Everyone was in good spirits most of the time. A bonus for me, we rode through areas where I rode my first ten speed in 35-40 years ago. This caused me to get a few bonus miles, as well, from making a wrong turn when I thought I knew where I was, but... didn't.

atwl77

Congratulations to both of you, and nice photos too!

antimonysarah

Looks both scenic and "scenic". Chapeau!

I made all my reservations for the Lap of Lake Ontario and bought myself a trunk bag and rack, so I guess I'm doing this thing. But first, 400k this weekend, and 600k two weekends later. Hoping for better weather than I've had for most of this season's rides, but if not, no big. The 400k has substantially less climbing than the 300k, and the 600k is only slightly more spread out over twice as long, so I'm much more confident about those. (The 300k was icing on the cake, though, as I'd done a flatter one earlier this year. Wet, hilly icing that goes flat in the dark. Or, er, something like that.) Am hoping to push hard (without blowing up) on the 400k to work on keeping my speed up throughout the distance, in order to practice for having more time to sleep on longer rides.

unterhausen

Thanks for the report. And that should satisfy the Mac 'n' Cheese organizers . Glad the rim problem didn't get worse. I was feeling pretty bad the first day when it turned into the same weather as the PA600k. Okay, it was warmer but the steady rain got old quickly, and my behind was causing problems. On Friday, as I was driving home, I ran into a severe thunderstorm. Which I wasn't really expecting. I was close enough to the course to be sure that the riders were getting some of the same weather, and I hoped it wasn't too extreme for too long. Considering the weather, the DNF rate wasn't too bad. But when the weather is like that, anything that you might ignore otherwise turns into a ride-ending problem.

If I ever see a constant 20% chance of rain forecast for a long ride again, I will know to expect 100% chance of rain.

brockd15 

@rhm, what did you do with wet clothes at each stop? Did they get put into a plastic bag that went into your drop bag? What rain gear do you use?
I've found wet gloves and socks to be miserable so I'm curious how you handled it.

aloKen

Here's a pic from BRB at about mile 472, beautiful area.

iTrod

Thanks for the pictures, Rudi! You need to post your picture of the climb to the Gathland War Correspondent Memorial. It was not only beautiful, but captured the spirit of the climb.

rhm

I had three pairs of gloves with me. I don't remember what I did with the first one; I found them unsatisfactory the first day, and wore different ones the second day. They were still wet Saturday morning but I didn't care. The third pair was still clean and dry; but one of the women we were riding with was having trouble with her gloves; her hands looked really bad, so I gave her my third pair. I didn't need them, and she wore them the rest of the ride, so that worked out well.

At the end of the first day, everything I was wearing was soaked. I put newspapers on the floor, laid my clothes on that, more newspaper on top, and walked on it until the newspapers were soaked. I then did the same with hotel towels, and eventually left my clothes laid out on the carpet. We were coming back to that hotel room the next day, so that was an option. They were reasonably dry then.

My wet clothes from the second day didn't have that option, so they went into bags the next morning, pretty wet. When I got home, pretty much everything in my drop bag was wet to some degree and it all went into the washer.

I put on wet jersey in the morning, and it wasn't too bad. Same with the gloves. I had enough socks that I was able to put on dry socks every day. Two days I wore SPD sandals (with socks), the other two regular SPD mountain bike shoes. Can't say one or the other was better.

My rain gear was inadequate. I basically didn't have any, only a plastic emergency poncho, which I put on over my wet wool jersey on Sunday, then put a vest on over that. Terrible look, and it flapped in the wind, sounded like a bumblebee. I'm getting a better rain jacket before my next Grand Randonee!

This one?

rhm

Hey, that's me

Thanks, Ken!

unterhausen

I lost my good rain jacket while riding PBP, and now I have a couple of $25 ones. One of them is made of Tyvek. I used the other one on the PA 600k, and the sleeves filled up with water. Not sure how that happened. I rode for many hours of that ride in just a long sleeve wool jersey. I kept catastrophizing about that getting too wet, but it was always perfectly warm. I find that any plastic jacket is uncomfortable above about 50 degrees, but sometimes you have to balance that discomfort with the discomfort of getting really wet.

I hope we don't need one very much on Mac 'n' Cheese. Best to be prepared though, it would be a bad place to be without a rain jacket if it rains, I think.

aloKen

Here's a pic from War Correspondent. That's Kelly.