Riveting

I was already "endurance fit" by the summer of the season that I did my solo 24hr ride in mid-Oct. I could ride a century at a moment's notice, and commuted to work pretty much every day, with a 40 mile ride after work several days a week. So in the 2-3 months prior to the solo 24hr (although at that point I had no plans at all to be doing a 24hr ride in Oct.), I started unknowingly prepping for the 24hr ride by attempting a sub-5hr century, (5:15 moving time), riding my first 200mi double century, with a group (14hrs moving time) that went well, 2 weeks later back-to-back solo 150mi rides with 17,500' total which was Boston to the Canada border thru Vermont (9.5hrs moving time each day, so I was comfortable with 19hrs of saddle time in 36 hrs.). It was at this point I told myself that if I can do 19 hours of saddle time in 36 hrs with 12 hrs in between the rides, and do that comfortably as far as no saddle sores, and having learned to dial in my proper fueling, then I might as well try to put those two 150mi rides together and just do it all in 24 hrs, and mark off a bucket list item), so then I just kept doing a century+ on most Saturdays after that, with a shorter 40-60mi ride the day after to keep my legs used to the volume, and I did that for the 5 weeks leading up to the 24hr event. And I see that I rode 250mi total in the week prior to the 24hr event, but nothing hard, and nothing longer than ~55 miles, just to let the knees have a full week of active recovery (if you can call 250 miles in a week "recovery"). And ultimately the 24hr ride was a complete success at 525km/325miles.

Completing my first 24hr ride was the mission, and nothing else mattered, so I decided to cut a bunch of variables out of the equation that might jeopardize it, such as night time navigation, being in the dark for 12 hours on the roads with cars when the bars close, water/fuel stops at 3am, etc... so I chose a route that was a 30 mile loop (that I did 13 times), was 100% on segregated bike paths, so I was able to park right next to the path, and get to my car every 30 miles, refill water bottles, grab food, and change into cold weather gear very easily. The hard part was the mental fortitude when getting back to the car each time, and not just giving in to the fatigue and just driving home with my tail between my legs, but I was on a mission, and that wasn't going to happen on my watch.

And BTW, I didn't join a Rando club until after this event. All of the knowledge and wisdom I got for this event and all the long distance events prior, was via BikeForums.