This past weekend I rode the SIR
Third Time's a Charm 1000k, just about 3 weeks after my first ever DNF, at LEL. I reverted to my Sella Anatomica saddle, placing the blame for LEL squarely on the Terry Fly saddle that so severely bruised my derrière. In reality there were many reasons, but I'm going to forever hold a grudge against that saddle. Twenty-eight riders lined up for the 5am Friday start, looking at a day of 233 miles and about 8k feet of climbing. I rolled out with a group of randos I mostly knew, who promptly dropped my 210 lb self on the first highway climb. No worries, I didn't anticipate hanging with the cool kids on the rolling first half of the ride. I rode solo virtually the rest of the day. Some people cannot tolerate riding alone, whilst I'm very comfortable spending a day by myself on the bike. Alone, I can cruise my pace, climb at my pace, push hard when I feel like it, take a roadside pee without having to chase back up, and just generally be my own boss. The route went generally NW out of Olympia, up to a short out-and-back to a staffed control by Wynoochee Lake. This was the first food and water on the route at 67 miles; a bit further than I typically roll without a stop. I was carrying a 3rd water bottle in my jersey for this leg, but with cool temps I didn't even get through two bottles. On the out-and-back nearing the lake, I saw the cool kids headed back, maybe 45 minutes ahead of me already. Someone yelled "you can catch up" as we passed. LOLs. "Nope", I thought to myself, "I'm chillin'."
Let me pause here and say, this was a 1000, with loops and repeats, so my recollection of exactly what happened when and where isn't exactly clear. I'll just tell snippets that may or may not have happened when and where (or even how) I recall.
There were miles of gravel. Chunky gravel, on a climby road, with soft bits and typically a seam of hardpack to seek out. It was grand, beautiful, slow, and devoid of cars. After Wynoochee lake, there was an icky stretch on 101 northbound that took us up to Olympic National Park, where the route thankfully veered off 101 and took a spin on the smaller and better packed gravel around Lake Quinault. Twice I've done that loop, twice the ride organizer advised us to ignore our GPS units' warnings about being off route, and twice I've stopped to figure out why I was off course. That's rando. Back out onto 101 I came to a control where the question was what color were the security bars by the door, and a couple randos from ahead were paused alongside the road. A rando tradition, at least with SIR, is to buy a gallon of water at a control, use what you need, and set it outside for following riders. In this case, someone even wrote "SIR" on the cap with a sharpie. So I topped off my water, wrote down the answer (green), pulled out onto the road and hit it pretty hard. After the gravel, the pavement felt so smooth and fast. I thought the other riders might jump on, but I guess I didn't give them a chance. I'd put aero bars on my bike two weeks earlier for a 200k perm, and was getting really comfortable on them. They're on 60mm risers, putting my torso at about the same angle as when on the drops, so not aero so much as providing hand relief. This is the stretch of 101 where a school bus driver decided to give me a full two inches, evidently not wanting to move over remotely close to the vacant oncoming lane. That's also rando. This is where I noticed the smoke. Later I found there was a wildfire burning near Packwood, one of our control towns for day 2.
Another pause. The ride is named Third Time's a Charm because this was the 3rd attempt SIR made at running this route, over the last couple years. The first two were canceled due to (I think) COVID, and wildfire smoke. Deja Vu.
Honestly I didn't smell smoke, but there was clearly heavy smoke in the sky, blocking the sun, making for weird lighting. Later I found several people had DNF'd due to the smoke, including one who's asthma was triggered. Either I got lucky where the wind was blowing the smoke (and it was windy), or I was just oblivious to the air around me (which my wife would tell you is quite consistent with prior behavior). The rest of day 1 is kind of a blur. I rode within myself but fairly hard, did a good job staying on top of hydration and nutrition, and generally had a good time. The last 100k was flat, allowing me to get into a groove, negating the effects of my weight. I rolled in to the hotel back in Olympia around 9:40pm, well ahead of my estimated 10:30pm. I was just 30 minutes behind the cool kids, which included my roomie. Here we learned of the extent of the wildfire, which completely nixed any hope of riding the planned day 2 route. The organizers gave us the Saturday plan: ride the day 3 route and they'd have something to tell us Saturday night. After sandwiches and a beer, I hit the shower and bedded down for a glorious and unprecedented 7 hours of sleep.
https://www.strava.com/activities/7798112378
Another pause in the story. Days 2 and 3 ended up using the same day 3 route due to the wildfires, with actual day 3 adding a 20 mile trail out-and-back for needed mileage. As a result, my recollection of the two days is somewhat intermingled. That's rando.
Mileage on days 2 and 3 were 188 and 207. The route started out going west out of Olympia then south along a bit of coastline before heading back inland, further south, then NE back towards Olympia. The additional out-and-back on day 3 was at mile 170. I rode with the group quite a lot on both days 2 and 3, with some solo miles and some two-man miles with my roomie, in-between group stretches. The small group of 5 to 6 included a woman who was riding her first ever brevet. That's right, she started with a 1000k. Not what you'd consider a good idea, but let me tell you. She's a car-free bike commuter, rides to other towns frequently, and has ridden Seattle to Portland numerous times, but I guess her main cycling gig is the virtual world. She slaughtered us, destroyed egos, wrecked legs, pedaled along for 1000km with a smile on her face and a clear joy for cycling in her body language. Damn. I mean, seriously? At times we'd send someone up to the front to chat with her so she'd slow the **** down. It was grand. Somewhere before Raymond, we were taking turns on the front and I ended up pulling when the road turned up. This perfectly timed with crashing blood sugar as I'd forgotten to eat in the paceline excitement. As everyone blew by my crawling heavy ass, she called out, "nice pull". Jokester. Somebody shared a packet of pure maple syrup, which I downed along with a Gu and the remains of a Rice Crispie Treat. I recovered. Day 1 in Raymond two of us stopped at a sit-down restaurant for a rather slow lunch, while on day 3 we went to a slightly quicker Dairy Queen with the group. Raymond to Pe Ell is kind of boring, a wide rolling road without much to see, at least that I recall. Pe Ell to Adna is about 18 miles of gravel rail-trail, where my roomie and I ended up solo because everyone else ended up taking the paved option. We did maybe another 50k together, mostly flat to small rollers, and got into a nice pattern of taking turns. I was feeling great. The day 3 out-and-back bonus segment started in Tenino, taking a paved rail-trail 10 miles out to the city of Ranier for an info control. Just about a quarter mile before the turnaround, we saw the gang returning; we'd taken a slightly extended stop of Mexican (tortas, Jarritos), while they'd opted for quicker convenience store dinner. So we hit it super hard, doing 1 mile pulls and drawing them back just near the end of the trail. Fortunately they saw us coming and decided to lollygag a bit to let us catch up. The last 17 miles from Tenino, on day 3, should have been an easy roll-in to the finish. We had 12 hours in the bank (despite 2 nights of 7-hour sleeps), and had no reason to hurry. But no, not with our virtual newbie rando super happy Zwifter 4 watts/kg friend on the front. She was holding back, but pushing hard enough to make us suffer. I hauled my fat self up a couple short climbs with everything I had, thankfully staying on the wheels so I could draft along in the flats. It just started sprinkling as we rolled into Olympia around 8pm. Five of us finished at 60:03, one had pulled ahead on the out-and-back to finish right at 60:00, and two more were a few minutes behind. Of the 28 starters, 10 finished. Some due to smoke, some didn't care to repeat day 2, and others for the more typical and various reasons. For me, I was super happy to get the LEL DNF taste out of my mouth. With this 1000k, I earned my 2nd RUSA Cup and my first ACP 10000.
https://www.strava.com/activities/7798112367
https://www.strava.com/activities/7798112373
Good times.
