Completed my 1000k over the weekend. That infamous climb that I mentioned earlier? Yeah, it's that nasty.
My plan was to do roughly 400km per day, or 20 hours riding, with 4 hours rest or sleep in between. This would make the last day much more bearable, with a target completion time of 60h if I manage to get back by 7pm Sunday.
The ride started at about 7am on a nice Friday morning. There were around slightly over 30 participants registered for the 1000k, which isn't much. But tomorrow, same time, will be a 600k and the following day, 300k, so we're expecting to meet some of the 300k and 600k riders on Sunday heading back to the finishing point.
There were three others riding with me, though like most brevets impromptu grouping come and go along the way.
First 40km of coastline roads was nice and flat. Then everything becomes hilly. The infamous climb starts around 100km. My lightest gear combination is a 32T in front and 32T at the back, so I thought I might try to keep it in Zone 2, slow but steady pace all the way up, but nope, the hill would have none of that. Even at the upper range of Zone 2 power, my cadence was around 35rpm, sweating buckets, heart rate nice and deep in Z5. Experienced muscle cramps in both legs -- but fortunately not both at the same time!
I made it, but at great cost. Others were probably smart about saving their legs and walking up. I'll probably want lighter gearing before I try this one again.
Anyways, due to muscle cramps the rest of my day was pretty bad. It's like having a hard ceiling cap to my power, go above Z1 and the cramps threaten to return. Since the route all the way to around 380km was hilly, that wasn't very good. My appetite was also completely shot at this point though; although I tried to eat solid foods throughout the day, but my stomach couldn't handle much and so I had to rely mostly on liquids - fruit juice, soft drinks, etc. Thoughts of DNF-ing kept occuring throughout the ride, though I managed to just endure it and ride on. I reminded myself of one of the important tenets from the ultracycling people - never scratch in the PM.
It was past 3am when I reached the checkpoint at 348km, so trying to hit that 400km/20h daily target was definitely out the window. Still not too bad, finishing under 70 hours was still possible.
Slept for around 2 hours at the checkpoint - on the floor of a petrol station - and woke up feeling pretty good. Legs were definitely much better and I didn't have to worry too much about cramping anymore. Appetite was still a bit iffy, but at least I could eat a bit more than yesterday.
Things were going well until between KM450-550. Although it was pretty much flat, this is a coastal road heading south, with some annoying headwinds. That alone would be bearable, but combined hot weather, it was a painfully slow slog south. Spent a lot of time stopping to rest and shelter from the sun, and by the time we hit the 578km checkpoint it was already night time. Furthermore, the route becomes a lot hillier afterwards.
- Ais kacang - local delicacy. We searched high and low for it to deal with the heat!
It was a slow trudge towards the next checkpoint at 681km though. This was our second night of riding, so people either needed to stop for power naps or were falling asleep on the bike left and right. The hills were also covered in a relatively thick and cold mist which fogged up my glasses. Visibility was practically nil, so I had to take off my glasses to continue riding. Fortunately I could still see decently without them; I just couldn't read.
We reached the checkpoint very early in the morning. No one was around to stamp our brevet card, so I just took a photo that included the time on my Garmin. Since everyone was pretty much sleepy and tired, we decided to look for a nearby hotel, get a hot shower and put in a little bit of sleep - 90 minutes, actually. Not much, but it was a lot better than nothing.
Third day, I was feeling a lot better now. Could also eat a complete breakfast, which was very encouraging. Still had some sleepy spells throughout the day, but nothing that I couldn't get rid of with a short 5-minute break. We "lost" a member of our group that morning, he woke up late at the hotel and then claimed to have bike problems so he told us to go on without him.
We started meeting BRM300 participants along our route from 850km onwards. Most BRM600 participants would have already been ahead as their COT was 10pm that day, whereas the BRM300 riders finish by 1am the following day. For me and my group though, it looks like we were on track for a 10-11pm finish.
We did hit a bit of a snag at around 900-925km, this is a major town center and it was a big public holiday (National Day on Monday, so 3-day weekend for a lot of people). Seems like they all like to congregate at the beach, so we had to maneuver through tons of not-moving-much traffic. Not fun at all, but eventually we got out of the town center for the final leg to the finish point.
I finished at 11:07pm for an elapsed time of 64:07; I was practically smashing it on the last flat 15kms in order to get that time. At the finish, I heard there were two other BRM1000 finishers before me; the rest of my group trickled in a few minutes later. The guy we left at the hotel in the morning completed about an hour before the 10am cut-off time the following day, so all is good.
