Back to Big Savage in Search of Solace

A version of this article appeared in American Randonneur Magazine (Winter 2017)

It was a straight-up revenge mission, or maybe a search for redemption.  Exactly two years before, after years of ultracycling and randonneuring – always on the lookout for the mountainous routes that brought with them panoramic vistas and exhilarating downward plunges to reward honest effort – a friend and I had taken a crack at the new, daunting frontier known as the “Super Randonneur 600k.”  The course was Big Savage SR600k, a route of Bill Beck’s device featuring the sawtooth grades of western Maryland, the verdant Lost River State Park in West Virginia, and Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.  It was the best the Mid-Atlantic had to offer, but we’d have to earn it: 42,000 feet of climbing in 375 miles told the story. Or so we thought.

The risk of looking for a challenge is that one might find it.  In retrospect, I wasn’t remotely prepared: a nasty fall earlier in the year had sidelined me for two months, after which I’d spent far more time planning my wedding than logging miles.  Thus, my 2015 crack at Big Savagehad essentially been a bachelor’s party only a randonneur could love, complete with self-inflicted debacles and no small sense of relief at surviving the ordeal.  It was the toughest 43 hours of my life; indeed, at the first control -- 60 miles and 8,000 feet of climbing in -- I’d found myself staring into the middle distance, dazedly trying to ingest a Frito and wondering where my life had taken a wrong turn.  The remaining 315 miles were little better.  Ultimately, it was only my riding companion’s persuasive powers and refusal to indulge my self-pity that convinced me to attempt the second half of the ride instead of aborting the mission.  My blog post afterward honestly recounted my view that, if one were thinking of attempting an SR600k, the best plan was to lie down until the sensation passed.

And yet, I couldn’t quite let it go.  Surely things would have been different if I’d prepared appropriately.  Possibly. So, while outwardly vowing never again to toe that masochist line, I thumb-tacked a mental note next to Big Savagethat read: “Not done here.”  

By September 2017, two years later, I felt ready to even the score.  In 2016, I’d cruised through the Lynn Kristiansen Memorial SR600kon Skyline Drive with no undue drama, although tropical storm remnants ensured that it was a thoroughly soggy adventure. Then,  in the spring of 2017, I’d joined the roles of Cyclos Montagnards R60 honorees.  With my wife overseas for a week, the scene was ripe for revenge served Savage. 

Life, however, has a way of resisting even the best-laid plans.  Two weeks out from the scheduled attempt, my father went into coronary arrest and septic shock.  Odds were against his survival.  I spent the next ten days in the florescent glare of an ICU ward, doing little but sitting, awaiting test results, and conversing with palliative care staff before collapsing each night more tired than if I’d run a marathon.  Bike ride?  Who cared?

Improbably, after more than a week of unconsciousness, my father woke up and began what would be a long and uncertain process of recovery.  The situation having stabilized at least somewhat, I returned to D.C. three days before I’d signed up to attempt Big Savage.  It was tough to imagine worse preparation for such an endeavor, and I debated whether to be conventionally sensible and focus on putting my life back in order. Equally, though, I thought that nothing would be better than losing myself in the mountains and sunshine and letting my mind wander with the winds.  Call it a celebration of life and triumphing over adversity: if my father could defeat septic shock, I could fight a battle in my own way.  I resolved to give it hell, exhausted or not.

Mentally, I started the ride with an audacious goal: to ride Big Savage straight through. I’d timed my ride start to fit with such a plan, and I hadn’t made a hotel reservation at the halfway mark in the hope that it would be easier not to stop that way.   Thus, heart full, eyes clear, and self-delusion abundant, I easily conquered the first hundred yards of the ride before launching myself up the first climb – a three-mile, thousand-foot spike known as Sideling Hill, the bane of weary RAAM riders dreaming of Annapolis.  

Three hours into the ride, I’d traveled barely thirty miles.  The first sixty miles traveling west from Hancock, MD, boast an elevation resembling the results of a particularly incriminating polygraph test: climb for three or four miles, plunge down the backside, and season to taste.  Despite my attempts to remain enthusiastic, my legs weren’t responding.  My heart and mind remained in a hospital a thousand miles away, and each time my phone rang I feared the worst.  Endurance challenges are profoundly mental, and I felt my resolve fading as the grades steepened.

Two thoughts drove me onward.  First, I’ve found that there are few troubles that a day in the sunshine won’t improve; whatever my emotional state, the saddle was the place to work through it.  Second, the fact is that the first sixty miles of Big Savagemay be the toughest of any randonneuring route in the United States.  It’s a remarkably difficult stretch regardless of circumstances, beginning with thousand-foot spikes and culminating in a punishing 2,500-foot ascent of the eponymous Big Savage Mountain.   I reasoned that the goal was just to stay in the game and continue moving forward, and that life would look better from the summit.  A bag of Bugles had my name on it.

And so it proved.  The course meandered along the Big Savage ridgeline, twisting through scenes that contrasted centuries, crimson barns and antique tractors presaging a regiment of wind turbines spanning distant peaks.  The roads were in perfect repair, but some ancient houses were little more than scaffolds of timber dejectedly yielding to fate.  The deer divined no threat in my whirring wheels, nor did the massive black bear that regarded me skeptically from atop a railroad embankment.  A bald eagle carried its victim out of my path on the plummeting descent down Big Savage.  Only too soon, I arrived at the top of the “Westernport Wall,” a regionally famous hill in Westernport, MD, whose grade exceeds 30%, and which is paved with bricks immortalizing the riders who have conquered it during the annual Savageman Triathlon.  

From Westernport, it was an easy spin through small-town Appalachia to Keyser, West Virginia, scene of the sadly departed Stray Cat Café, a previous culinary highlight of the route, then a turn southbound on the 40-mile rolling stretch toward Moorefield.  The cycling gods signaled their favor in the form of 20 miles of brand new, glassy-smooth tarmac, and an expansive valley stretched for miles to the east before the ridgeline I knew I’d have to summit eventually. Just before Moorefield came the deceptively brief but severely steep 1.2-mile Patterson Creek Mountain climb, which is easy to miss in the elevation profile only due to the monsters on either side of it.  Its 8% average grade testifies to the lie of averages, and around each of its twists one meets the depressing reality: “Not yet.”  

But all things must end, and from the summit, a breakneck descent carried me into Moorefield and the control at Fox’s Pizza. Calories, sodium, and air conditioning were all that this savaged randonneur could ask, even if my mere presence put Fox’s at risk of flunking a health inspection.  

Fox’s location is a mixed blessing: it’s just what you need and when you need it, but it comes immediately before the biggest beast of the course, the climb up South Branch Mountain.  Eat too much and you risk giving some of it back in short order – five miles at an 8% average grade is grim in the best of times, and the last half-mile’s 14% grade qualifies as obscene.  The only blessing is a guardrail that provides a convenient seat from which to contemplate the nature of despair and the potential availability of mountain bike gearing. 

 

The eventual summit proved that hard work pays dividends, offering infinite views of the rugged West Virginia countryside and the encouraging realization that it was all downhill from there.  I quickly entered Lost River State Park, a mid-Atlantic cycling mecca of wild landscapes where one’s far more likely to encounter a bear than a cell signal.  At its heart lies one of the best controls in the randonneuring world, the Lost River Grill, an oasis of booth seats, great cooking, and pie slices as big as the cog I wished I’d had on South Branch Mountain.  The wait staff are so familiar with cyclists and their peculiar needs that I’ve had them preemptively swipe my empty water bottles from the table and bring them back full of my beverage of choice.  

The only downside of Lost River Grill is that it’s nearly impossible to leave, especially when one’s facing twilight and the knowledge that more climbs await.  By this time I’d abandoned any notion of riding straight through; indeed, I was sufficiently shattered that I’d tentatively decided to call it quits at the overnight control 30 miles away.  My legs had been leaden all day, and as much as I tried to prevent it, my thoughts were with my father instead of the road ahead.  And, with the nature of an out-and-back course, it’s only too evident what topographic monsters lurk on the return journey.

But what a final 30 miles!  The climbs through Mill and Wolf Gaps are arguably the sweetest riding in the mid-Atlantic, all sparkling tarmac snaking through the George Washington National Forest.  At night it’s a starry wonderland, the sounds of crickets, spokes, and rushing waters combining into a sonnet for the intrepid rider.  On the far side lay the bed into which I collapsed without setting an alarm, content that I’d had a soul-cleansing day in the saddle and needn’t push my luck with another the next morning if I didn’t feel compelled.  

Ten hours later, I stumbled out of bed confident I’d qualified for membership in the Rip van Winkle society of SR600k riders, looked out the window, and contemplated my choice: a 60-mile leisurely spin back to the car, or a 188-mile assault on the return leg of Big Savage.  While I enjoyed a leisurely hotel breakfast, I received encouraging news about my father’s health and immediately felt an emotional cloud lift.  I realizing I’d be a fool not to celebrate by spending as much time as I could beneath the sun and amidst the trees.  Bring on the reverse route!

The return to Hancock was as joyous as the first leg had been arduous.  Climbing back through Wolf Gap, a bobcat flashed across the road not ten feet in front of me, as exotic a sighting as one will find on a bicycle.   A quick slice of pie at the Lost River Grill fueled me over the much gentler side of South Branch Mountain.  So, too, the Patterson Creek Mountain spike and return climb up Big Savage Mountain seemed friendlier with the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to see them again the next day.  The final 30 miles, with their thousand-foot climbs and descents, were as tough as I remembered their being two years earlier, but no journey worth retelling would end on a whimper.  The Big Savage SR600k admits defeat only after a suitably mighty roar. 

More than most, randonneurs grasp in their souls that reward is proportionate to effort, and in that respect, the SR600ks are crown jewels.  With their new 60-hour time limit, they are within reach of anyone with the audacity for the attempt and the planning to make the dream happen.  The Big Savage SR600kis not for the faint-hearted, but it earns that highest of accolades: it’s utterly unforgettable.

Final time: 41h, 12m

Strava file for Day 1:

Strava file for Day 2:

The Four Amigos: Diabolical Double 2017 Recap

Whee!

It's rides like the Garrett County Gran Fondo's "Diabolical Double" that sold me on cycling.  I bought a bike in 2005 to train for an Ironman in 2006, and after finishing that in one piece, I found myself drawn inexorably to the long, painful, and stupid.  Whereas in my first year of cycling a rolling hill constituted a daunting challenge, by 2007, I found myself signing up for Mountains of Misery, a ride in Blacksburg, VA, over Memorial Day weekend that started in a valley and ended on top of the most ridiculous climb in the world (and the filing location of Dirty Dancing!).  MoM offered a 100-mile route with two awful climbs and a 125-mile route with four, so I chose the longer one because it was longer than the shorter one.  Sound logic.

That first year of MoM was a blast.  I didn't know anyone else riding, but I met a colorful cast of folks along the way who knew what they were doing.  Too dumb to know better, I rode faster than I should have but somehow held it together, thus finishing both my longest and hilliest ride in one swoop.  In the final miles of that ride I met a guy, Kyle, and his girlfriend, Laura, who seemed to be riding pretty hard.  When we got to the base of the final climb, a 3-mile monster that ascended at an average grade of 12% or so, Kyle quickly vanished up the road.  I remarked to Laura that he seemed to be a strong rider, and she agreed before dropping me as well.  Sheesh.

In future years, MoM became a mainstay on my calendar -- every Memorial Day, I talked a different group of friends into giving it a go, and most of them came back for more.  I rode it seven years consecutively, and only in the last year, 2013, did I crank out a quick time as I was chasing my buddy Mike around like a dog after a frisbee.  He's Canadian, so he doesn't get tired, apparently.

Sometime around 2010, Kyle, whom I'd first met on MoM a couple of years earlier, apparently decided that MoM wasn't hard enough and that he could do better.  He had a house on Deep Creek Lake in Garrett County, near Wisp Mountain in far western Maryland, and he advertised a 125k ride that would make MoM look like child's play.  The first year was a "beta" year, i.e., one in which the ride organizer was still perfecting things, so he invited riders to come out and give it a whack in exchange for gaining a new perspective on the concept of suffering.  I toed the line with Max, Mike, and perhaps Seb, and we trundled our way through never-ending grades of 15% or more, followed by descents that weren't much more relaxing.  At one point we found ourselves in a valley with 50 miles to go, looking at a digital board that proclaimed the temperature to be 95 degrees, and facing a series of miles-long climbs in the brutal sun.  The only way home was forward.  Grim effing business.

The gang and I rode the Diabolical Double two or three more times in the ensuing years, often camping near the start.  Each time was memorable, but when I stopped racing triathlons and joined the ultra-racing scene, I found that each year the DD coincided with the National 24-Hour Challenge in Michigan, the biggest of the American 24-hour races, so I didn't make it back for a little while.

2017, then, was the return of the prodigal moron.  Due to work commitments, I couldn't make it to Michigan, and besides, I learned that the DD had innovated in my absence.  In 2013, it had been a 125-mile sufferfest with little to shoot for except survival, but in the last year or two, it had started keeping track of riders' times up certain climbs and ranking riders' performances afterward in connection with "King of the Mountains" and "Queen of the Mountains" awards.  That sounded intriguing.  Better yet, 2017 was the pilot edition of a team competition wherein teams of at least four riders would compete over about a dozen climbs scattered throughout the day.

I put a team together consisting of the ever-enthusiastic Sebastian; a local climbing superstar, Chris; and one of his friends, Matt, whom I didn't know.  I looked forward to a social ride, because I haven't had many of those lately.  Between the R60 chase on the randonneuring front, which had me riding solo off the front for 6-20 hours at a time; ultracycling races, which are monastic by nature; and my usual indoor training regimen, I realized I'd been something of a cycling hermit.  The beauty of the DD's team competition was that we could ride together all day, enjoy the plentiful aid stations, and then work hard on the designated climbs before regrouping at the summits.  A perfect summer day on a bike!  If only Max hadn't been in Europe.

I wasn't sure what to expect performance-wise.  I felt like I was in pretty good shape after my win at the Maryland Endurance Challenge 12-hour race a month before, and my base fitness was unquestionable after my springtime randonneuring exploits, but the Diabolical Double's KOM competition was an entirely different beast.  Ultracycling and randonneuring, like Ironman racing, prize long, steady efforts that, while uncomfortable, never require anything approaching an all-out effort at a given moment.  Climbing steep grades as fast as one can is just the opposite: you find a highly uncomfortable place and force yourself to live there until you reach the top.  It's something I don't train for in any direct sense, and I hadn't done much hard climbing this year.  Indeed, I hadn't ridden these notoriously difficult climbs in several years.  So, I eyeballed the Strava times for the relevant climbs, reviewed my past times, and took a stab at some goals I hoped to be able to reach.  Off we went!

Because I'm me, the night before the DD brought a tropical storm to the area that dumped All Of The Rain on the course, washing gravel across the road in certain places and generally making a muck of the first couple of hours.

KOM Climb 1: Overlook Pass (0.7 miles, 12% grade)

Fortunately, we didn't have to wait long: the first time climb, Overlook Pass hit us at mile 2.5 or so.  It was a steep effort of 0.7 miles, so I revved it up and let it rip.  About halfway up, I realized this was going to be a long day, but the result was a pleasant surprise:

My previous best time up the climb was 6:31, and my ambitious goal was 5:25.  My actual time was 4:59, with an average power of 365 watts.  What a result!  Maybe I could climb after all.  Of course, that's easy to say on the first hill of a 125-mile day with 16,300 feet of climbing, but a good start was better than the alternative.  My lungs and legs burned.  Le ouch.

KOM Climb 2: White Rock Road (0.9 miles, 10% grade)

We didn't have to wait long for our second shot at glory: White Rock Road awaited us just a few miles later.  I walked across the wet metal grate bridge just in front of it -- fool me once, and all that -- and Chris, who'd started behind us, met us on the other side.  At last I'd be able to ride with the legendary Chris, the climbing hero and cheerful masochist about whom I'd heard so much, but with whom I hadn't ridden.  I imagined he'd dispatch me easily when the grades pitched up, but we'd see.  White Rock Road was just as advertised: a little longer, a little less steep, but with lactic acid still flooding the muscles from the past effort.  Oh, well, up and at 'em.

Previous best: 7:28.  Goal: 6:53 (looking back on it, could I possibly have been more arbitrary?).  Time: 6:41!  Victory is mine, at least over me.  Plenty of folks beat me, but at least I beat past me.  That guy sucked.  And an average power of 360 watts for 6:41, another personal best, and an even stronger effort than the first climb (5 watts more, but 1:42 shorter).  This was fun!  And completely awful.  Seb found me doubled over the handlebars wondering if we could go home now.

After White Rock's torture, we enjoyed a leisurely ride to the first aid station.  I got to know Chris a little, made fun of Seb (because that's what one does on a bike ride), and caught up with a bunch of local triathletes I hadn't seen in too long.  It was refreshing not having time spent at aid stations count against us in any sense -- I ate a sammich and some M&Ms in leisurely fashion, then off we went, to infinity and beyond!

KOM Climb 3: Limestone Hill (3.5 miles, 5%)

Infinity wasn't very far at all.  In fact, it started about 1/4 mile after the aid station.  This one was longer: 3.5 miles at a relatively reasonable average grade of 5%, but is there a more misleading statistic in cycling than the concept of average grade?  In this case, it meant extended sections at 10% punctuated by brief descents and lengthy flattish parts that would have been relaxing if ridden slowly, but ridden hard were anything but.  I took off like a flash, leaving Seb, Chris, and Matt behind, and I was feeling pretty good about myself for a couple of miles, at which point Chris came cruising past me and flew into the distance, beating me handily.  Wow.  Hats off, the guy can ride.

I'd never ridden Limestone Hill before, so I had no past times to compare it to.  My educated goal was 20:04 (again, there must have been some reason for this), but I spanked it with a 17:57 effort at a healthy 310w average.  Chris and I both recorded top-10 overall Strava times (i.e., rankings against everyone who's ridden the climb), with him pipping me by 5 seconds.  I was delighted with my time, but I was feeling like my quads had been run over by a semi.  Red wizard needs food, badly.  (Sorry, 80s video game reference.)

KOM Climb 4: Sam Friend Road (1.3 miles, 8% avg grade)

Not friendly at all.  I was still pretty cooked from Limestone Hill, and Chris was bobbing over distant hilltops effortlessly.  Sam Friend wasn't going to be pretty.  It wasn't.  Just get it done somehow.  How long could 1.3 miles be, after all?  (Answer: 1.3 miles too long.)

Again, no past times against which to compare my performance, but at least I handily beat my goal of 9:27, chalking up an 8:34 with a 319w average power.  Hardly disastrous, but I was feeling thoroughly sorry for myself at that point.  Chris had plenty of time to wait at the top while deciding how sorry for me he wanted to be -- he beat me by nearly 30 seconds.  At this rate, he'd have to save me a beer at the finish line, and perhaps drink it while I laid in a ditch somewhere.

My only solace lay in Chris's assurance that the next aid station came before the fifth KOM climb.  I intended to sit down for awhile and suck down Coke while I collected myself before taking on the next climb, which was a 4.7-mile slog.  And then, just where I thought the aid station would be, I saw a timing mat.  Well, crap.

KOM Climb 5: Keyser's Ridge and Pig's Ear (4.7 miles, 3% avg grade)

Again with that average grade.  Sure, the average was 3%, but nothing on it was 3% -- it was hundreds of yards at 10% or more, then meandering flats and mild descents on which we had to push the pace because we were being timed.  It was a combination of climb and time trial on legs that wanted to be anywhere else.  Meanwhile, Chris had missed a turn at the start, so I was pretty sure he'd be buzzing past me at any moment.  It never quite happened, but by the time I reached the top (and the long-sought aid station), I was shattered.  I'd never climbed that hard so many times in succession.

Still, not a disaster!  Out of 3 previous efforts, my best time was 23:20, and I'd set an audacious goal of 21:46.  My actual time was a sprightly 19:47, good for 18th overall.  Wattage of 285 wasn't anything to brag about, but I was tired and there was a downhill section where it was hard to push the pace, so I had to be pleased.  Whether I could climb anything else, though, was far from clear.

KOM Climb 6: Bowman Hill (1.6 miles, 9% average grade)

Bowman is notoriously nasty.  I'd ridden it several times before, and it was always the piece de resistance of an incomparably difficult set of challenges.  You know it's bad when one aid station is only 11 miles after the previous one -- it's guaranteed that nothing good will happen in those 11 miles.  And it didn't.  Bowman is efficient in that it just goes straight up the mountainside with no thought for  mitigating the grade through switchbacks.  This presented an additional challenge in that riders ahead of us were drifting back and forth across the road in a desperate attempt to stay upright.  Gah.  I wasn't sure what I had in me, so I just sat down and cranked until the cranking was done.

Woof!  Previous best - 13:08.  Goal: 12:31.  Actual time: 11:36.  My power meter didn't register for some reason, but heck, who cares.  I was alive and had kept alive my streak of beating every goal time with flying (ok, slowly disintegrating) colors.

Bowman was the penultimate KOM "chip timed" climb, and the seventh and final one lay some 40 miles down the road.  Of course, that section wasn't flat by any stretch -- it's just that the climbs would only count toward the team competition, not the individual KOM.  There's the famous Killer Miller, a climb I'd tackled many times before with times ranging from 10:01 to 11:20.  This time, I chalked up an 8:18.  There was the Michael Road route up Big Savage Mountain, which comprised the final 0.6 miles of a 4.3-mile climb... and it averaged 12% grade.   It was the closest I'd come in years to unclipping and lying down on the ground, but merely by surviving it I snagged a top-10 Strava result:

KOM Climb 7: Dry Run (2.8 miles, 7% avg grade)

Finally, after about 105 miles, we came to the final King of the Mountains chip-timed climb, a hard 3-mile charge up Dry Run Road.  I had nothing left to give -- I just wanted to make it to the beer at some point.  Somehow, though, when I saw that timing mat, I sucked it up and recorded an entirely solid effort:

Goal time: 18:19.  Result: 17:01 at 315w average power.  I have no idea where it came from -- there aren't many times in my life I've ridden that hard for that long, much less with so much stress in my legs.  In fact, that's a higher power than I've ever recorded in the Computrainer challenges I've taken part in at the old Multisport Expos, and I tackled those on fresh legs.  Hot damn!  The end couldn't some soon enough, but I will say that Dry Run is simply a delight.  How could you not ride well under a forested canopy with a river rushing past you?  Paradise on earth, apart from the pain.

The remaining 20 miles were a relatively tame victory lap that unfolded without incident, apart from a couple of unwelcome "team competition" hills that came out of nowhere.  Somehow I managed to snag the day's best time and 5th overall on Meadow Mountain, an 0.8-mile, 9% kicker from hell.  And, in an inexplicable turn of events, I took the Strava overall KOM on the final significant climb of the day, a 1.1-mile, 5% ascent up Negro Mountain Road:

I don't have many KOMs -- I'm not that kind of rider, and this ride had some folks far faster than I am -- so all I can guess is that I didn't fall apart as much as some others.  330+ watts for 5 minutes is, for me, miraculous at that stage of the day.  And what a sign-off for the ride!

Final Thoughts

I had more fun on that ride than I've had in a long time.  The companionship was a huge part of it: Chris, Seb, and Matt were great company -- talented riders who didn't take it too seriously.  I realized I miss riding with friends on events like these.  I used to do it pretty regularly, but it's been far too long, and I hope to have chances again soon.  Perhaps it's an argument against ultra-racing, although there are arguments in favor of that, too.  (Give me a minute.  Let me get back to you.)  But there's really something to be said for an event that lets you disregard overall time, work really hard for segments, relax the rest of the time, and finish up the same day you start.  It's almost... normal, although frankly, nothing about the Diabolical Double course is normal.

My performance here surprised the heck out of me.  I finished in the top few riders over 40 and top 10 overall out of many hundreds, and this isn't the sort of thing I train for.  It makes me think I could hold my own outside of ultracycling races, although who knows in what.  

In the meantime, I'm not sure what's next on the radar.  The Diabolical Double was an unexpectedly great capstone on an entirely successful spring season, complete with the win at the Maryland Endurance Challenge and R60 completion.  I hit all my targets, which I suppose means there's nowhere to go but down, but I'm hoping to build on my newfound strength and push on.  Maybe I have more surprises left in me yet.

Maryland Endurance Challenge 2017: Better than Bridesmaid

He's so... pretty in pink.

Cycling-wise, the past six months have been the best and worst of times.  Since November, I've been training more consistently than ever, using both new equipment (out with the Computrainer, in with the Tacx Neo), and a different training system (TrainerRoad).  I've never worked so hard, and I looked forward to trying to push some personal boundaries at Sebring in February.  Unfortunately, a serious throat infection hospitalized me for several days; instead of doing hot laps on an F1 race track, I was intubated at Johns Hopkins and looking forward to the day when I was allowed to consume ice chips.  I was off of the bike for more than a week, and I felt distinctly weak for far longer than that.  It was disheartening, but at least I lived through it.  And, hey, few better ways to lose those extra pounds than an impromptu ICU vacation.

With no racing on the near-term agenda, I refocused myself on putting together a serious randonneuring season, which featured a sub-20 hour 600k and receipt of the Cyclos Montagnards R60 honor for completing a 200k, 300k, 400k, and 600k brevet in under 60% of the allotted time.  At times it was tough to stay afloat: at one point I'd completed rides of 300k (190 miles) or further on 5 weekends in a 6-week stretch.  It's tough to balance (i) resting for such rides, (ii) recovering from them, and (iii) putting in the hard intervals necessary to get faster at the same time.  I'm not sure I did it perfectly, but I certainly did the best I could.  It said a lot about my mindset that I worried excessive randonneuring would derail my training; I forced myself to remember that I train in order to have adventures, and not for its own sake.

Through hook or crook, I came into the first race of the season stronger and lighter than I've ever been.  But I hadn't done much racing in a long time: my last competitive event was Race Across Oregon in July 2016.  Before that, I'd had a fairly disastrous National 24-Hour Challenge in which I succumbed to heat issues and called it a day before darkness fell.

My first race of 2017, at the inaugural Maryland Endurance Challenge 12-hour event, would pit me against several extremely strong riders.  One of them, Billy Volchko, crushed me in that 2016 National 24-Hour Challenge with a ride of over 500 miles on a miserably hot day; he'd also won a couple of 12-hour races.  Another racer, Ken Ray, was new to the ultra-racing scene but was at the pointy end of training for the TransAmerica Race, a 4300-mile self-supported coast-to-coast event, and he'd been riding 25-30 hours per week since last fall in preparation.  Plus, I've found that usually an unknown-to-me superman shows up unannounced.  It would be no time to have an off day.

The race was run out of the beautiful grounds of Mount St. Mary's University near Thurmont, Maryland -- north of Frederick and almost into Pennsylvania.  That area is a cycling mecca with everything one could want, from flat cruising up to Gettysburg to climbs in the Gambrill Park region that threaten cardiac events.  It even has covered bridges!

Duncan, the race director, had designed the course to display what the region has to offer.  It wasn't hilly per se, but at 40 feet of climbing per mile in the form of constant rolling hills, it posed a monumental challenge -- many ultracycling events are flat drag-races, or at least have a couple of hills that one can conquer before relaxing.  This one, though, would require a little bit of everything and would offer few opportunities to relax.  Moreover, it was a draft-legal race, which introduced a strategic dimension that one doesn't face in the "put your head down and pedal" races like Sebring.  Working cooperatively can help everyone go further, but that won't necessarily help you cross the line first.

The 12-hour race featured two loops.  The first was a 34-mile "long" loop that we'd ride 3 times; it featured a solid half-mile climb, several punchy rollers that exceeded 10% grade, twisting country roads, covered bridges, and the Catoctin Mountains in the background.

The second was a 6.4-mile affair that we'd whip around until either we got dizzy and fell over or 12 hours had passed.  It was slightly less hilly than the long loop but still far from an easy cruise, particularly when you're tired and riding aggressively.

One enjoyable thing about 12-hour races is that they're ridden in daytime -- no overnight freezes, lights to deal with, or attacks of the sleepies.  But offsetting that convenience was a challenge: unlike in many races, I was self-crewing.  I've mostly been fortunate to have friends or family handing me food, bottles, and other sundries; without that help, I'd have to figure out how to keep moving.  My solution was to pre-mix about 20 bike bottles with various concoctions, mostly Infinit, and stack them in a milk crate for easy grabbing.  Beyond that, I had a box of Clif Bars, and the night before I'd gone by Whole Foods and raided their junk food section for croissants, donuts, cookies, and pastries, and I'd also found some Red Bull in case the going got bleak.  Unfortunately, when I got to the race site, I realized I'd forgotten the goody bag, so Infinit, water, and Clif Bars it was.  Oh well; at least I wouldn't have anything interesting to tempt me to stop for a bite.  Coulda used something salty, though.

I met Billy at the start and said hello to his sizable crew, which included his sister, girlfriend, and another guy, each of whom had more energy than I could imagine for early on a Saturday morning.  They promised to ring the cowbell for me and made good on it throughout the day.

The day was conducive to riding -- overcast and mid-60s -- but it wasn't without its challenge in the form of a flag-snapping wind out of the north.  A group of about 50 riders lined up a little before 8:00 a.m., and a rifleman sent us on our way with a single shot, doubtless to the neighbors' delight.

Billy, me, and Georgi Stoychev of D.C. Randonneurs fame, heading out.

Almost immediately, Ken (of "training for TransAmerica" fame) pulled away from the peloton and began to ride into the distance.  A few of us looked at each other with expressions that said, "Nope, not gonna be that easy" and closed the gap, thus creating a paceline of 5-6 riders that stayed together through the opening miles.  Things fractured when we summited the 1/2 mile hill at over 400 watts; by then, it was down to me, Billy, and Ken, the x-factor.

The three of us traded pulls through the 20-mile point, after which I turned around and noted a distinct lack of Ken.  Victim of a cougar attack?  Who could say?  At least it simplified the logistics: Billy and I agreed to trade pulls every 2 miles in order to keep things fair, and we made very quick time almost to the end of the first loop.

Unfortunately, our reward for being at the head of the pack was that we were first to miss a turn that was marked inconspicuously, if at all.  We didn't realize our mistake until we'd gone 3 miles past it.  Groaning, turning around, and pulling out our cell phones with Google Maps, we found our way back to the turn and corrected our error.  Along the way we passed a passel of other riders who'd made the same mistake, including Ken.  Oh, well -- it was frustrating because we were making hellaciously good time, but we're responsible for knowing the course at the end of the day, and at least most people seemed to have suffered a similar fate.  On subsequent loops, the turn was marked sufficiently obviously that the space shuttle could have navigated by it, so the organizers were on the ball.

The second long loop flew by without incident, and by the end, we were still averaging well over 23 mph -- enough for a 270-mile day if we kept it up.  Still, I confessed to Billy that I wasn't sure I could keep pushing 265 watts for 12 hours, and he admitted that we were pushing hard.  In my mind, I reasoned that if he was strong enough to keep doing that all day, I'd have to face reality at some point and do my own thing.

The third loop was a fairly painful ordeal.  The rolling hills seemed to be steeper than before, and although I felt solid, I was putting out more effort than I ever had before for that long, and it was of a spikey nature that's largely foreign to time trialists.  With TTs, the name of the game is to hold the highest steady output you can.  With a draft-legal race in rolling hills, though, this one felt more like a road race -- constant surges up hills, relaxing down the backsides, pushing hard when in front, and relaxing a little when drafting.  My wattage was all over the place, but on average it was pretty darn aggressive.

Finishing up Loop 2.

We came through the century mark in 4:19.  I've gone a couple of minutes faster over a century before, but nowhere near it on a course this hilly and windy.  Toward the end of the third long loop, I noted gratefully that Billy had stopped riding quite so hard when taking his pulls at the front, which allowed me to regroup a little bit and contemplate the short loops ahead.

At the 110-mile mark, I quickly swapped my water bottles for the first time.  Not sure how I pulled off that stunt; I guess on a cool day, it's possible.

Off we go to figure out what the short loops have in store.

The first short loop veritably flew by -- there's nothing quite like having something shorter and a little less hilly to attack.  We kept with the 2-mile-plan, but I was feeling stronger by the mile.  After we completed our first short loop, the course grew more crowded as the remaining 12-hour riders began to circle along with the 6- and 3-hour groups.  On the second short loop, Billy and I joined forces with 4-5 other solid riders, which made time and miles pass quickly: instead of pulling half of the time (with a 2-person paceline), we could do relatively little work and still make pretty good time.  I pondered this fact as we finished the second loop and started the third, at which time we were joined temporarily by Henrik Olsen, an accomplished local randonneur and ultracycling racer who'd come out to join the festivities for a little while.

The dilemma was one endlessly familiar to road racers but a bit novel to me, coming from a non-drafting triathlon background.  We'd ridden hard for 5 hours, leaving 7 hours to go.  We were part of a solid paceline making good time, and it would have been straightforward to be satisfied with that and to let the day unfold.  The problem was that Billy and I were the two strongest riders in the group, which means we weren't working very hard.  And, at the end of the day, only one of us could win, which meant that I'd have to try to break away at some point.  Finally, I got the sense that I was feeling a little better than he was at that point.  The time could be right to make a move, but if I was wrong, I'd expend a ton of energy doing something stupid.

Note: I'd done exactly that stupid thing on my first trip to the National 24-Hour Challenge, where I solo'd off the front as hard as I could from miles 75-125, only to find that I'd been ridden down by a group of strong riders, each of whom hadn't had to do nearly as much work as I had.  It was a fiasco.

Still, fortune favors the bold.  I figured that if I had a strength after my long season of hard randonneuring rides, it was in riding long distances solo; I was less confident about my ability to sit in a pack and then sprint toward the end.  So I decided to gamble a little.  When my turn came at the front of the paceline, I accelerated gradually and then went extremely hard up a medium-length hill and down the other side.  When I turned around, only one rider was left -- Ken, who'd stuck on my wheel but was a lap behind.  The others were some distance back.

Exiting the turn-around onto short loops.  Photo credit to Andrea Matney.

As I exited the turnaround, I saw Billy and the remainder of the peloton coming into it, which meant my lead was 20 seconds or so.  To me, that was confirmation: I had an opportunity, but to seize it, I had to bury myself to build on the lead -- I wanted to be far out of sight.  So I resolved to ride the next two short loops all-out to build whatever cushion I could.

I don't think I've ever ridden so hard for a 45-minute period.  I cut back on greeting people I passed because I was gasping for air a lot of the time, and each time we turned north into the gale, I tucked down into my aerobars and tried my best to hang onto my gear, even if it meant my wattage going through the roof.

Cruising in to finish a loop.  Photo credit to Andrea Matney.

The strategy appeared to work: by the end of my surge, I saw no sign of the chasers.  The problem was, it was a loop, so I couldn't tell whether my lead was shrinking or growing, and I had... 6.5 hours left to ride.  Good grief.  Lots can go wrong in that time period, especially when self-crewing.  I had to stay on top of my speed and nutrition and just keep focused on moving forward quickly and efficiently.

Ultimately, it was one of those days when everything came together -- I never did see Billy again, and Strava suggests that we spent the last half of the race orbiting opposite sides of the loop from one another.  Every now and then I asked his crew how he was doing, and they assured me that he was rolling along well and a few minutes back.  I'd have loved to know more about what "a few minutes" meant, but I didn't press my luck.  ;-)

My splits for the remainder of the ride were:

300k (188 miles): 8h 26m
200 miles: 9 hours
400k (249 miles): 11h 22m

At the 173-mile point, some 7.5 hours into the ride, I stopped to swap out my bottles and realized that it was only the second time I'd done so, meaning I'd ridden that entire distance on 6 bottles.  Again, having a cool day really helped matters.

Eventually, after having ridden a little over 10 hours, I began to feel the finish line: at a rate of 19 minutes per loop, I'd only have to ride 5 more -- I could understand that, and made each one its own interval.  4, 3, 2... finally, with one more loop to go and no sign of Billy at the turnaround, I knew I only had to keep the bike upright to finally win a race after five years of coming close.  No problem!  Done and done.  I even slowed down a bit to say hello to some chickens.

One thing that looped races have to decide is how to handle the "remainder" portion of a loop at the end.  Specifically, if you finish a loop and don't have time to ride another complete one before the race ends, are riders to stop, or should they keep going to get credit for part of the last loop?  Most races are in the former camp, but this one was in the latter, and I hit the tape with 12 minutes to go -- more than enough time to get in a few more miles.  So I removed my visor and enjoyed a victory lap as the sun descended behind the mountains, reflecting that I felt oddly great.  I'd never gone through a weak spell.  Maybe my simplistic diet and lack of a crew had been enabling in some weird sense, allowing me to get lost in my head and just get things done.

Winner winner, Dorito dinner!

Cyclists in medal are wearier than they appear.

Looking back over my race, it's obviously the strongest ride I've ever had.

I've ridden further in 12 hours, but only on the flat drag-race course in Sebring -- nothing like the hills and wind of Maryland.  In fact, my wattage profile looks more like a road race than a time trial: I spent more than an hour in Zone 5 and higher, which is something I'd have thought impossible for me.

I was on the bike and moving for 11:57:38 out of 12:00, which is about the best one can hope for in a self-crewed event, and certainly much better than I've done in the past.

From the preliminary results, it looks like I finished about 9 minutes in front, which isn't much after 12 hours of riding.  Almost all of it came during the "surge" of a few short loops mid-race.  Here are the first several loops (3 long loops, the first one with extra miles, and the first short loop).  It was neck-and-neck.

My surge came at the end of the 3rd short loop (Lap 6), and carried through the next few laps.  In retrospect, it looks like I banked about 8 minutes there, a gap that didn't grow much at all in the remaining 5+ hours in Laps 11-23.  My gamble paid off this time.

At the end of the day, the race was a terrific way to put a capstone on a satisfying spring of riding.  I'm not sure what event is next for me -- it's looking unlikely that I'll be able to make the National 24-Hour Challenge this year, a particularly sad fact considering that this might be its last iteration after a 35-year run.  For now, though, I need to let my mental and physical batteries recharge a bit; I've been pushing hard for many months straight.  Maybe it's time to relax for a couple of weeks and watch the TransAmerica and RAAM competitors gear up to go.  

As for the Maryland Endurance Challenge, I can't recommend it enough.  It's pretty in a way that few UMCA looped courses are, and it provides a challenging course far different from the flats that one normally encounters.  For that reason, it's not a "personal record" kind of event, but I think it's a true test of everything you can do.  It was run splendidly, especially for a first-year event, complete with electronic timing and modern touches like Strava segments.  And, arguably best of all, it's run for charity, supporting homeless youth in Frederick, MD.  I'll be back next year!

Fighting Big Flat: 2017 D.C. Randonneurs Frederick 300k ride report

The Frederick 300k (188 miles) is an institution on the D.C. Randonneurs' rotation, having first been ridden back around the turn of the century, near as I can tell.  It was my very first 300k back in 2012, and I vividly remember fighting 95-degree heat throughout the afternoon and wafting in on fumes in just under 14 hours.  Back then I was definitely of the mindset that a 300k might as well be a ride across Siberia -- I was posting periodic Facebook updates to let people know I was still alive, and my bike was weighed down with about 15 pounds of energy bars, most of which went uneaten.  It took me a couple of years to realize that, as rides get longer, the only thing that really changes is clothing. 

Another thing I remember about that ride is having my first encounter with a climb called "Big Flat." The first word is accurate; the second, less so.  But I'd only had the one crack at it, and I wanted a second.

One great thing about the D.C. region is that, depending on which way you go, the character of the rides changes fundamentally.  Head east toward the shore, and you'll never find anything flatter, with windswept beaches and wildlife preserves.  To the southwest is Virginia, where nothing is flat -- there are more rollers than a Broadway production of Hairspray.  To the west are mountains of varying degrees of seriousness.  Finally, to the northwest and north, in Maryland, there's a little bit of everything, and that's what this ride had to offer -- three solid climbs broken up with some Amish country and cornfields.

The goal was straightforward: finish under 12 hours, and thus complete the third of four requirements for R60 qualification.  To do that, I'd need to shave nearly two hours off of my 2012 attempt, when Max and I finished in 13:56.  Egads!  Fortunately, the weather called for a perfect range of 50 degrees at the start to 78 mid-day, so if it was going to happen, today was the day.  

Ride start, pretty in pink!  Photo credit: Ed F.

Of course, I'm a moron -- that's the first rule.  When faced with a ride more than an hour from home starting at 5:00 a.m., many sane people stay at a local hotel at the start/finish and make sure to get to bed early.  My version of this was going to a nice dinner with Amy in D.C. on Friday evening, then to after-dinner cocktails, and then to after-cocktails dessert with another cocktail, such that I got to sleep at about 12:30 after drinking all evening and woke up a little more than 2 hours later for a 190-mile ride.  Part of the story is that I'm stubbornly short-sighted, but the slightly longer version is that I recognize doing these rides knocks out a big chunk of the weekend that I'd otherwise be available to socialize.  I'm exhausted and useless when I get home, so it seems unfair to block off Friday night as well as Saturday and Saturday night -- cycling's not the only thing in life.  Of course, there's a healthy dollop of self-loathing when that alarm goes off in the middle of the night, and I'm not getting any younger.  I'm sure I'm sacrificing some performance with this tragic habit, but I like to think it adds a "degree of difficulty" score, like Olympic diving.  

Also, there's something vaguely weird about getting in an elevator at 3:00 a.m., fully bedecked in spandex, and nearly running headlong into someone smelling of booze who's getting home after an evening of revelry.  Worlds colliding.

The ride itself began at the Days Inn in Frederick, MD, as made famous by absolutely nothing.  On the plus side, it has a Waffle House attached to it.  We rolled out parade-style through the deserted streets of Frederick, which is always enjoyable in one of those "different ways of seeing the same thing" ways that cycling sometimes presents.  It's certainly better than returning through the same streets on Saturday evening, a pleasure we'd have later.  

I was the only rider with a time-based agenda, so I began to press the pace after an hour or so, when we reached the beautiful 5-mile climb up Foxville-Deerfield in the Catoctin Mountain Park.  It's one of the best climbs in the mid-Atlantic: peaceful, great pavement, a gradual slope through the forest, and a river rushing along next to you.  Soon after beginning the ascent, I found myself alone with Eric Willams, one of the stronger riders in the group, and someone who rides probably twice the miles that I do.  He climbs like a goat, and the two of us made great time to the summit -- I climbed it in 21:41, compared to my 29:07 in 2012.  A promising start!

More promising for me than Eric, though.  The poor guy had decided that, despite a ride start temperature in the high 40s, he'd head out with a short-sleeve jersey and no gloves.  A descent that was wonderful for me probably brought him no end of misery.  Oh well -- as he said, he knows better.  This is pretty much the first time I can remember on a bicycle when I wasn't the cautionary tale.

As the two of us plowed north toward Pennsylvania, Eric realized that cycling could be enjoyable rather than an exercise in self-flagellation, and accordingly drifted off the back, where he eventually joined up with a chase group of riders who had a thoroughly reasonable day.  I pressed on, trying my best to make it home in time for a wine tasting that Amy was hosting at our place that evening.

Next up was the featured attraction: Big Flat.  Below is the elevation profile for this ride: pick out the least flat part of it, and you've found it.  To be helpful, I've highlighted it.

It's not the toughest climb out there, but it's solid work, climbing about 1300 feet over nearly 7 miles. In 2012, I'd trudged my way up it in 46:35, but I guess I've gotten stronger: this year it was 34:42, good for 8th overall on Strava.  (I'm sure I'll be getting that pro contract any day now.)  It was a tough effort, but I consoled myself with the notion that it was almost literally all downhill from the summit.

I'll say this: the Michaux State Forest was a gorgeous place in full bloom, with bursts of whites, purples, reds, and yellows speckling the dark green backdrop.  Probably the perfect place to film an ad for Claritin, actually.

After the epic, swooping 9-mile descent into Shippensburg, PA, the mountains receded and Amish country beckoned.  Buggies, farmland, and sketchy roads unfolds for dozens of miles on end, and the sun came out to teach us a lesson.  Many people love these roads, but I found myself in that awkward mental position of having ridden a hard 80 miles and remembering that there's still more than a century to go.  Fortunately, the second half of the ride was relatively flat, so I anticipated making good time.  Maybe a sub-11:00 finish was in the cards?

To make a long story short, it wasn't.  And, come to think of it, the story wasn't that long: we were riding a huge clockwise loop beginning on the southernmost point, which meant that the last 80 miles or so were heading south and then southwest, directly into one of the most diabolical headwinds I can remember.  I was working my butt off just to go 17 mph.  Usually loop courses at least afford the dignity of benefitting and suffering from the same winds, but not in this case -- they picked up throughout the day, so it was just plowing ahead and hoping for respite that wasn't forthcoming.  At some point I decided that the goal was sub-12:00, and it wasn't worth wrecking myself for an attempt at a sub-11:00 finish that wasn't in the cards that day.  I just wanted a nap.

Ultimately, I rolled back into Frederick a little after 4:00 pm, having done what I needed to.  And, in fairness, I'd done well: my 2012 moving time was 11:55, and I'd taken 2 hours off of the bike, for a finishing time of about 13:55.  This year, I was moving for 10:36, and I was off the bike for only 35 minutes, for a final time of 11:10.  That's progress.  Enjoy the video!

Next up is the flèche, a 24-hour group ride that promises lots of eating.  I plan to P.R. at least one ice cream sundae.  

Mike Hall Memorial 600k: Ignoring Limits

Sometimes awful things pile up and there's no way forward except to go smash something.  After three months of the hardest training I'd ever done, a calamitous throat infection knocked me out of the 24-hour race at Sebring.  I'd never felt stronger, but instead of clicking off hot laps, I was intubated and bludgeoned with every high-powered intravenous antibiotic they could find.  Things turned out "well," if by well one means losing weight I couldn't afford and struggling to complete a 1-hour easy spin.

Fortunately, after a substantial training adjustment in which I dropped the high-watt intervals in favor of extended sweet-spot sets, I started coming around after a few weeks.  In mid March, I DNF'd a 200k brevet when my routing went horribly awry, but I still felt good.  I decided to test things by leaping straight into a 600k (375-mile) brevet out of Lumberton, North Carolina, on April 1.  It was a flattish and unremarkable course apart from 30 miles of riding along the beach, but I figured it would be a good chance to test out a new saddle and hopefully check off a big box on one of my 2017 projects, i.e., a Randonneurs Mondiaux R60 designation.  

Apart from the Charly Miller Society, which requires that a rider finish the quadrennial Paris-Brest-Paris 1200k in under 56 hours and 40 minutes, the R60 is probably the toughest honor to achieve in the randonneuring world.  It requires that one complete a Super Randonneur series (200k, 300k, 400k, and 600k), each in under 60% of the allotted time.  That makes the requirements as follows:

200k (125 miles) -- 8:06

300k (188 miles) -- 12:00

400k (250 miles) -- 16:12

600k (375 miles) -- 24:00

I'd finished a couple of 200ks well under the required time, which left the longer rides to attempt in the remainder of 2017.  My personal best on a 600k brevet was 25:40 or so, so I'd have to go faster, but on the other hand, my previous 600s had been on considerably hillier terrain and an older bike.  In 24-hour races, which are on fully-supported loops, I'd knocked out 600k in under 19 hours, but randonnees tend to be slow -- routing, controls, and the rest of it just tend to add up.  I hoped for 22 hours and thought it possible.

Unfortunately, only two days before the ride, the cycling world received the devastating news that Mike Hall had been hit and killed by a car while racing the Indian Pacific Wheel Race across Australia.  Mike was a legend in the ultracycling world at the young age of 35: he held multiple records including fastest on a bicycle around the world and course record holder in the 4,300-mile, self-supported Trans America race.  He was one of the featured riders in Inspired to Ride, a Trans America documentary well worth anyone's attention.

How completely sickening.  We're now forced to add his name to those of Jure Robic (6x RAAM winner), Bob Breedlove, Claudio Clarindo, Anders Tesgaard, Matthew O'Neill, Lynn Kristianson, and many others avid ultracyclists who've been killed by cars in recent years while doing what they love.  For me, this is one of the top reasons I do so much of my riding indoors: I love to be outside on two wheels, but the more one does it, the more likely it is that the odds will get even.  Thus, I choose my battles carefully.  In Mike's case, from all accounts, it sounds like some of the roads the racers traversed were anything but safe, and that there were a number of uncomfortably close calls before the fatal incident.  It's utterly gutting to lose anyone that way, but particularly such an inspiration.  

In all, it wasn't a great mindset to take into a 600k solo ride on unknown road, but then again, maybe it was.  There's something to be said for the knowledge that we're privileged to be able to attempt these feats at all, and it's a gift we should celebrate.  

And so it was that I reported for duty at 6:00 a.m. in the parking lot behind a Super 8 hotel in Lumberton, North Carolina, looking pretty out of place.  Especially on longer events like 600ks, randonneurs tend to favor traditional setups with plenty of cargo capacity, but I looked more like a Martian, complete with disc wheel, Zipp 808 deep-rim front wheel, and aero helmet.  Perhaps overkill, but I figured that, if I wanted to go fast, there's no reason to leave the go-fast gear at home.  

To hit my goal of 22 hours, I'd have to average 17 miles an hour, which isn't generally a problem in terms of moving speed, but it also includes all of the stops and snafus along the way.  I'd probably have to average more than 19 mph while moving in order to do it, which isn't trivial over the span of nearly an entire day.  My best 24-hour race time is 20.5 mph, but that was fully supported, draft-legal, on a looped course where it was impossible to get lost, and on fully tapered legs.  Here, none of those things was true.  (It technically was draft-legal, I suppose, but as there was no one to draft off of, it was an academic point.)

One of the things that made me slightly nervous was that I'd be riding on a new saddle, the Selle Anatomica C Series.  I'd ridden on the traditional S-A leather saddles for years, but they're heavy as bricks and the leather needs to be re-tensioned periodically, and the carbon version promised to address both issues.  It's a beautiful thing, although, as a crowd-funder, I'd had to wait about two years to get it.

So, off we went!  With a 6:00 a.m. rollout, I hoped to be done between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. on Sunday morning and sitting comfortably in a booth at Denny's across the street.  We'd have to see.

For once in my randonneuring life, things went remarkably smoothly.  Tony Goodnight's route was a joy to follow, with turns only every 10 miles or so in many places, and relatively few control points that forced one to stop.  But that came with challenges: with highs pushing 80 degrees and scheduled stops only every 60-70 miles, it was important to keep on top of the nutrition and hydration.  For me, it was a mental struggle between the desire to stop as infrequently as possible and the knowledge that the whole thing could go down the drain if I didn't eat and drink constantly.  I resolved that dilemma by ignoring my desire to stop more often, and never even slowing down between controls -- go big or go home.  The result was that, on a few occasions, I went 4+ hours between stops, which had me pretty much parched and ravenous by the time the next stop rolled around.

I've learned a couple of things about randonneuring nutrition over the years.  First, if you're in trouble on a hot day, there's little better than massive ice cream sandwiches -- cold, caloric, and satisfying.  Second, if you need a blood-sugar rush, those huge Rice Krispy Treat bars are about as close to rocket fuel as you can find.  Third, Bugles!  Enough said.  Rules to live by.

One of the big challenges in a ride this long is finding something to hold the mental focus.  Sometimes the zen silence is enough to set the mind wandering, but I've found that, as one fatigues and things start to get sore, the zen dissipates into something closer to self-resentment.  So, music is key some of the time, but podcasts and audiobooks also are great.  On this occasion, I made my way through S-Town the new release from the makers of Serial, a fair chunk of the latest John Grisham book, a couple of episodes of Freakonomcs, and some Judge John Hodgman.  And lo, the hours did pass.

The course itself was nothing to write home about -- flattish, quite windy (constant 15-20 mph), and largely along country roads lined by pine trees.  At one point we crossed the Intracoastal Waterway before riding 15 miles along the barrier islands to Atlantic Beach, and then back again.  The roads were the highest of highs and lowest of lows, mostly great but with the occasional stretch that would have insulted a cheese grater.  

It was largely a mental game.  With the wind at the back, rolling at 22 mph felt effortless, but the price was a couple of stretches of 20+ miles into headwinds that felt like a sick joke.  My power meter was on the fritz, registering zeroes randomly when I was pushing darn hard, but I gave up trying to fix it after awhile.

In terms of moving speed, things went amazingly well for the first half:

100 miles -- 4:53

200k -- 5:59

300k -- 9:25

Each of those was a personal best for me on a brevet by a considerable margin.  By halfway, I was on pace for a sub-19 hour finish, but I was self-aware enough to know that such extrapolation is dangerous.  Riding at night tends to be slow, and with fatigue being what it is, stops tend to get longer and the average speed tends to drift south.

There's a mathematical issue I've noticed on these events that never ceases to throw me for a loop.  (Many people doubtless know this already -- I'm willing to embrace the fact that it's my issue.)  The issue is this.  Given my spectacular speed over the first half, I'd dared to adjust my target down from 22 hours to 20 hours.  10 hours in, my average speed was about 20 mph.  I knew that a 20-hour finish required an overall average speed of 18.6 mph, so I reasoned as follows: since I've gone 20 mph for the first half, I can go 17.2 mph for the second half to achieve an average of 18.6!  (17.2 + 20)/2 = 18.6!

Except the math doesn't work.  After riding for 10 hours at 20 mph, I'd gone 200 miles, which meant I had 175 miles to go in the second 10 hours.   175/10 = 17.5 mph, not 17.2.  Sigh.  Not that the 0.3 mph delta was huge, but when things are falling apart at the end of a ride, things like that matter.

After a 9:25 first 300k, a sub-20-hour finish required a 10:35 second 300k.  That's an hour slower, but it was still way faster than my 300k personal best heading into this ride, and much of it would be riding at night.  To make matters worse, I encountered a road closure with a massive traffic jam due to an accident with fatalities, and I got turned around a couple of times where the route crossed over itself.  And, of course, there was the challenge I encountered at mile 300, where I completed an 80-mile stretch completely empty of water, calories, and hope.  That prompted an extended break in the welcoming embrace of an Exxon station.

Ultimately, though, I've rarely felt this strong.  I finished in 19:38, fully six hours faster than my previous best at the distance.  After my 9:25 opening 300k, my second 300k had clicked off in 10:13!   Thus, my best and second-best 300ks were ridden back-to-back, which has to say something positive about my training.

I'll confess I'm pretty over-the-moon about this outcome.  As far as I can tell, it's the third-fastest official 600k brevet ever ridden in the United States -- the first is a 19:30 and the second a 19:34, so I was just a handful of minutes away.  Part of me thinks that, given that I was stopped for about 1:50 over the course of the ride, I surely could have gone 10 minutes faster, but I had no idea I was so close to the record, and frankly, who knows.  As a statistical matter, this graph puts things into perspective:

This shows the official 600k completion times in the United States from 1999-2011, and the chart begins at 20 hours, with the median up in the mid-30s.


I'm also happy to report that the Selle Anatomica Carbon Series saddle worked perfectly -- I think it's a keeper.  It's noticeably harder than the leather hammock that the traditional S-A offers, but it never was uncomfortable.  This may be because of the Mummy Tape I apply to my sitbones before all long rides, but whatever the case, it was nice to finish a 600k and be able to sit down comfortably.

So, mission accomplished!  I felt strong virtually the entire way, and I truly loved finishing before 2:00 a.m. and thus avoiding the witching hours that come later in the morning.  It's been a very long time since I've been at a Denny's at 3:00 a.m., but such was my reward.  Next up, trying to get my legs working again and recalibrate myself toward an upcoming 300k, where I'll try to put the next brick in the R60 wall.