Ugh. Wait… that doesn’t do it justice. SHIT. There you go. That was running through my head all day.

Saturday was the most brutal day I’ve had on a bike in a long time. I’ve had some down moments, like my second 300k, but nothing quite like this.

Going in to the ride, I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. Chris had mentioned the pain in his legs after riding a 300k version of this route last year. This route covered 125 miles and roughly 9000 (!) feet of climbing. I think I got softened up by STP with its 2000 something feet of climbing over 200 miles.

Chris and I met at some ungodly hour to ride out to the ferry for the start. We got there and met Joby and Matt. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits. Both Chris and Joby have amazing new bikes that were about to get a working over. Matt was on his light go fast bike. I can tell he is in good shape right now and ready for RAMROD.

Out of the gates, I kept a good (if not especially spectacular) pace near the front. I could feel that my legs didn’t really have “it” though. It was kind of a general fatigue that I couldn’t really shake throughout the day. It wasn’t a big issue though. I was more than happy to let people drop me while I cruised along at my own pace.

The hills were pretty relentless right away. They were short and steep. I actually tend to prefer this style of climb over a long and drawn out mountain pass, but the sheer amount of them wore me down quickly.

Early on in the day I finally met Jack Brace. Jane had mistaken him for me when she volunteered on our first 300k. Thankfully she didn’t accidentally grab his butt at the time. That would have been a conversation piece. I did my best to keep up with him until the first control, but again… I just wasn’t feeling too strong. “No problem”, I told myself. “Just keep the controls short.”

I zipped through the first control and totally missed the fact that Chris, Joby and Matt were waiting around (for me?) because they passed me later on in the section following. Keeping their wheel wasn’t really an option and I just let them go.

I somehow managed to catch up to them at the second control after a nice waterfront stretch of road. The amazing volunteers were preparing sandwiches and had beverages on hand. It was really nice to get some salt and protein in me. Unfortunately, my real troubles also started here.

My rear tire was getting low. I was dumb enough to swap out my old inner tubes on to my newer wheelset from Peter White. They have a deeper rim, requiring a longer stem. Somehow when I installed them, I was able to still get my pump to fill them up. It didn’t seem like a big issue at the time. If the tire blew, I would swap it out. No problem right? Well, it wasn’t a blown tube, just slightly low on air. Every attempt I made at filling it let a little bit of air out. Pretty soon I had a very low tire. Volunteer Robin Pieper gave me a hand in changing out the short stem tube for a long stem one I had in my bag. It took a bit longer than I wanted it to, but everything was on and settled. I was ready for the large climbs ahead.

I spent the next 30 miles riding solo for the most part. I was definitely near the back of the pack at this point. I wasn’t too worried about it, but I knew that I wanted to finish the ride at a reasonable hour if possible. The mental calculations are always churning in the back of my head. “If I can keep this pace for x hours…”

At around 78 miles, there was the Seabeck control. It wasn’t a town as much as a reason to stop. There might have been 4 or 5 stores total here, with an amazingly beautiful view of the Hood Canal. I would have gotten a picture if I was able to think straight. Thinking isn’t my strong suit on a rando ride. To my suprize, Chris, Joby and Matt were all waiting for me here. They played it off like they just happened to want to spend over half an hour at a control… but they can’t fool me. Thanks guys.

After some food and drink, we all started the slog up through Anderson Hill Road and some beautiful sections. Most of the ride was pretty stunning actually. It would have been a beautiful drive (I kid, I kid). After some of the major climbs of the section, I was in the back of the paceline and a ran an actual flat tire. I thought about calling out to Matt, but I didn’t want to slow them down again and thought it would be no big deal. Huge mistake.

I checked out my tube and noted a piece of glass had cut it near the stem. These are almost always pretty difficult to patch, so I opted for my second (and final) spare tube as my first replacement. I checked the tire again to make sure I wasn’t missing any glass. A few riders passed and asked if I had what I needed. I waved them off thinking everything was covered. I got the tube in and the wheel back on. After pumping it up, I went to pull the pump off of the stem and the head blew off. Yet another useless spare. By this point I knew I might be in trouble. I was pretty upset and really considered calling it off. I went as far as to call Peter to see how I could make it back to the ferry if I needed to. Peter gave me the directions back to the ferry. It would have been a long walk.

Bill Gobie and Tom Barocan were nice enough to stop to make sure things were going alright. Bill was on a recumbent with smaller wheels, and Tom was on an upright with short stemmed 26 inch wheels (too small for me). We made some attempts at patching and riding on the tube with a cut and also tried to refit the original tube with a short stem. Nothing was working. It was almost comical at that point.

I called Jane to see where she was at. She had taken a bus to the mall and couldn’t have picked me up for probably 2 to 3 hours even if she cabbed it back home. Amazingly, Tom remembered that he had a long stemmed 26 inch tube in his back still. We managed to stretch it over my wheel and get enough air in it.

I remembered the directions back to the ferry, but with so much going wrong, I at least wanted a solid finish to make up for it. It was probably silly to try and finish off a ride without the proper equipment, but again… thinking isn’t my strong suit on a rando ride. Tom, Bill and I kept close through the next 30-40 miles.

The area is beautiful, but I wasn’t getting a lot of love from the locals. I was taunted more on this ride than on any other. Rednecks were “complimenting” my legs from out of their lifted truck windows and pedestrians were making rude comments all day. I did my best to keep my middle finger in check… I don’t want to give SIR a bad name.

I started to get a bit of strength back after the 4th control and was pushing out ahead of Tom and Bill. There was a noisy stretch of freeway along SR-3 following by a swooping offramp. I looked at my cue and noted the direction. If I were to “bear right” on SW Clifton Road, I would be going to correct direction. Instead, I went left on “Old Clifton Road”… you know… because I love extra climbing. I started left and was immediately hit with a 15% grade for about half of a mile followed by a steady 5% for another 4 and a half miles. I was cursing SIR for putting yet another steep climb so close to the finish of the ride. “They always do this!”

“God, where is this turn? I should have passed it already.”

“Oh dear lord, I went the wrong way…”

I turned around and back tracked. Only 10 miles left.

I’m not sure what happened to my bike, but every major grade on the final portion caused my chain to drop inside my crank. It wasn’t doing it all day, just the final 10 miles when I wanted to finish. Every couple of miles I had to stop, get off my bike, and set the chain back. I was too tired to fix it properly.

Somehow I managed to roll in to the finish without being lanterne rouge. All the volunteers were cheering me on and I had to crack a smile. It was so far beyond annoying that it was just funny. Robin made me a sandwich for the ferry home and filled me up with some water/soda. Everything was beautiful.

I rode the ferry home alone and rode back home.

To top a perfect day, I forgot my keys and had to crawl through my window in order to get in my house. That ripped my SIR jersey.

Awesome.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 7:39 am and is filed under bicycling, sir. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.