I like to say that a ride isn’t long if it can be started and finished in daylight. Today’s ride started before daylight and finished after it got dark so it qualifies as a long ride. Sixteen people showed up for the 300k brevet. I actually thought there might not be that many. Starting so early in the morning we saw lots of deer. For a while there was a rider ahead of me and I couldn’t see anyone behind me. Finally I saw a rider catching up when I got off and walked through a water crossing. On Monday when I did the 200k brevet, some of the riders on the A ride broke bones so I wasn’t taking any chances. All I need to put an end to my RAAM effort is to break a bone. I saw the rider behind me start falling but he didn’t totally go down.
It turned out that the rider coming up was Fred Boethling from Boulder who is also doing RAAM solo this year. He will be oldest solo finisher ever if he makes it. He did it last year on a two man team. We rode pretty easy and chatted about RAAM and whatever else we felt like.
It was a cool, overcast day and I never took my arm and knee warmers off. We had periods of light drizzle but it never got too bad. After the first checkpoint, we were in the lead and it was that way all the way to the finish except when we got caught briefly by 4 other riders. We had just started rolling down the road after a bathroom break when they caught us. We jumped on the back and rode with them for a little ways. They were hard core randonneurs and apparently we weren’t good enough for them. We didn’t have big butt bags, carry our maps in holders on our bars, and didn’t have hub generators. They weren’t friendly and after a couple miles they stopped for a bathroom break. The rest of the ride they would show up at stops just as we were leaving.
Fred and I ended up with an official time of 13:54 which isn’t fast but we enjoyed the ride and weren’t out to set any speed records. I actually felt good the whole ride. I was worried that I’d start feeling all the miles of the week. I got 194.8 miles with 6722 feet of climbing and the on bike average was 15.6 mph.
Update: Texas Hell Week photos and posts for each day.
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Tags: cycling, Hell Week, ultra cycling
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A lot of randonneurs seem to like riding alone. Very alone. Or just with their usual little group. Some others are fine to ride with. Most of them seem to be very skillful riders regardless – I guess putting in 10k+ miles per year for 10 or 15 years will do that for you.