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This is it. The final event in my Super Randonneur series. It’s done. Fini. Completed. And I finished them all strong. Woohoo! (in spite of significant setbacks in this weekend’s ride.) I am now qualified for the grand-daddy of all brevets, the Paris-Brest-Paris, 1200km. Though this is not really the year for me to pursue something like that. Perhaps another year.

The slideshow
Click here for my flickr set of these photos and you can read the notes on individual photos.

The stats
Miles: 600km (380 miles)
Time: 36 hours exactly
Sleep: 3 hours
Route: everywhere in the Adirondacks
Total elevation gained: …wait for it… 15,400′
Stopped time: 7:10
Uphill time/distance: 9:34/85 miles
Downhill time/distance: 6:32/93 miles
Flat time/distance: 12:46/198 miles
Difficulty/Effort index: 84/376 (for comparison, the ADK 540 was 44/233)

Elevation profile

The blue bit from about 75 miles to 180 miles is in the heart of the Adirondacks. The red bit after 200 miles is Plattsburgh. The sharp spike at 280 or so miles is my least favorite climb.

Overview
Got a good night’s sleep and the 4am start is finally feeling normal and comfortable. I think the 5am training rides of the last few weeks is helping there too. The new helmet-mount light I got was a huge improvement over my CatEye handlebar mounted one. Brighter, shines further, can point it wherever I want… Good stuff.

We had perfect weather. Even the night riding was warm and the 6am start on Sunday was only cool for the first 30 minutes. The sun quickly warmed everything up.

The broken bikes
The frames look to be ok, and hopefully the insurance co will not take the bikes so I’ll have at least the trek as a kick-ass spare bike. Though until I get it x-rayed, I won’t trust it to not break under me during a hard descent or climb.

While I was sad to see my bikes damaged (possibly ruined), I was more sad that I would have to drop out of the 600km or ride a strange bike. Luckily I got a loaner of a very good Italian bike and I obviously got to ride. But the saddle on this bike was pretty different from mine and my old one was completely squashed and unusable. It looked like a Play-do saddle made by a kindergarten kid hopped up on Coke and SweetTarts.

The sore end
So… 380 miles on a strange saddle. I don’t think I need to tell you that that is NOT a good idea but I had no choice. That was the biggest problem I faced. My butt was screaming like an empty coffee pot on the warming plate and only heavy doses of ibuprofen and liberal applications of chamois cream helped me to not quit (thank you, Stuart, for happening to have that cream with you on the ride!). Because of that I rode standing a lot and therefore had more pressure on my hands. My hands got very irritated and sore. I had to tape my fleece gloves to the handlebars to provide more cushioning and relieve the pain in the hands. On Monday, the last three fingers on each had were a little numb and very tingly. Today, three days later, they are nearly back to normal.

The group
Only three of us did the entire series that John organized. John (of course), myself and Ferdinand. The last two events, the 400 and 600, also had Bob and Brian as part of our group. Stuart a friend of Brian’s nicely rounded out our merry band of five this weekend.

The eating
There was an amazingly low amount of eating while on the bike. Usually I have my pockets packet with Clif bars and gels. Well, I had plenty of gels, but hardly ate any of them. Stewarts Shops were the majority of our checkpoints and at each one we ate plenty. I had variously: hot dogs, soup, Snickers bar, salt & vinegar chips (my fav), muffins, donuts. You know… really healthy sports foods. Lotsa hot tea. A hot drink really does a job of rejuvenating you if it’s a little chilly out on the road. Mmm, salt & vinegar chips… (wipes drool from chin). Let me tell you, that salt sure fixed a craving, and the vinegar was the kick to bring some sense back to my deadening systems.

We ate dinner on Saturday at a Pizza Hut in Pittsburgh. Yup. You heard me. Five of us in full cycling kit amble into the PH like John Wayne into a bar. Well, maybe not quite with the panache of Mr. Wayne. Ok, more like Pee Wee Herman searching for his bike. Ferdinand sweet-talked the shift manager into giving us complimentary salads with our cheap-ass $18 single large pizza/drinks/cheese sticks special. Our waiter had such a fake, overly happy customer service voice that I thought shards of his plastic-fake-waiter larynx were going to shoot out and become a new pizza topping. Not that we cared. We had about 30 miles to go before hitting Wilmington and getting our sleep stop. Tanking up on pizza and cheese and filling our water bottles with iced tea/soda/water/whatever was all we had on our mind. Oh, and thank you, Stuart, for picking up the tab. You were very generous this weekend–especially parting with some much needed chamois cream.

The climbing
Climbing? Check. Excessive climbing? Check. So much so that it broke me? No check.

Nope. I’m a climbing fool this year. Well, not each and every hill on this course was met with the same relish and verve, but a lot of them were. The climb out of Lake George? No problem. The climb up Blue Mountain Lake? Tough but doable–in fact I only went into my heart rate red zone for four minutes on that one out of the, I don’t know 1/2 hour or whatever it took to climb? I don’t even remember how long it took. The one that DID hurt was the one in Keene Valley.

There’s the most amazing waterfall just left of the road across a small valley about a quarter mile up the climb. This little idyllic oasis of beauty. The sound of the waterfall is soothing, Birds are tweeting in harmony. Fuzzy woodland creatures are doubtless frolicking under rainbows cast off at the foot of the falls. Though it’s kinda hard to see. What with the blinding, grinding, red veil of effort clouding my vision while climbing that F**KING hill!
I had to argue with the other guys that it was the toughest. They were unconvinced. Well, they grudgingly admitted that MAYBE it was steeper. MAYBE it was longer (than Blue Mountain Lake). But it didn’t bother them. Nice. Well, it kicked my ass. I was last up that sucker when on all the other climbs I was… um… distinctly not last. Must just be the gradient–I think each person has their own bust-a-gut-can’t-find-a-rhythm gradient that they have to deal with. I found mine.

It’s immensely gratifying to know that now, while on any ride, even a quick 30 mile Wednesday night group ride with the guys, I can count on making up any lost group ON THE CLIMB. I’m dumbfounded by it. Here I am gushing like a schoolgirl over a new Justin Timberlake magazine cover… but really… I can’t help it. It was never there before for me. But now it is. I’m chalking it up to losing 30 pounds since mid-December, running for three months in the winter, and changing my pedaling style and cadence slightly.

Things I noticed

• Dragonflies darting in between us like dolphins on wakes
• The geese in Saranac Lake
• How much better it is to ride at night with the confidence of better lighting
• How seltzer will spruce up even the most tired water bottle of drink (thanks for that one Ferdinand)
• How much damn tree pollen there was over everything
• How nice the motorcyclists were on a whole (this was Americade weekend)
• How nicely quiet the BMW bikes were and deafening the Harleys
• A mid-ride sleep break didn’t provide me with nearly the trouble I was worrying about
• Riding a big event with an unfamiliar saddle… not recommended
• Strange saddle = irritation = eventual swelling = sitting up higher = catching more wind = slower
• I need to get small containers and bring the following with me: chamois cream, sunscreen, Visine, hand lotion
• Starting a ride at 4am means you forget to apply sunscreen before locking the car
• There tend to me no assholes on these endurance rides. I’ve yet to encounter one–I think they get weeded out before making it to this level of cycling.
• Nothing I ate gave me grief. Sometimes on big rides I think too many gels do.
• Frontierland gets shorter and shorter each time I ride it. It’s still the shittiest stretch of 7 or 8 miles in the Adirondacks, but at least it’s giving me less trouble each time.
• I saw one Pontiac Fiero. I think it’s the same one each time I ride up there.
• Stuart kicked all our asses on the descents with his unusual descending form. I never came close.
• I love my camera. I keep it on a lanyard and slip it in my right jersey pocket. I can have it out and snap a shot in as little as 3 or 4 seconds.
• The camaraderie on these rides is amazing. Since it’s not a race, we bunch together in groups of equal ability and pretty much stick together for the whole event.
• I flatted early on. Everyone waited politely and offered help. I was too hasty in my patch and bungled it, necessitating actually replacing the tube. I might have been done with the patch in about 6 mins if I had been more careful. Instead it took nearly 20 minutes. Sorry guys.
• I need to bring No-Doz on overnight rides. It’s scary feeling like you might nod off while on the bike. Thank you, Bob, for offering a PowerGel with caffeine in it. It helped a little.
• Even though we were a friendly, and congenial group there could be times as long as a hour with no talking.
• Time and distance is very fluid on these big rides. Sometimes you look down at the computer and you’ve gone 27 miles since the last time you looked. Other times, you look and 1 mile has passed.
• Frequent and long rest stops helps immensely. If my GPS is to be believed (I don’t have reason to not) then we were stopped for a little over SEVEN hours out of our 36 hour time. Granted at least 4 of those were at the sleep stop (3 sleeping, 1 hour of eating/showering/talking/etc.)
• A shower after 22 hours in the saddle is divine.
• It’s shocking how much dirt is on you even though you rarely touch the ground.
• Even though the route is a big loop, it always had a headwind.
• The Campy shifters on my loaner bike are sufficiently different from Shimano such that EVERY time I shifted gears, I’d swear, then shift again the correct way.
• I will admit I liked the quality of shifting much better than Shimano, just not the mechanics of the levers. Maybe I should try Dura-Ace shifters on my next bike.
• A roll of electrical tape proved very useful to carry in the cargo bag.
• Laminating the route cue sheet is a smashing idea. Thanks Bob for that idea.
• Sending my Trek off to get an xray is another good idea Bob had. Why? To look for cracks in the frame from the accident.
• My GPS wore out 3 sets of batteries.
• According to my TopoFusion stats above), the difficulty index of this ride compared with my benchmark ADK540 ride is almost exactly double. And the Effort index is about 62% greater. Big numbers.
• I can now say that I can RIDE further than I can DRIVE my car on a full tank of gas.

Video
Bob, Brian and Ferdinand in order in front of Long Lake.

End of the day on Saturday and the sun’s getting low in the sky.

Ferdinand, Bob, Stuart and Brian in order.

More POV video from down in the aero bars. Around 10 seconds or so I lift my camera arm off the aero bar pad and the image stops shaking as … all » much. Then I get a little clever with a yet another perspective. If you can’t read it, the speed on the GPS unit is 36+ mph.

This horrible snippet of video is an attempt at some very high speed video-taking. Then I thought better of it. I was going about 36 mph … all » before calling it quits–since I knew I’d be well over 40 mph in a few more seconds. It rather looks like an accident in progress. It’s included for its amusement quality.

Riding through Lake George during Americade.

This entry was posted Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 11:34 pm and is filed under Cycling, Photo, Video. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.