Improvised 24hr/triple century ride

The last 3 years I’ve participated in the Davis 24hr event – in 2008 it was my first ride longer than 300 miles, and it’s also where I met Sandy, who’s become a good friend and is my crew chief for RAW. It was never a huge event in terms of number of participants, but a very intimate event with a lot of camaraderie and familiar faces. Unfortunately in 2011 there is no Davis 24hr event, so I decided I needed to try and do my own 24hr ride.

I didn’t do a lot of advanced planning – I just knew that I wanted to try and ride for 24hrs sometime in April. Since Mike’s 50 mile run is on April 9th, I knew that weekend I needed to plan a recovery weekend so that I could support him for that, so what better way to have earned a recovery weekend than having done a 24hr ride the weekend before (and a 300km the week before that). Since the weather forecast was also looking pretty good, mid-week I decided that I was going to give it a shot. But instead of starting on Saturday morning and riding until Sunday morning, I decided that starting Friday night would be more valuable training. First, it would mean additional sleep deprivation since it essentially meant being up for 2 days and 1 night versus just 1 day and 1 night. Second, it meant that I could ride during the day on Saturday and do more climbing later in the ride (versus doing the climbing early in the ride and then finishing flat at night) which is good training. Third, since I’d finish Saturday evening, I could try and ride Sunday as well and get even more mileage for the weekend (although I’ll be honest – I didn’t think of this “advantage” until I’d already started the ride, but it did work out nicely that way!).

Friday evening I set out at 7:15pm. I decided to do loops out to the end of Canada Road and back at night. Each loop was just under 60 miles. I hoped to get two and a half of these loops done and head out on my day loop as soon as it was light in the morning. Since we’d had a mini heat wave during the second half of the week it was still fairly warm in the evening, so I didn’t even need to wear knee warmers or arm warmers for the first loop. It was light out for the first half hour or so, but I always feel a bit depressed as the sun gets lower and lower in the sky and it gets dark, so starting out the ride like that was a bit tough mentally. Once it’s completely dark I usually feel a bit better as I get to enjoy the different atmosphere that night riding provides – the different sounds, shadows & shapes, stars, and the glow from various metropolitan areas. The first loop went well, and I was back home by about 11:30pm. I quickly put on my knee warmers, arm warmers, and vest, downed a Mountain Dew for a bit of caffeine/sugar, filled my water bottles, changed my light battery, and headed out the door again. The first half of the second loop went well, but then I started getting really sleepy. Coming back Foothill on the second loop I was drifting off. A couple times a startled deer on the side of the road jolted me awake. At this point I decided that I was going to need to go down for a substantial nap when I got home rather than head out for another partial night loop for safety reasons. Since I was going to be riding alone all day Saturday, I decided that I needed to try and get a little bit of sleep so that I would hopefully be more alert during the day. Also, I’d been using cornstarch as my strategy to avoid chaffing since it had showed promise during my 325 mile ride at Christmas time, but the last few rides I’d used it I’d had problems, and unfortunately I was already experiencing irritation in that area, so I was going to need to switch strategies and go back to chamois cream. So I decided I would quickly shower and then let the skin dry while I napped in hopes that it would mitigate the damage that had been done and allow me to get through the next 15+ hours. I got home from the 2nd loop at 3:45am, and by the time I’d showered and climbed into bed it was 4:05am. I set my alarm for 5:25am figuring that would give me time to get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and then head out for the day loop just before it started to get light. But then I hit snooze a couple times when my alarm did go off, so I didn’t actually get up till about 5:45am, and I wasn’t all that organized getting ready to go, so by the time I finally headed out it was about 6:40am.

For the day loop I’d planned to head out to the coast via Highway 9, then head up the coast and do some climbing around West Alpine and Tunitas Creek before dropping back towards home. It was overcast as the sun came up and I headed over Mt. Eden and Pierce Road towards Highway 9. My legs felt heavy and sluggish. I guess I had just ridden 119 miles before my extended break, but they’d been fairly flat miles, so I was a bit disheartened that I felt this sluggish. Highway 9 felt tougher than it usually feels, and I started bonking a bit so as I approached the top I was hoping the hot dog vendor would be there so that I could get a soda and/or hot dog, although I knew it was probably way too early in the morning for him to be there. I was right, and he wasn’t there when I got to the summit, so I had to settle for a bag of honey roasted peanuts that I had with me – I downed them quickly and then headed down Highway 9 towards Santa Cruz.

Although I’d driven this road before, I’d never actually ridden it before. It was quite a nice descent – the road surface was pretty good, the turns weren’t too technical, and there wasn’t much traffic. It was still overcast and kind of damp, so I got chilled descending, but it could have been worse. As I approached Boulder Creek I started getting really sleepy again. I stopped in Boulder Creek at a gas station to use a bathroom, but decided to try and make it to Santa Cruz before I stopped for food. I ate some orange Cliff blocks which had some caffeine in them to try and jolt myself awake. The rest of the way into Santa Cruz had a lot more traffic, and the road was a bit sketchier – not much of a shoulder, more debris on the road, etc. As I made it into Santa Cruz finally I was expecting to be able to just turn onto Highway 1, but I hadn’t realized that there was no bike traffic allowed on that stretch of Highway 1, so I had to find my way on surface streets for a bit. I didn’t know where I was going, but figured if I headed in the general direction that I’d eventually find a road that would dump me out on Highway 1. This strategy worked and I got onto Mission which turned into Highway 1. Once on Highway 1 my next objective was to find some food and caffeine. I knew there was a good coffee place along Highway 1 called Coffeetopia, and low and behold there was a Mexican restaurant right next door that had breakfast burritos. So I stopped at La Mission Restaurant and had a chorizo breakfast burrito, then grabbed a cappuccino at Coffeetopia. Both were excellent!!

Then I headed up the coast. It was 34 miles to Pescadero, so I figured it shouldn’t take much more than 2 hours to cover the distance since the ride up the coast was just a lot of rollers but no substantial climbs. What I hadn’t factored in correctly though was the headwind….. It wasn’t too bad as I left Santa Cruz, but not far out of town the wind started to get stronger, and it just got stronger and stronger as I headed further north. On the flats I was lucky to go 11mph, and I couldn’t build up any speed on the rollers, so the climbs were pathetically slow. I tried to just suck it up and deal with it, but it was frustrating nonetheless. The coast line was pretty interesting to watch with all that wind though – Bean Hollow beach looked like a washing machine it was so rough! During this stretch up Highway 1 I got to see the folks who were doing the Santa Cruz 300km brevet – they’d headed up to Half Moon Bay in the morning and were returning down the coast – with a tail wind – I was jealous!!! I recognized Tim Woudenberg early on, then later I saw Sheila Stevens. I stopped and backtracked a bit to chat briefly with Sheila and Tina – anything to break up the monotony of riding into the head wind!!

I finally got to Pescadero about 3 hours after leaving Santa Cruz. I stopped at the gas station there to get a Mountain Dew, and also grabbed a burrito since they make really good burritos there. I ate just over a third of it and then packed the rest for the road. I headed out towards Memorial Park and Haskins Hill. The original plan had been to do Haskins, West Alpine, then drop back down 84 and do Lobitos Creek and Tunitas Creek, but given how late it was in the day, and the fact that I didn’t have my powerful light with me (I just had my small light with me) and I didn’t want to get caught on this side of the hill in the dark, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to stick to that plan, and wasn’t going to fit the Tunitas loop in. I got to West Alpine at about 212 miles into my ride, and I must say that the climb is a lot harder with that many miles on your legs than it is after only 40-60 miles!!! It was a slog to the top, but I made it. Once at the top I headed along Skyline towards 84, and decided I had time to at least drop down the west side of 84 as far as West Old La Honda and come back up that way – it added another short climb and I could get it done and still have time to get home before dark. After doing the West Old La Honda loop I stopped at Skylonda to get a soda and eat some more of my burrito before dropping back down into Woodside.

At this point I knew I wasn’t even going to get 300 miles in before my 24hrs ran out, but I decided that I had to keep going until I’d ridden at least 300 miles. I needed to go home and get my powerful light before finishing up, so I got home around 7:30pm after riding 267 miles. I quickly changed into some dry shorts and a dry shirt (so that I didn’t get too cold as the sun set), put my night reflective gear back on, downed a soda and ate the rest of my burrito, gave Mike instructions on going out and getting some food for me for when I finished, and then headed out to get the last 33 miles done with. I wasn’t as depressed riding into the setting sun this time around -probably because I knew I was almost done. I felt like I pushing hard on this section, but I wasn’t setting any land speed records. I left home at about 7:55pm and got home at 10:15pm.

So all told I’d ridden 301 miles in an elapsed time of 27 hours (ride time of 21:45). My cyclometer reported 15,800 feet of elevation gain, so it certainly wasn’t a totally flat ride. And thankfully I didn’t have any back pain this weekend – a night and day difference from the Davis 300km a week earlier. There were definitely some challenges along the way – mental, emotional, meteorological, physical – but I got through it. Of course thinking about the fact that RAW is almost 3 times the distance and elevation gain that I rode during this ride is a rather intimidating concept – yikes!!

Oh, and to finish up the weekend I went out and rode another 75 miles on Sunday to make it 376 miles for the weekend – my longest training weekend to date if you don’t count weekends when I did 500 mile events. So a pretty solid training weekend. Now I’m definitely ready for my recovery weekend!