wickedwords

Ride Length: 204 miles (approximately)
Elevation: 3600 ft? mostly rolling hills
Where: STP Route Guide
Start Time: 6:15 am (ish) on both days
How long: 11 hrs on Sat, 12 hrs on Sun, more or less. 23 hrs total. This includes all stops.
Avg Speed: 12 mph Sat, 11 mph Sunday
Heart Rate: 124 avg, 152 max for Sat, and Sunday was 122 avg, 148 max
Total Calories: about 17,000.

Whoo-hoo! I did it. About 25 miles from the end, I was whining like a whining thing, but once I got to the next rest stop, I found my determination again and finished the tour. It was incredible.

Day 1:

sherrold opted out of the ride, so Sat at 6 am, B and I started from their house on Capital Hill, with the plan that Lar and Sandy would meet the two of us in Centralia, providing support in case something went wrong.

We met up with the pack on Lake Washington Blvd, and headed to Steward Park and our first mini rest stop. During this section of the ride, we encountered our first set of paramedics tending to a rider. Seattle had the most incidents that required someone other than the rider medics in attendance, mostly due to 6000 people all trying to get through the same places at the same time. Somewhere on the West Highway, after Auburn but before Sumner, there was a 'thread the needle' effect, with too many people trying to go through too small a space; I braked so I wouldn't hit anyone, but the woman behind me tapped my wheel and went down. She was okay, but like I said, conditions were really crowded at times early in the day, and awareness of other riders and stopping distance was really important. The worst accident was on Highway 30 in Oregon, where a drunk driver hit a cyclist. I'm glad I didn't know about that until I got back.

The morning was great, though, despite the crowds. Cloudy and cool, and it was impossible to get lost, as we all followed the riders ahead of us. In fact, the crowds meant that everyone was drafting at least a little, and so the pace to the first official rest stop. The mass of humanity there meant it took us 20 minute to get food and water, and to hit the portapottie--and that was the fastest official stop of the day. By Sunday, though, we had fallen to the end of the crowds, and so stops went a little faster though they were out of most choices of food by the time we got there. But since I like peanut butter, fruit, and bagels, there was pretty much always something I could eat. Plus we packed a lot of our own food; I lived on clif bar shot blocks, bars, and electrolyte drink for most of the trip. The food at the stops was extra.

We had a pretty good ride down to puyallup, and the rest stop before the big hill of the ride. Again, long lines for the portapotties, and after that, the long mile-plus climb, with a 6% grade. I think I managed 5 mph going up the thing, but we didn't walk, and I was proud of us for getting through it. We stopped at a shady spot at the top to eat and drink, and ended up chatting with a couple of bear-looking guys one of whom had a small stuffed bear attached to his helmet. This was like the 6th time they'd done the ride, and they were both very sweet, telling us the lay of the land ahead of us to centralia.

Spanaway was even more of a zoo than Kent had been, and it took us a half hour to find everything. They had weird food at this stop--rice, corn, and bean wraps plus green grapes and not much else. I snagged a bar and grapes, but B passed all the stuff by, as the grapes turned out to be on the sour side.

It was also starting to get hot by then, and we were only about halfway through the day. The next section was okay, but getting hot; we hit Roy and stopped in the shade, and noticed that Wilcox Dairy was giving out free chocolate milk on the other side of town. I passed it by, as I was afraid something cold and milky would give me cramps right then, and promised myself something at the next rest stop.

Only McKenna was out of everything when we got there. Indoor toilets, yes--one of the great things about being a girl on one of these rides is that there's less of a line at the toilets when they're separated by gender--but the water in the women's room was hot water, which isn't really drinkable for awhile, so unless you stood in the long lines to go to the men's room, you were out of luck for refilling your water bottle. So I dinked around going to the nearby gas and incidentals store, where everyone else had gone--long lines, cold-and-therefore-also-undrinkable-yet-water, and no change so everything had to go on the debt card. I think we ate up 45 minutes with this, so it was really hot though Yelm, the 72 mile mark; at that point, I nearly gave up.

But we soldiered on, and got moved onto a wooded trail as the police in the area refused to let so many cyclists on the road at the same time due to accidents. It was blissfully shaded, and had many hidden downhills--places that looked flat but weren't, and in a good way-- so we rode fast and cool for a while, and suddenly, by the end of the trail, I was ready to do it and finish the day's ride.

So when we left that last rest area, we were in good spirits and the last 13 miles of rolling hills didn't seem too bad. We pealed off from the crowd to get to model after we hit Centralia--a couple of riders followed us until B told them we were going to the hotel--and met Sandy and Lar when we got there.

Then blissful A/C, blissful shower, blissful food, and blissful sleep.