Friday night I started feeling horrible. My nose was running like a faucet. For a while I thought it might be spring allergies, but I concluded it was
definitely a cold. The
Covered Bridges 400K, my longest ride of the year, was the next day and I couldn't afford not the be on the bike. Except for the cue sheet, which I had printed and covered with clear packing tape, none of my gear was ready. And all my wool clothes were dirty. After a couple of tablespoons of Tylenol Cold medicine, I set the alarm clock for 1:30 AM and sacked out around 10:00.
I think I woke up before the alarm clock went off, but I don't remember for sure. I made myself a big breakfast: fruit
smoothy (a good 48 oz. at least), hot cereal, two slices of toast, 3 eggs, a few strips of bacon, a cup of decaf coffee, more cold medicine, and several Hammer pills. I packed my
camelback with tools, 3 spare tubes, some solid food, my wallet, spare batteries for the lights and a cell phone. I topped off the tires with air, lubed the chain, and mounted two bottle carriers behind my
seatpost. I filled two bottles to the top with Hammer
Perpetuem powder and two more bottles with the normal
Perpetuem/water mix. Then I showered and got dressed: long tights under wool shorts, long-sleeve wool shirt, wool jersey, wind vest, light weight shell, and
Burley jacket. Shortly after 3:30 I was out the door headed to
Newberg.
I took the round-about way, trying to avoid as many steep climbs as possible. On Tile-Flat Road I chased a
coyote for a few hundred feet. Then, something that sounded like a bird squawked at me from a tree. I've been on the same road before at night and heard the same sound at exactly the same place. I'm beginning to wonder if there's a motion sensor attached to a speaker somewhere. It's pretty startling the first time.
When I got to the Travel Lodge, Susan was just starting to setup the registration tent. I helped her carry a few things from the van. Then I curled up on a bench to catch a few Zs, since I was pretty early. After a while I woke up fairly cold. I walked over to tent to pay my registration fee and get a cup of coffee. When I got back to the bench, Ken Carter was sitting there reading the outside of the bundle of
newspapers that had been dropped by the front door. I sat down next to him and we chatted for a while. Then it was finally time to get moving again.
After the usual
pre-race talk. I watched a pack of people take off. Given my condition and the distance that lay ahead, I was in no mood to go with them. Instead, I settled for a brisk but very comfortable pace. It wasn't very long before Jon Wolf, a friend from Salem who I've ridden with a few times, saw me and we started riding together. Jon is doing the Elite
Pac Tour this year, which leaves San Diego June 10
th, the same day as
RAAM. So our training goals were perfectly aligned. We both wanted to finish sooner rather than later and keep stops to a minimum. In fact we ended up riding the entire 400K together, darn near
EFI.
Jon knew the roads we were on a lot better than I did, so I could relax a little and not worry about getting lost. Even better, he had these great stories from previous
Pac Tour rides he had done. If you ever get a chance, be sure to ask him about Mike and the banana, the
teeter-totter salad, and skewering a dog with a broken carbon fiber frame. Be prepared to bust a gut.
For quite a while Jon and I rode side-by-side into the wind. And when a small group latched onto our wheels we stayed up front most of the time. I began to question the description of the course: "mostly flat". To me, there sure seemed to be a fair number of hills. Nothing very long, but not what I would call flat. Turns out the second half of the course WAS mostly flat, but that detail wasn't highlighted very clearly or maybe I missed it.
A train blew by us at one point, which surprised me. What are people going that fast doing behind us? I wondered. I wasn't going to let the chance to ride a little faster get by us though, so I sped up and got on the back. The pack didn't stay together for long, though. Between my body weight, the gear I ride, and my decent level of fitness, I have a tendency to get away from people on the hills. (Unfortunately, I don't fair so well on flat, windy sections.) As the pack started breaking up, Jon and I stayed together.
We rode with Nate
Armbrust up and over some hills that had me snaking back and forth across the lane. Later we chatted with Peter
Beeson for a while. I think Peter is also doing the
Pac Tour with Jon, so Jon wanted to meet him. Peter was a little bit ahead of us after one of the controls, so Jon took off while I finished my business. Then I caught them as they were sauntering down the road.
Near Eugene, Jon and I got down to the business of getting home. As the course leveled out, we took turns pulling, with Jon doing about 80% of the work. As we neared the last control we saw someone coming toward us. Turns out it was Sam Huffman, although I didn't know it at the time. Jon and I made plans to stop by his house, which was just a 1/4 mile from the route, on the way back to
Newberg. We took a slight detour, which Jon though was a nicer route than the one called for by the cue sheet. The distance was almost exactly the same, though.
When we got to Jon's house, I was
greeted by his lovely wife, Tonya. I was impressed that she remembered me from the Peach of a Century ride a couple of years ago. Jon and Tonya were on a tandem along with my former boss, John Cartwright and his wife, Sharon. Tonya remembered that I was on my Country Road Bob
fixie. I remember spinning like a madman trying to keep up with those tandems. Anyway, I had a cup of warm water with a packet of
Emergen-C. And after about 10 minutes, we were on the road again.
As we got closer to
Newberg, I picked up the pace significantly. Jon said I had ants in my pants. He was right there with me, though, and maintained the pace as he took over the pull. Near St. Paul, Jon waived me to the front and I had to admit that I couldn't (or at least didn't feel like I could) keep going that fast. So we backed off and rolled into
Newberg around 9:45.
After getting my card signed, eating a piece of cold pizza and downing a can of coke, I hopped back on the bike and rode home. On the way home, I kept my attention focus on the next 2-3 turns. That was a pretty effective mental game that made those last 25 miles seem no-so-bad. I got home shortly before 11:30, quickly drank a large glass of
Recoverite, swallowed a couple of Super
AO pills, and took a shower.
I came home with one full bottle of
Perpetuem powder. (About 1/2 way through the ride I switched to
Powerade and Gatorade.) I had a couple of burritos at one of the controls, a packet of cliff shot
bloks, a couple of Hammer gels, and a chocolate Hammer bar. After taking a shower, I weighed myself - 155. Exactly what I weighed before I left the house. Not bad.
Then I hit the sack.
