STP Ride Report

Yay! I did it! And it was way fun!

I was the most irritable, mean, yucky person on Friday afternoon when I got home from Germany. I yelled at my husband A TON (mostly because he failed to bring my bike in for the service I wanted prior to this 200 mile bike ride - and the reason I didn't do it myself before I left was that I was busy helping him with something else) and I just felt crabby. I chalked it up to needing sleep and went to bed at 9:30, after preparing all my stuff and going through lists of all the things I needed to bring, needed to put in John's car, and needed to do to my bike.

I slept so-so - thank goodness I was actually tired, or else I probably wouldn't have slept at all. I was very nervous and woke often with weird dreams (one of them, about John unplugging my cell phone from the charger to plug his in - and I screamed at him in my dream, of course - actually sort of came true: when John met us at the first rest stop, he took my phone's battery because his was dead. FLAKE). I also remembered a few things that I'd forgotten on my lists (headlight, cleat covers, etc).

So, I got up to the alarm at 4 a.m., showered, and made coffee. I decided last-minute to change my clothing strategy - I was going to wear a bike tank top with regular black shorts - but all that food I ate in Germany was making me believe I looked extra-fat - so I decided to wear my Terry skort and a different pink shirt. I still thought I looked fat in the shirt, but at least the skort hid my tummy and thighs. Plus, it gives me a silly thrill to ride past men all decked out in team cycling gear when I'm wearing a skort, and I did hope for some opportunity to ride well.

For breakfast, I ate a bagel and cream cheese and two hard-boiled eggs, but I was so excited and anxious that I had to force it down - and I couldn't eat it all. But I knew there would be ample opportunity to eat throughout the day.

Jessi showed up at 4:45, and Danielle was a few minutes late at 5:05. Jessi's fiance took a few pictures, and we were off. Matthew was waiting a mile down the road. I had decided we would start from home in Renton, rather than in Seattle, because I didn't want to get up even earlier, suffer through STP traffic to get to Seattle, just to ride back to Renton - and even though this cut a few miles off the trip, I felt - and still feel - that I completed the ride. The course went through my city probably 3 or 4 miles from my house, so we caught up with the earliest riders somewhere around 5:30.

Our strategy was to ride 17 to 18 mph all day on flat roads, and stay together in a pace line. Early on, both Jessi and I were feeling like this is just too easy, we should be riding harder - but Danielle kept reminding us that it's a very long day and we can't let ourselves burn out too early. So, we pretty much stuck to plan. Our plan also included stopping at every rest stop, but briefly - hit the Porta-Potties if we had to, fill up on water, and go. We were pretty efficient for probably the first 3/4 of the ride; towards the end of the day, we definitely slowed down at the rest stops. Maybe that was me, procrastinating. :-)

(Quick aside about Jessi, I just have to announce to everyone who might read both of our blogs that she is SO UNBELIEVABLY STRONG. She hadn't trained for a one-day ride and her longest prior to STP was 70 miles. At the end she was still pushing hard and looked amazing. I was so psyched she decided to come with us and share in the pulling. She is a force to be reckoned with! You can read her report here.)

The first 100 miles is incredibly easy. There's one hill around mile 45 or so, but, as Danielle said, "It's no Lakemont." (That refers to a two-mile climb that's one of the steepest, longest hills around here - that Danielle and I LOVE to climb, mostly because we can. And I like it because you get a 3-mile downhill on the other side.) My hill strategy was just to do it easily - not push hard, not race, just stay comfortable - and my heart rate told me I did, barely breaking 160.

Right after the second major rest stop (mile 55), I got a terrible, sharp pain right in the center of my right knee. Last time I had this pain, I couldn't ride my bike anymore - had to get off and walk. This wasn't quite as bad, so I just sort of tested it and pushed through it. I found that dropping my heel A LOT - more than you're supposed to, so my foot stayed completely flat throughout the pedal rotation - made it better, but pretty much I felt it the entire 150 miles more. Danielle thinks I need to get my bike re-fit for me, especially since any knee pain I feel running is completely different (and seems due to muscle fatigue in my quads, not joint trouble) - so I'm probably going to do that soon (but not until after the half-IM - I don't want to change anything before that).

We got in some good pacelines, sometimes with other riders we didn't know, and made it to Centralia, the half-way point, at 11:40 a.m. In Centralia, we ate big plates of spaghetti, and the sun came out. Up until then, it had been bright but cloudy - what I'd consider perfect biking weather. As much as I like sun, clouds are better so I don't get as hot or sunburn. I still felt very fresh and happy, despite the knee issue.

The miles from 100 until 145 were most definitely the hardest for me. 96 to 108 DRAGGED - I thought time was standing still. I'm thinking my body was busy dealing with the food I'd thrown in it, plus it didn't know that riding more than 100 was possible, so it took a while for it to catch up with my brain that was telling it, time to move! Got another 100 to do!

Also, 100 to 145 gets some rolling hills. Nothing huge - on a regular ride, I doubt I'd even get out of my big ring (but that's because I'm a masher anyway), but after a century, they were hills. And I started to notice how every hill, even slight ones, were taking a lot more out of me than they should. My legs felt heavy and full and I just got tired so easily - but then as soon as we were back on a flat or in a paceline, I was back to being pretty much fine (knee pain excepted).

Actually, here's how I would describe the two halves of the ride: the first half is the easiest century ever. The second half is the second easiest century ever, but when it comes right after the first half, it turns into something harder.

I sang a lot on the way. Some of it was quietly, just for me, and some was for other riders - like for this guy with an Oscar The Grouch shirt who I passed no less than 4 times (I ride faster, but take longer stops, I guess), I sang, "Oh I love trash!" And I sang the Sponge Bob song for people with that jersey on, and I made up my own song - to the tune of "I love to laugh" from Mary Poppins, "I love to draft!" I'm a big dork, but I entertained myself.

I also yelled at a guy for passing on the right. Danielle yelled at him for wearing earphones. He claimed he could hear us, but later, Jessi said that when we were getting towards a rest stop, everyone started yelling, "Slowing!" like we're supposed to, and that guy ripped his earbud out and said, "What's happening?" But I guess he was a fairly new rider and there were no hard feelings - when we saw him at the finish line, he actually wanted to take a picture with us.

At mile 162, we met up with a group called the Green River Riders. We'd seen them a bunch of times throughout the day - one guy had a pink helmet and pink wheels, so Danielle was all jealous, and Jessi rode up to the guy to find out who made the wheels so she could get them too. We left at the same time as them from the Goble rest stop and quickly realized they were keeping a pace just slightly harder than ours - so we hooked on to their pace line and held something more like 19-20, at times up to 22 mph. It ROCKED. They were really cool people - they actually live fairly close to Danielle and me - and although we did offer to help pull, they didn't take us up on the offer. We split off at the next rest stop at mile 175, but then decided we wanted to hang with them a little longer, so we found them and asked if we could. So we continued the great pace until mile 188, the last rest stop. They didn't stop, but we did - I needed to go to the potty. :-)

We definitely took a while at that last rest stop - frankly, I was reluctant to hurry. I was afraid I was going to be slow, and I warned the others that I might only be up to 15-16 mph for the end. Well, that turned out to not be true in the least. We kept the good pace most of the way; for a while we stayed behind a couple of guys going about 17, but for some of it, we were still up between 18 and 22. The last few miles, though, are in the city of Portland - and HILLS! Some of them significantly steep, but all of them pretty short. But again, hills were sucking the life out of me, so I just slowed to something easy and tried to spin up. (John told me later that compared to everyone in every pace line I was in, I was always at a slower cadence, even when first, which says I'm still mashing too much. Drat. I need to work harder on that.)

At the very end, Jessi and Matthew were ahead and they made a light that Danielle and I didn't. Although we'd been riding fairly well alone for these last 16 miles, in Portland there were suddenly a TON of people, so we couldn't really catch back up, and I think it felt good to both of them to just go hard to the end. Danielle and I finished just after they did; my bike computer said 11 hours, 8 minutes. Average speed 17.1 mph. 190 miles completed! (The full ride would have been 204; we cut off 14 by starting at my house. I felt like that was okay, though - I know I could have done another 10 or 14 if I needed to, and I'm calling myself someone who has completed a double century despite the missing miles.)

Here are some other random observations:
-- Number of flat tires Danielle counted: 20
-- Number of flat tires I, the queen of flats, got: ZERO! Really!
-- Number of times I dropped my chain: 1
-- Number of times I passed the guy in the Oscar the Grouch jersey and sang to him: 4
-- Number of beers it took me to lose the ability to talk post-ride: 1 (yes, really)
-- Number of 180-calorie Hostess cupcakes I consumed on the ride: 3
-- Number of times John stopped to offer his floor pump to riders with flats: 6 (isn't that nice of him?)