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The SIR 400K May 11th-12th, 2002--a ride report
Randonneurs face many challenges and not all of these challenges are found on the road. Often the challenge lies not in overcoming some difficulty, but in working past all the sensible, logical and comfortable alternatives to get to the point where you actually ride the brevet. And that is not always easy. But randonneurs are not called to the sport because it is easy. Consider the following tale... In addition to this year's various brevets, my friend Mark Vande Kamp and I have a little bike tour planned for this June, a quick 3000 kilometer jaunt back to the midwest using fixed gear bikes and ultra-light camping equipment. This has given us an excuse to experiment with all kinds of nifty things like titanium cook pots and tiny alcohol stoves made from old Pepsi cans. It also gives us a terrific excuse to log lots of extra training miles. Unfortunately the tour also gives us a chance to rationalize away doing any brevet. Here's a note I got from Mark a few days before the 400K. (Note: all the emails recounted here are reprinted with Mark's permission.) Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 09:23:46 -0700 Well, on the surface Mark presents a compelling case. But, I'mnot buying it. I quickly work up a reply. Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 10:19:26 -0700 (PDT) Mark quickly responds with the following: Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 10:31:27 -0700 Now this is more like it. I write back: Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 10:40:31 -0700 (PDT) The details of the plan quickly fall into place: Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 16:12:35 -0700 By now the astute reader will be able to predict my response to the "do you want a ride?" question in the previous note. I respond: Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 08:24:28 -0700 (PDT) And so it was settled. It actually took a bit of discussion with Christine and she wasn't immediately convinced that I had to prevent Mark from weenieing out of the 400K. "Why you?" she asked. "I have to," I replied. "With great power comes great responsibility," I said, solemnly quoting Spiderman. Christine just rolled her eyes and said "Yeah, right!" And then she added, "You're gonna freeze up in North Bend while I am warm and cozy..." On Friday night just before 6:00 PM, I ride my loaded bike up over the Issaquah Plateau, through Fall City, up past Snoqualmie Falls and through the towns of Snoqualmie and North Bend. I get to the Edgewick Inn at 7:30 PM so I have some time to check out the local mini-marts and do a bit of preliminary scouting of possible camping areas. I see Jim Giles checking into the motel, so I chat a bit with him. Mark pulls up a bit before 8:00 PM, quickly unloads his bike from the car and we set off in search of a good camping spot. The crossroad near the motel ends in a gate. The sign prohibits cars but doesn't mention bikes or denote the land beyond as a "No Trespassing" area, so Mark and I slide our bikes under the gate and roll down a path that is something more than a trail and less than a logging road. We go down this road, to where the tree-cover breaks into rolling meadow. We are further away from the sounds of the I-90 freeway now and well away from civilization but the terrain offers no good spots for hanging our camp hammocks. The weather is still terrific, with the sunlight turning orange as the earth turns toward nightfall. In this warm glow on a side trail we see the black-boned carcass of a long-dead elk. The ribs and skull look Pleistocene in the golden sunlight and the moment is far from frightening. It is instead as if Mark and I are two young boys who've somehow stepped into the comfortably macabre world of a Ray Bradbury story, a place where time is long and death is merely some odd, bat-winged uncle who's trying to teach us something very simple involving patience. We turn the bikes around, backtrack to the green-belt and find two sets of proper hammock-hanging trees. It only takes a few minutes to set up camp. Mark ate before he drove up, but I'm hungry so I hike the short distance back to the Pizza Hut/gas station and order a small pizza. Mark catches up with me just as I finish eating and we return to camp just as it is getting completely dark. We agree on our wake-up time and settle into our respective hammocks.
It's really dark at 3:30 AM, but helmet lights let us break camp with a minimum of fuss. Mark is up before my alarm, getting a headstart on making breakfast. After packing my hammock, sleeping bag and Thermarest pad into the compression stuffsack, I fire up my own pop can stove and brew myself some coffee and oatmeal. After downing our simple breakfasts we make a half-hearted attempt at cleaning our cooking gear before packing it up. We load up the last of our stuff, roll back to the motel parking lot and stow the camping gear in Mark's car. It's some after 4:00 AM now and a nice crowd of randonneurs is gathering, signing in and tweaking their bikes. I'm glad to see my friend Ken Krichman. Ken had crashed on the Hood Canal Bridge on our 300K ride a few weeks ago but this morning he is back on The Beast and ready to roll. Jon Muellner is still keeping the fixed faith, as are Mark and myself, but fellow Shiftless Bum Tom Brett is skipping this ride. Occasional fixed-rider Wayne Methner is continuing the back-sliding ways he'd shown on the 300K and this morning he's on his geared titanium bike instead of his fixer. Wayne recognizes some of the virtues of fixed gear riding, but he continues to return to the comforts of coasting and downshifting. I chide him with a brief "coasting makes you weak" comment but he seems perfectly happy to ignore me. One guy who sure isn't weak even though he favors those coasting bikes is Jan Heine. Today Jan is riding yet another example from his seemingly endless collection of funky, classic European bicycles. This particular bike is a 1960s vintage full-chrome Alex Singer randonneuring machine that I'm sure has a terrific story behind it. The bike gleams like a jewel. Jan is relaxed and he jokes with Mark and me about our inferior and out-dated technology. Unlike on our wet 300K where Jan didn't seem quite like himself, today he's here in fine form, ready for what to him is just another day on the bike. Just before 5:00 AM, I realize I'd used about half my water making breakfast but the bathroom is occupied and I decide I can make it the 30 or so kilometers to the Snoqualmie summit with just a singlewater bottle. Ken Carter gives us the last-minute pre-ride instructions and at 5:00 AM, he sends us on our way. Last week Ken Carter and Peter McKay had enjoyed great weather and turned in a very speedy time of 17:24 for this course. Today we also have fine weather and 27 of us roll down the road and up the entrance ramp onto I-90. None of us are surprised that Jan is off the front but I am surprised that I manage to keep him in sight pretty much all the way up to Snoqualmie Pass. Stan Reynolds and I chat for a bit until the steeper part of the climb hits and then we each focus on the task at hand. I'm slightly ahead of Stan at the summit, but when I roll off at the exit to fill my bottle Stan naturally keeps going. It's 31 degrees at the summit and my water stop is pretty quick, but I know some of the others have moved on ahead, while others are still behind me. I'm certain I'll wind up getting passed by more folks on the descent. While I've got a pretty good spin, a fixed gear bike will only go as fast as its owner can turn the cranks and I'm no match for some of our club's fast descenders. As if to emphasize the point, Bill Dussler effortlessly zooms past me shortly after I rejoin the interstate. As we descend eastward, the temperatures climb. The sun is warm and the sky is a soft blue. More people pass me including Ed Husted and the very fast tandem team of Greg Cox and Max Maxon. Cars and trucks roar by on our left and while the the shoulder is wide, it's littered with various obstacles including gravel, broken glass and blown tire fragments. Michelin wires from blown truck tires are probably the worst of our foes, since the tiny wires can work through kevlar belts and cause sneaky flats that are almost impossible to find and repair. Luck, combined with the deliberate descending style imposed by a combination of the fixed gear and my own cautious nature keep me clear of the obstacles. Others won't be so fortunate today. Of course what I call caution, my friend Andy calls descending like a weenie. It's all in the telling of the tale and since I'm the narrator here, I'll choose to stick with my prudence as being a noble and successful course of action. The first 80 kilometers of the ride pass quickly and at 8:06 AM, I'm getting my control card signed at the Cle Elum Safeway. Greg and Max and Ed are there as well, but it's a quick snack stop and soon we're rolling again. The wind is with us and the terrain is climbing again. I pass the group of Wayne, Pete, Mark Thomas and Eric Duncan who are all stopped repairing a flat tire. I do a quick courtesy shout-out to make sure they've got what they need and roll on once I get the standard assurance that everything is under control. The climb up to Blewett Pass is wonderful. It's warm but not too hot and the grade is never too severe. Actually, this isn't the real Blewett Pass, the real pass is now called the old pass. That road turns off to the left and it's a marvelous road, steeper and far more spectacular. It features a series of classic Alpine switchbacks and it has a much more European feel than the wide, safe American road I'm riding on now. Alas, the old road is never plowed in the winter and it's still too early in the season for it to be included as a part of this brevet. Last September Mark Thomas and I rode the old pass and it's now one of my favorite roads. But it's a road for another day. Almost before I know it, I'm at the modern Blewett summit and Ken Carter is signing my card for the secret control. I drink some water, fill one bottle with Gatorade and slather on some sunscreen. I verify that Mark Vande Kamp is definitely ahead of me and that Jan is naturally way ahead of everyone. Stan Reynolds and Bill Dussler are also somewhere up ahead. While I'm stopped, Mark Thomas, Ed, Wayne and Eric all catch up. Mark and Ed roll off quickly to enjoy the long descent down to Highway 2. I don't linger too long at the stop, but I'm not too far down when Wayne and Eric roll by me. I'm basically just managing to keep Wayne and Eric in sight when Pete Liekkio pulls up alongside me. Pete's a big guy so he's much better at descending than I am. I point out the little dots that are Eric and Wayne. "You can catch 'em," I say, and Pete motors on. Soon he's also a dot and then they're all out of sight. I keep spinning along at acomfortable 40 kph, 120 RPM pace on the long downgrade. On the steeper descents I can manage 50 to 55 kph for a while but nothing today will test my absolute maximum, which is around 180 rpm or 60 kph. I'm not too far from the turn onto Highway 2 when I again see Wayne and Pete. They're pulled over, once again fixing a flat. Again I call out to make sure they've got what they need and again I'm told that all is right with the world. I roll on. I catch up with Eric as he's waiting at the light at the busy turn onto Highway 2. He'd been wondering what had happened to Wayne and I fill him in on the Wayne's latest flat. Once we turn west onto the highway, we're fighting a bit of a headwind, but it's not too far into Leavenworth and at 11:37 AM, I get my card signed at the second control, the Leavenworth Chevron at kilometer 166. Leavenworth is a faux-Bavarian town that really plays up its alpine setting. Today a German band is oompahing in the park and as usual the town is packed with tourists.
Both Marks are here and so is Ed but they don't hang around long. I grab a chicken teriaki sandwich and some milk. While I'm snacking, Wayne and Pete roll in and so does Jon Muellner. Wayne's having some shifting trouble and he decides to consult Jon and me for advice. He says "Hey, you guys know mechanical stuff. Can you help me figure out what's wrong?" We look at it and I start by saying "Here's your problem, you've got a derailleur in your drivetrain!" Wayne accuses me of not being helpful. We continue to look things over and figure out that he must've bent the derailleur cage when he'd laid the bike down as he fixed the flat. Wayne can't quite get it fiddled back into shape. Jon suggests that he can probably get things tweaked around so he can get at least one gear working OK and then says with a perfectly straight face "...and in my experience, one gear is really all you need." Wayne comes to the conclusion that he picked the wrong guys to provide him with sympathy and advice about his derailleur woes. Eric is anxious to get going and I advise him that the Nason Creek Rest Area, about halfway between Leavenworth and the Steven's summit is a good place to stop for water. I take off a few minutes after Eric and pass him a while later on the gentle climb up through the Tumwater Canyon. I always stop at Nason Creek, not just to fill my water bottles, but because local volunteer groups usually have a stand set-up with coffee, lemonade and cookies. Today is no exception and I drop a dollar in the donation jar and fuel upon lemonade and cookies. I start up a chat with one of the ladies running the lemonade stand. "There will probably be more riders coming," I tell her. "Oh yes," she says, "we saw more of you as we were driving up here. We couldn't quite make out what it said on your shirts. At first we thought it was 'Seattle Random-something.'" "Randonneurs," I laugh. "It's French for 'people who bike a lot'." "Yes," she says, "another one of you was here just a few minutes ago and he explained what you're doing, riding over the three passes today." I'm used to people being impressed or disbelieving of our rides, but this woman is completely matter-of-fact about it. I'm probably fishing for a little of that awe when I say something stupid like "yeah, I've still got a long wayto go..." but this particular lemonade lady will have none of it. "Well, you did choose to be out here, now didn't you?" I thank her for the lemonade and get back out on the road. Either Eric didn't stop at the rest area or he took a quicker break than I did, because I wind up passing him again a few kilometers up the road. We've got a headwind now but it's actually kind of nice because it's kind of cooling. I continue climbing, plotting the distance to the top and looking at the occasional elevation markers. Near the top I make one of those stupid, mental math mistakes that baffles me for a bit. I think I know how far it is to the summit and I think I know how many more feet of climbing I've got, but when I divide this out I come out with something silly like average grade that's well over ten-percent. Now, I know what a ten-percent grade is like and this isn't anywhere near that steep. It takes me a few more minutes of climbing before it hits me. I've been calculating distances in kilometers but the elevation markers are in feet. It's a good thing I'm just trying to ride my bike and not launching any multi-million dollar space probes. I stop at the summit to pull my sleeves down and then I descend to Skykomish. There's still a lot of snow at the higher elevations and in the warm sun I get to see a couple of mini avalanches and rockslides. As I descend I see a few touring cyclists working their way up the pass. I pull into the Skykomish Chevron (kilometer 245) at 3:50 PM and get my card signed. I have some milk and a Snickers Ice Cream Bar and I fill my water bottles. Eric pulls in a couple of minutes later, but I wind up leaving before he's ready to go. Just past Skykomish I see a flash of yellow in the ditch and by the time I think "was that a cycling vest?" I'm well past it and I'm in no mood to circle back. Skykomish isn't much higher up than the town of Sultan and I'm fighting a headwind all the way through the towns of Index and Gold Bar. Every time I pass through Gold Bar I think about stopping at the reptile house (hey, I'm a sucker for any place that advertises the ten deadliest snakes and an albino alligator) but it seems like the only time I'm up this way is on brevets, so I've never managed to stop. I roll through Gold Bar and on through the town of Start Up. Just past Start Up, I see Mark Thomas. He's just finished patching his fourth flat of the day and is stowing his gear back in his bag. I stop to provide moral support and he tells me that while he was changing an earlier flat, Mark Vande Kamp had stopped and presented him with the leg warmers and reflective bands that he'd lost earlier. It seems that Mark Thomas had neglected one crucial cinch on his stuffbag and had been strewing clothing across the countryside. "Your vest is in a ditch outside Skykomish," I tell him, "Maybe somebody else will pick it up." Mark and I blast into Sultan and stop at convenience store on the corner at the turn onto Old Owen Road. I have a burger and milk and fill one of my bottles with green iced tea. Mark is anxious to get going and rolls out quickly. I'm slower here, dreading what lies ahead. What lies ahead is the hill on Reiner Road. This is not a nice hill. I can climb mountain passes all day and night and ten percent grades are fine with me. Reiner Road is not fine with me. It is my nemesis. It is the only hill I walked when I rode the 2000 SIR brevet series on a fixed. I don't know how steep it is, but I think it's about 18 percent at its steepest. It is not a nice hill. I ponder flipping my wheel here. Fast Eddy has a 42 tooth chainring and I've got a 16 tooth sprocket on the back. This gives me a gear of about 71 inches and it's fine for almost everything. Everything but the hill on Reiner Road. But my rear wheel has another fixed cog on the other side and that cog has 17 teeth. Just one more tooth, but one more might be enough. By flipping the wheel over, I could make use of this lower gear. But then again, I might be able to make it up the hill on my 16. I debate my options and decide to stick with the 16 tooth cog. Now there are other hills before THE HILL and I chug up these. Off to the right I see the goat that may possibly be a sheep that lives in a field next to this road. This is a strange beast, notable for having one giant horn. If you look very closely, you'll see it also has one tiny stunted horn as well but at a glance it looks like a domesticated unicorn -- strange, proud and mysteriously out of place. It is a creature to inspire strange thoughts, thoughts that should be able to propel a man and a bicycle with 42*16 gearing up an impossible grade. I take a long, deep swig from my bottle which somehow no longer contains green ice tea but is now filled with some kind of life-giving ancient herbal mixture whose exact formula was passed down, generation by generation, from the true men of old. I ride and the grade steepens. I ride and there's nothing here but a hill, and a bicycle and gravity as relentless as death itself. I ride and I ride and I ride and the hill tips up and up and now I drop to sub-walking speed. The pedals are just not moving now and I've hit the point where my wise old dad would say "don't be a damn fool, son!" He's a smart guy, my dad. A true man of old. What in the world am I trying to prove here? Deformed sheep are not unicorns, ice tea is no magic potion and more importantly, despite those persistent rumors, my dad didn't raise a fool. For the steepest 20 meters of Reiner Road, I walk alongside my bike. And it feels good. Still I know that it will feel better to conquer this hill with pure pedal power in my 42*16 and perhaps someday I will. But not today. I'm no fool. I've faced the demon now and while I may not have won, I have at least survived. And that's enough for now. I still have kilometers to go before this day is done, and I know the rest of the course and I know I'll ride it all. I roll on. I ride over Pipeline Road and Bollenbaugh Hill Road ("Ha!," I think, "you call that a hill!") and onto Woods Creek Road. I see Mark Thomas pulled over at the side of the road and think "Oh, no. He didn't flat again, did he?" But then I see he's got his cell phone out. I don't bother to ask if he's OK, I know what he's doing. He's calling his always helpful wife Chris to come and bail him out. He probably wants her to meet him at the next control with a refill stash of spare tubes. I give him one of my trademark "cell phones make you weak" glares as I ride past. Mark finishes his call and catches up with me. "Calling the wife?" I ask. "Yep," he admits. "Walk the hill?" he asks. "Oh yeah," I admit. I guess we're both just a couple of weak guys. There might not be any more real hills on this ride but there still is some pretty darn rolling terrain; what my British friend Mark Brooking would call some lumpy bits. Mark and I roll over the lumps. He zooms ahead on the descents and I fly ahead on the climbs. We're together when we get to the turn onto the Dubuque Cutoff. Russ Carter is there and his van is the second SIR secret control. Russ has a nice supply of goodies there and Mark and I fuel up on potato chips and frappacinos. I fill one of my bottles with water and the other with apple juice and then we're off again. Mark pulls ahead and that's the last I see of him for a while. I take a bathroom break in Snohomish and then ride the very familiar roads to the Chevron at Paradise Lake Road. This isthe 343 kilometer checkpoint and it's 8:25 PM. I buy a bag of M&M peanuts and get my card signed and then walk over to chat with Mark and Chris. "Bailing him out again, eh?" I say. Chris just laughs. She's famous for getting Mark out of jams and once she drove 150 miles to a control to give Mark an entire spare bike! Mark is our Regional Brevet Administrator and he and Chris own Sammamish Valley Cycle and they both do a tremendous amount to support randonneuring in the Puget Sound area. Of course, I've got this very independent streak that winds up most often being expressed in pithy comments like "fill-in-the-blank makes you weak" so Mark and I often have gentle disagreements on a variety of subjects. Chris is oohing and aahing over my latest creation, a coroplast handlebar bag. She proclaims it and the rest of my bike, a classic Eddy Merckx equipped with coroplast fenders to be "neat." "We should have pictures of this stuff in the shop," she says to Mark. "No," he says firmly. "No, we shouldn't. He's bad for business. If everybody was like him, nobody would buy new bikes." Chris is not convinced. "Ooh look," she says, "he doesn't even use clipless pedals!" She says this with the awed tone of a paleontologist who's just found a live stegosaurus munching greens in the backyard garden. "That's what I mean, "Mark grumbles good-naturedly. "He barely uses anything from this century. He's bad for business, I tell you. Don't encourage him!" "Hey," I say as I strap on my reflective ankle-bands, "my lights are 21st-century" and I point to my twin Princeton Tec Impact LED lights. "But they're not even real bike lights!" Mark counters. We stop the bickering and roll out down Paradise Lake Road. After a minute or so I realize Mark isn't behind me, but I figure he'll catch up. Sure enough, he catches me at the turn for Woodinville-Duvall Road. "After all that, I forgot to get the tubes from Chris," he confesses. "I had to go back and get them!" It's colder now that it's gotten dark and Mark tells me he's been fighting off a raspy bug that he'd picked up from his kids. With the colder weather, he's slowing down and he makes this kind of honking coughing sound every once in a while that doesn't sound good. We're together in Carnation and he asks if I'm planning on stopping. I still have some M&Ms in my pocket and water in my bottles, so I tell him I'm planning on pushing straight on to the end. Shortly after that, I don't see him behind me any more. It's a nice climb up to Snoqualmie Falls and it's a quiet night in Snoqualmie and North Bend. At 11:08 PM, I'm back at the Edgewick Inn, the final control. 402 kilometers in 18 hours 8 minutes. Ken Carter signs my card and I declare my intention to take things easy and rest until daylight. Ken tells me there's another room available, but I prefer staying in this one, getting the stories from the other riders as they come in. Mark Vande Kamp got in sixteen minutes ahead of me and rests for a while before his drive back home. Mark Thomas rolls in eight minutes after I do and he also hangs out for a while before driving home. Ken tells me the quick version of Jan's story, he'd finished the ride in fifteen and a half hours and he'd also complained about the wind. Strong and speedy Stan Reynolds had come in second finishing an hour and forty-five minutes behind Jan. Somehow I don't think the wind slowed Jan down too much! I snack and snooze and wake when other riders come in. Max and Greg turn in a great tandem time, despite Greg's having some problems with his knee. Max asks about the strange beast she saw on Reiner Road and I assure her that yes, it was real. Later, Jon Muellner comes in and claims the title of the only fixed gear rider to ride every centimeter of the course. With his lower gearing, he'd managed to scale the Reiner Road hill while Mark Vande Kamp and I had been reduced to walking. The long descents in that low gear had darn near spun his legs off and he was muttering many alarming words about the possibilities of freewheels. Riders come in throughout the night including Bob Brudvik, who is one tough guy. Bob rolls in at 5:34 AM with a lot of nasty things to say about Spinergy wheels. His new "speedy" wheels have proven anything but, deciding to self-destruct with less than 1000 miles on them. His rear hub has become a friction box. A lesser man would've called it quits, but Bob rode the damn things in. I think of the Taoist proverb "If you want speed, you will not arrive," but I keep it to myself. Bob gave up on speed and finished the ride with old-fashioned power and stubborness. I congratulate him on a great ride. A few minutes after Bob finishes, both the recumbents roll in. I hang around a few minutes more and then pack up my gear and roll for home. As an experiment, I flip my rear wheel over to the 17-tooth cog, what Max calls my old-man's gear. The hills seemed easier. Maybe too easy. 17-tooth cogs make you weak. I've got to train more, get in some more hill work. But I won't be a damn fool about it. I'll take my time. Pick some good hills, work my way up. Reiner Road is still out there, still big and steep with the kind of patience you only find in stone. But I'm out there too, riding an old bike that doesn't coast up the biggest hills I can find. It's a pretty silly thing to do. Maybe I am just a damn fool after all.
Appendix: Listings for the SIR 2002 400km brevet
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Writer
Kent Peterson lives in Issaquah, WA with his lovely wife, two sons, a cat and a bunch of unusual bicycles. He thinks the Tour de France would be a lot more fun if the bikes didn't coast.
Date
v1.0 written July 2002
Related
Kent has his own site with details of his other rides.
He suggests rusa.org if you want to find out more about riding brevets.
Mailing list
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