Okay, I’m back from San Francisco and our 24 hour adventure. And all I can say is what a blast! The Fleche was the best organized ride I’ve ridden. The scary part is that I already want to do another one. I have never felt that way after a Double, or even the 200k or 300k for that matter. This is an entirely different class of ride.
A few elements came together to make this ride successful: the route; the people in our team; the weather. Paul Guttenberg designed the route, and put the team together, for that matter. The weather just happened.
I learned a couple of interesting things on my first overnight ride:
- Bring a toothbrush. I’ve never ridden so long that dental hygiene was an issue. But man! Now I know.
- Leave the cycling computer at home. I’ve got a Garmin Edge 305. It measures, reports, and records heart rate, cadence, speed, average speed, time of day, riding time, and it will supply all that info for each lap as well as cumulatively . . . Basically, it spits out a whole bunch of crap that is good for training, but completely irrelevant for a long, slow ride in the country. I ran out the day before and got a battery backup so I could power the Garmin for the entire trip. What a waste! The only thing I used the Garmin for was time of day, and that’s only because the battery in my watch died (now I know why that battery icon appeared a few months ago).
- Night riding is cool, especially with a group. A group gives a nice sense of visibility and security. We had to change a tire (three times, as it turned out). Really nice to have all that light and reflectivity for the cars speeding along the highway a few feet away. Also, as beautiful as the daytime riding was, especially along Dry Creek in Sonoma, riding through the night gave us different experiences: Seeing Orion low over the the black Pacific where we turned south at Jenner; listening to thousands of frogs in the marshes and trenches along the way to Petaluma; watching the sun rise while drinking espresso on the waterfront in Sausalito.
- I also found that riding a little slower isn’t the end of the world, and may sometimes even be good. I tend to push when I ride. Knowing we were required to take 24 hours to make 230 miles, and knowing at least three of us had to finish together, I let go of any notion of pace. We just rode, talked, and stopped and ate whenever it was convenient. While it may be tiring just staying awake that long, it certainly doesn’t require more exertion than, say, a 300k €“ that is, if you slow down a little bit. I feel better today, the day after the ride, than after other long rides. And what the hell? We were 20 minutes early to the finish anyway!
I’m working on a write-up of the ride itself, and will post that as Part 2 of this series. Those of you who followed the Twitter updates won’t really learn anything new. But I think it’s worthwhile to expound a little more on the ride.