I was planning on doing the SiR Whidbey Island 200k today, but instead decided to sleep in a bit and watch a big mountain stage of the Tour de France. While I was looking forward to another brevet, I guess having already doing a 200k-600k this season has made me lazy. And I didn't want to spend 10+ hours on the bike, only to spend 4+ more hours watching bike stuff on TV. Well I wouldn't mind that too much, but I also want to maintain some sort of life outside of the two-wheeled world. Anyway I chose to just watch bike racing on TV instead of riding one; wow, some of those cols make local passes like Stevens or Cayuse kid's play.
So the "Ride Around Mt. Rainier in One Day", aka Ramrod is happening this Thursday, I can't wait. Last year's edition was fun, even with the 76 extra miles thrown in. Signed up for a breakfast ticket, so that will be a nice treat after the 3-3.5 hour ride to the ride.
The course has been changed a bit this year due to a washout, so we'll be skipping the Paradise climb and instead heading south towards Packwood, where we'll turn back up north and head up Cayuse, this time doing the full length of it. Oh, and they added the Crystal Mountain climb to the mix just to make sure nobody says this year's edition was too easy.
Training, or lack thereof
I haven't done a ride over 60 or so miles since the big 600k + 80k ride last month. Not the best training for a big ride like this, but hopefully my butt hasn't forgotten how to get to know a saddle..
Since that 600k I've done about four races or so, so the fitness is still there if not better. On that note I recently held 32.x km/h (20 mph) average for one full hour (while solo) for the first time evar. The route was from Capitol Hill down Lake Wa Blvd, through Renton, up and over the plateau to Issaquah, e.g. not exactly flat - of course from there to Redmond, Bothell, and back to Seattle the average went down to about 29.9 km/h.
One thing I'm doing differently than last year is to avoid wearing my SiR wool jersey. Even though I'm a sucker for that blue jersey I remember baking on Cayuse last year, and this year might even be hotter. Back to a simple jersey for me.
I'll probably need to head out of the house by at least 2 AM this year in order to get there in time for breakfast and rolling out around the 5 AM start time. But it sounds like a few others might ride to the ride this year as well, so maybe I won't be doing that part alone.
See you on the road!
8/1/2009 update: I made it!
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Gearing Up For Ramrod 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Thanks for the update! Ramrod sounds like great fun this year.
Hey, I've been trying to get a hold of you, but my efforts haven't worked. Email me sometime? (in my profile)
safe miles
Nice to finally meet you yesterday. Where can I find out more about the RAMROD++ ride we talked about?
Ian: good to hear from ya, I'll be sending you a mail shortly!
Rob: nice to meet you as well! You can see all the gory details of SiR's "Ramrod++" 600k brevet here.
See you guys on the road!
WOW, impressive and inspirational. This was my first RAMROD and I have to say, although it was great, it put the super long rondo rides into better perspective for me. I'd like to try them someday, but it seems pretty damn challenging! Maybe that was just the heat talking though. Nice work on extending the RAMROD.
Post a Comment