Olympia 1

In part to help riders prepare for Paris-Brest-Paris, SIR scheduled two days of rides in Olympia at the end of July - a 300km brevet on Saturday, July 28 and a 200km brevet on Sunday, July 29. Proponents claim the benefit of two successive days of riding in a row before the 3-4 day PBP. Others suggest that a 500km weekend less than 4 weeks before PBP might be too much. I take the Deep Purple view of this: "Too much is not enough." So on Friday, I headed down to Olympia to add a 200km permanent to the weekend's festivities.

Frank Kaplan carpooled with me from Redmond and John Vincent joined us in Olympia. The route was RUSA Permanent #202 from Olympia to Brinnon to Olympia. Frank and John will be first-timers at PBP next month; I enjoyed their infectious enthusiasm for the upcoming event.

The course is good PBP preparation with similar amounts of climbing and types of climbing. Great weather, nice Hood Canal and mountain views, and good coffee shop stops enhanced the experience. Somehow, in all my previous stops at the Hoodsport Coffee Company, I had overlooked the fact that in addition to friendly folks and good coffee, they also have ICE CREAM (good ice cream, too). Today I remedied this oversight.

Good riding pace and relaxed stops and regroups brought us back to Olympia in just under 10 hours, followed by dinner with Peter Beeson and Eric Vigoren for dinner. Looking forward to the 300km tomorrow.

-- "You've got it bad, you're hopelessly addicted"