Something Different

I'm not known for speed. In 2002, some SIR riders and visiting riders got together to carpool in a small caravan from Seattle to the Rocky Mountain 1200 in British Columbia. I warned the other driver that some regrouping might be necessary because, as I put it, "I drive kinda slowly." Greg Cox heard this and exclaimed, "Geez, don't tell me you drive that way too!" Not much has changed in the years since.

Fresh off my dawdling ride of the Last Chance 1200, yet oddly emboldened by how good I felt on and after the ride, I suggested to my fast friends Bob Brudvik and Robin Pieper that we go out this weekend and ride a 200km permanent for speed. We picked the Three Rivers Cruise, a relatively flat (3000ft according to my Garmin), but still scenic, ride and we lucked into a beautiful day.

We rode three versions of a fast paceline throughout the ride: Bob pulling Robin pulling me, Robin pulling Bob pulling me, and Robin and Bob side by side pulling me. To be fair, I think I may have been in front for a kilometer, early in the ride. So call me the Sandy Pittman of the ride, short-roped to the finish. They pulled when I could hang on and they slowed when I drifted off the back. Very generous.

And it worked. We finished in 7:30. (Elapsed time was actually 7:25, but we started 5 minutes past our scheduled start time. Knocked 1:05 off my previous best 200km time. We averaged 30km/hr for the 6:40 that we were on the bike. Absolutely outrageous. It may take me longer to recover from today's ride than from the Last Chance 1200km.

As a footnote, today's ride pushed my total randonneur event distance for the year to 11,604km, another personal record (I rode 11,541km in 2007). What a fun year it's been!

The riders in Marblemount:

The bikes in Day Creek. Guess whose bike has the most stuff on it?

Speed graph and map from Garmin.