Friday, February 6, 2015

Why am I not going crazy?

Actually, I guess you could say that I am crazy already, since I have agreed to pursue this somewhat ridiculous adventure.  But what I'm talking about right now is that tomorrow - yes, tomorrow - we attempt our second brevet - 300 kilometers in one sitting.  ("Sitting" will be the worst of it, I fear!) That's far and away the longest distance I have ever attempted, and yet I am not anxious or worried about it.  I have given it almost no thought, in fact.

This is due mostly to the fact that I have been pretty busy with another project, organizing the Conservancy's Tour of the Emerald Necklace.  That's one of those projects with multiple sub-projects and lots of volunteers and folks to coordinate, and it's just all-consuming right now. Plus we went up to Tahoe to help Dana with her move.  So I just have not had time to fixate on this ride tomorrow.

Also, Roger seems pretty casual about it.  It will be mostly flat - the route goes up and down the various Los Angeles river trails, and we never get over 700 feet, according to the route profile on RidewithGps.com.  But still - it's nearly 190 miles!  That will be a big increase for me over the last event.  Anyway, we are sleeping at home, and we'll get up about 4 am, and dress and head for the start (which is at 6:00 am) and some number of hours later we will be done.  I figure it's a full day, for sure.  And I won't be able to do anything else, which is actually kind of nice.  Can't do anything else, really - just ride my bike.  So I am looking forward to that part of it!

I'll let you know later how it went.  For now, I am going over the checklist again.  When we did the 200, I did not end up taking the peanut-butter sandwiches, and that was a mistake.  Somewhere there around 90 miles or so, Roger got all low-blood-sugar-y and started getting cranky.  We determined that we should not endure that again - either one of us! - and so I have already made some sammies to tuck in to our bike bag.  I will see to it that he consumes a portion every so often, whether he wants to or not!

He's planning to wear two pair of shorts, and I am taking a second pair to swap out about 70 or 80 miles into the ride.  I figure I will put the clean ones on, and put the others on over them.  That will give me extra padding for the final stretch of the ride.  I'll let you know how that works out. It was a great help on the last ride to have fresh shorts at the halfway point.  I did not use the second pair for padding then, but I figure it may be helpful this time.  So that's my plan.

By the way, we've done almost no riding this week. Since we were up at Tahoe helping Dana, and I was at the church retreat last weekend, I did not have a chance to ride, other than a short trip up Mt. Rose on Tuesday.  I felt pretty good on that, at least after adjusting for the altitude.  So my legs should be pretty fresh.  Or maybe they will be no good at all.  It's hard to know how it's going to go.  Having never done this before, what do I know?  All I can expect is to just keep those pedals turning, turning, turning . . .