200km Brevet, Part 1 of 2

After much anticipation, I did my first 200km brevet on Saturday. At 127 miles, from Malibu to Carpinteria and back, it was the most I had ridden in one day. Previously it was something like 70 or 80 miles. I spent a good deal of time the weeks before the ride researching recommendations on gear lists and nutrition (this fantastic post by a fellow Bike Pirate was extremely helpful). I also used the ride as an excuse to pig-out… err… carb load all last week.

The night before the ride, I made sure all my gear was together and that everything on Grant, my trusty Bridgestone RB-2, was in working order. Bronwyn and I also went out for a nice (and carb filled!) Italian dinner at Il Capriccio, though good conversation over a tasty bottle of chianti lead to us staying a bit longer than we probably should have and I ended up going to sleep around midnight with the alarm clock set for 5:15am so that we could leave the apartment at 6am and be in Malibu before the 7am start.

The Ride

The morning of the ride, I managed to wake up and shower just fine. I cooked up a hearty breakfast of bacon (the gift of bacon truly is the gift that just keeps giving), eggs, and a couple slices of banana bread that I had baked earlier in the week. This made for kind of a leisurely pace and our 6am departure time was starting to look more like 6:15am. That wasn’t all that worrying as I was getting my eat on, however things started to turn panicky when thetrunk rack for Bronwyn’s car had a malfunction. I spent some time trying to fix it before deciding it was a lost cause. Instead, we dropped the rear seats in Bronwyn’s Civic and managed to slide the entire bike into the trunk. Now fairly late, we rushed off to Malibu, arriving at 7:30am. I was the absolute last person to check in, rolling out at 7:45am.

Once in the saddle, the hectic morning was pretty quickly forgotten as I pedaled along the PCH with some absolutely stellar weather. It was sunny and clear with dazzling blue skies and morning temperatures in the high 50’s that would eventually get up in to the 70’s by the afternoon. I spent the first leg of the trip, 37 miles to the first control, riding solo up and down the hills of Malibu maintaining around a 15mph average. Eventually someone on his morning ride passed me going an average of 17mph and I started following him for about an hour before he turned around. The step up in speed really wasn’t that difficult once I got into it, but I found it harder to maintain that rate when there wasn’t someone off of whom I could pace myself.

At the first checkpoint in Port Hueneme I met up with John Vu (his account of the ride is here) who had also gotten a late start (I saw his name on the sign-in sheet just above mine). The control had brownies and water which I happily scarfed down and after a quick break, we headed out together with another rider, Mike from Pasadena who had gotten an early blow out and so was lagging behind from the rest of the more punctual riders.

Now in a group, we were able to take turns pulling and drafting so it definitely helped, especially since there was a slight headwind. The day was warming up and the terrain was pretty flat at this point so it was a rather leisurely ride, though we maintained a 15mph pace. However, as we got around the 60 mile point I was starting to feel some soreness in the saddle regions as well as in the shoulders and neck.

We reached the second control and the turnaround point at a park in Carpinteria just after noon and they had wraps, sodas, chips, trail mix, and cupcakes available. We enjoyed a nice lunch break on the grass, while the folks at the control commented on John and my “true randonneur”-ness in the form of our old lugged-steel bikes and wool jerseys. As John noted, it was interesting to see that our bike styles were actually the minority as most of the riders out seemed to opt for their “fast” bikes a la fancy titanium and carbon fiber.

After lunch, we headed back to the Port Hueneme control and for this part of the ride we flew. We had a nice tailwind and I think a lot of the ride was very slightly downhill so we made fantastic time and felt pretty good at the third stop with 30 some miles to go.

A short break there and we were off. Interestingly, the soreness that I had felt earlier disappeared for the most part during this leg. Maybe it was me getting used to my bike shorts (this was the first real ride I’d done in them), or maybe it was just my body starting to ignore the aches, but I amazingly felt pretty good as we continued along the PCH.

John apparently didn’t have as much luck. Things slowed down unexpectedly as he hit the wall shortly after the century mark. He both quickly tired and started cramping, which he attributes to not drinking enough water. Facing the Malibu hills again probably didn’t help either.

I hung back with John as Mike took off. We managed to eventually make it to the end, only needing to stop for the occasional stretch break. I think we came in sometime around 6:30pm or 7pm so it was in all around an 11-hour ride. John and his girlfriend Emily, who was waiting at the finish line with a cup of warm tea ready for John, were kind enough to offer me a ride back to L.A.

In the next post, I’ll write about what did and didn’t work.

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