Jun 24-27 - in the rando world

We finished at 8:59 p.m. last night for a time of 74:59.  Catherine Shenk, Jason Pierce, Jeff Dewey and I finished together.

We experienced wet, wind, heat and cold.  The weather is ALWAYS a huge factor on these rides.

I rode the first 95 miles on the flat with a group then ended up on my own as the climbing started.  Getting that first 400k over through Susanville at 3:54 p.m., I was happy to stop.  However, mentally thinking of this one as 3x400k rides, I planned to leave again at 6pm, consistent with the first 400k.

That left me one hour to sleep, which I did.  I did not plan on riding through, however, and when I got to the next major Control, Adin, I grabbed another hour of sleep and left there at 1am.  Does this sound crazy ?

That second "day", Susanville back to Susanville, was a long one.  I found out later that Catherine Shenk and Jason Pierce (didn't know him before) left Adin at 1:30 a.m.  They'd had a long, long, sleep, having ridden from the beginning to Adin the day before.  They were running almost three hours ahead of me that first day - typical of my first days :).

All that day I ran 1/2 hour ahead of Catherine and Jason.  We talked at one Control, agreeing to ride together the third day to beat the expected wind together.  I waited for them when I got to the last Control before the return to Susanville (Grasshopper), and we came into Susanville together.  They'd had a shorter day than me, however, since they'd started at Adin.  They were keen on continuing to Taylorsville, and rode on.  I said that I needed to give my eyes a break, and got an hour sleep.

I got to Taylorsville while they were sleeping, again having ridden about the same pace.  I got another 1/2 hour sleep at that point while they had breakfast and we set out together (it was dawn at that point) and finished up together, picking up Jeff along the way who had ridden a lot by himself, like me, and running the same pace.

There's a lot more to tell ... but that will come later.  My strategy for this one, 3x400k rides, seemed to make sense with the way that things were setup.  Other rides might not have a logical 400k place to stop.

I rode my bike to the motel, crashed until 6:30 a.m., checked the website and saw that Patrick had come in, scrambled down there with the car to find that Bill had also just come in.  They'd already organized the drop bags, theirs and mine, figuring quite rightly that I'd take care of them -- I'd left mine there the night before, not really trusting myself to drive back-and-forth even four miles :).

Back at the motel (this room is great !), I just finished breakfast, caught up with a few emails, talked to Sandy who was downtown Toronto at that point, found out that Jeffrey will be arriving on Sunday (no surprise) and am dashing off this blog.

There's more to tell -- panic attacks, duct tape, more and more.

The celebratory lunch is at noon today downtown Davis.  I've got to pack my bike, obviously, and get bags organized for my flight home.  I've already used web check-in ... yikes ...

Onward !