humbling

so yesterday moominmolly and i finally did the 200k ride that was postponed saturday on account of weather.


we had the option of attempting it saturday anyway, if we'd wanted. in 30 degree weather and sleet. i'm glad we didn't; there is no chance we would have finished. we might have died. (i'd like to think we would have been smart enough to quit before it got to that point. after all, the whole route was in towns, more or less. but still.)

as it was, we finished it in 13:12, which is within the time limit to qualify (13:30). because of weirdnesses with verifying start and end times in the absence of the ride organizers-- they set up a system where we got date/time stamps from atm machines at the start and end and various points along the way-- our actual time was closer to 13:00 (thirteen hours). the actual paris-brest-paris race is 90 hours for 1200 kilometers, so 13 hours for 200k would have earned us a whole two hours of sleep. whee.

there's an obvious upward/downward spiral where being in better shape lets you make better time which gives you the chance to sleep more, etc. unless you're genuinely racing, i suppose; but i think just finishing the course in the allotted time will be plenty for me, thanks. anyway i figure there must be a lower cutoff, below which you're not in good enough shape to give yourself time to sleep enough to make up for the lousy shape you're in. i wonder where that point is.

"roses are red" ran through my head for the entire day, except for a brief period when it was replaced by a different aqua song (i don't remember which one). molly's earworms had more variety.

anyway, it was, um, really tiring. i'm completely exhausted now, late the next day. at least the stabbing pain in my legs that i fell asleep to had abated by the morning. now i'm just creaky. and that was the "kinder, gentler" course the brevet organizers adopted since we're having to do the qualifying rides so early in the season this year. meaning the actual p-b-p will be harder. and we need to be faster. and the 300k is next weekend.

i adapt to metabolic changes smoothly, so i was cramming my face with reeses cups at every opportunity starting early in the morning, until very late in the day i started to feel a little stomach upset. molly didn't start quite as soon (and couldn't eat the reeses cups), so we discovered the hard way that a big part of it is about fuel. fail to eat at a rest stop, and a few miles later you can't move anymore. very dramatic. this also kills your time.

so there are a few easy improvements we can make. (other than getting our bikes overhauled, which they are in the shop for right now. i'd like to be able to use my full range of gears; she'd like to be able to change gears without having to lean her full body weight on the shifter. and we could probably both use a lot more grease everywhere.) we're going to look into goo or gu or whatever it's called, trendy athletic food that's high calorie and easy to consume while still riding. (i made a batch of my beef jerky that we'd both found so satisfying back when we were taking long weekend rides around chicago. but, um, it's not high enough in calories, and takes too much chewing.) we'll probably both get camelbaks-- reaching down for a water bottle is too much wasted effort. do i sound crazy? it sounds crazy to me, but it's true.

and... lots of training. lots of biking this summer. wow.