2004 STP trip report
SUMMARY
Left Seattle July 17 6AM
Arrived Winlock July 17 4PM
Left Winlock July 18 6:15 AM
Arrived Portland, OR July 18 2PM
Mileage: 205
On-bike average speed first half: 17.7mph
On-bike average speed second half: 15.7mph
Stops: Kent, Spanaway, Yelm, Tenino, Centralia, Winlock, Vader,
Lexington, Longview, St. Helens (OR), Portland City limits. Detailed
route map here: http://www.cascade.org/EandR/stp/pdf/stp_2004_routemap.PDF
Weather: Temps from lower 60s to lower 90s. Saturday: morning sun,
afternoon clouds. Sunday: morning clouds, afternoon sun. Headwinds
Sunday morning. A graph showing elevation and temperature may be found
here: http://www.jimcarson.com/images/stp_2004.jpg
Ride details:
I did the two-day version of the STP this year. Carol and Nona, two
women from my office, invited me to join them. Carol is a bike racer.
Nona's mostly a runner -- she was even in the New York marathon this
spring -- and is very athletic. I was flattered that they asked me to
join them, but felt insecure about it too. Sort of like a junior high
school thing, where, maybe I get invited to have lunch at the sosh
kids' table, but then feel awkward about it. I had never ridden with
them before -- they've done a couple of long rides, including last
year's STP, together.
Nona said that I shouldn't worry about being slower than her -- that
she had just had three weeks of bronchitis (true) and hadn't been
riding at all (true) for at least two months.
Friends, this is called a sucker punch. Carol and Nona were incredibly
fast. They can lead a paceline at 22 mph and not think much about it.
They seemed to think I could just catch their wheel, and I'd be going
22 mph too. Yes, maybe for an hour's ride, I might be able to. But
when you're talking about riding a couple hundred miles, that pace for
me is unsustainable. I can paceline at 19 - 20, and I can ride alone
at 17 or so for that distance. But not 22-24, which is more where
these ladies were.
We met at the Winlock luggage truck at about 5:40 AM. I was aiming for
5:30, but there was an incredible traffic jam to get into the parking
lot. By the time we were completely collected and out of the chute, it
was 5:55 AM.
We sped off and were keeping together initially without too much
difficulty. We stopped at Kent (mile 24), and then took off again. We
were pretty much together until the Puyallup Hill (mile 42). Carol and
Nona waited for me to make it to the top, and then they took off to
Spanaway (mile 55). They said when I pulled in at about 9:15 AM that
they had not been waiting long.
After Spanaway, it was clear that I was not going to even try to keep
up with Carol and Nona. I was pretty much riding on my own. Carol took
a number of small breaks along the way, so sometimes I'd catch up to
them, we'd meet briefly, and then they'd take off again.
I prefer pacelining with people I know. One of the nicest aspects of
STP last year, or Flying Wheels this year, was riding with my husband.
I know how he rides pretty well at this point, and so when either
pulling or being pulled, I feel like we're a pretty good team.
However, I also don't mind working with others – actually, it's one of
the ways that STP is a more social ride than any other event I've
participated in. The sheer number of riders – they sold out with 8000
this year – means that you can usually find an amenable paceline.
My guidelines:
· I ask before I join
· If the line moves too fast for me to be able to take a turn, I let
people know; a lot of people don't like freeloaders, and who can blame
them?
· If I do freeload, I always thank the line before either I am dropped
(and let them know I'm dropping) or just before either I or the rest
of the line takes a rest stop
· I don't ride with people who don't signal, aren't steady, or are
otherwise unpredictable – there are enough pacelines out there, it's
not worth the risk
I arrived at the mid-point in Centralia at 2:00, at my fastest two-day
pace ever of 17.7 mph, and eight hours of total ride time. This is
mostly because I was trying to keep up with Carol and Nona for the
beginning part of the ride. Carol and Nona had already been at
Centralia for a while, so I told them to take off and I'd meet them in
Winlock, in 20 miles.
I felt like I needed to eat something more substantial at this point.
I bought a bbq sandwich with chips from a food vendor, and ate that
along with the usual free creamsicles that they hand out.
I was riding out of Chehalis (mile 111 or so), on this ugly frontage
road along the freeway, perhaps the ugliest portion of the ride, when
I found myself riding slower, and slower. It seemed to be as much
effort to ride at 12 as it did 17 just a while before. And then
slower... pushing it to ride 10 mph...and then I just sat in the grass
in front of some farm/industrial equipment sales lot. I thought,
"maybe if I have some water, I'll feel better", so I drank half a
water bottle. This cleared enough cobwebs from my brain that I
realized, "Oh! I've bonked!" I sat there a little longer, and then I
thought, "Oh! I have gu in my bag! I could have that!" I sucked down
the sports gel along with the rest of that water bottle, got back on
the bike, my brain cleared, and took off at 17 just like nothing
happened.
The second nastiest hill of the ride is then at Napavine, which the gu
helped me ascend. I was starting to flag again, though, at the top, so
I bought 50 cents worth of gatorade off of two enterprising boys of
about age 8, and had a schlook.
While riding the upsy-downsy (mostly downsy, thank goodness) of the
Napavine rollers, I suddenly had a wave of nausea, and upchucked the
bbq sandwich, stained red with gatorade, right from the handlebars of
the bike on to the shoulder. (ew!) Oddly, I hardly even broke my
cadence, it was so sudden. Something like this has never happened to
me. Good thing I wasn't in a paceline, eh?
So I don't know what was going on with my digestive system at this
point. If the bbq beef had been sitting out too long maybe it's just
as well it came up then rather than for me to be stricken with food
poisoning all night long. Or maybe it was the wrong food along with
just the heat (it was now about 90 degrees and muggy) and exhaustion
of the ride.
Considering the previous bonk issue, I was right at Centralia to think
I needed to eat; my problem probably was that I made the wrong choice.
I pulled in to Winlock, at mile 120, home of the world's largest egg,
at about 4:00. With the bonk, it took me quite a while to do those
final twenty miles. I pitched my tent on the elementary school
baseball field where Nona and Carol had already set up. I took a cold
shower -- not by choice -- all the hot was gone – but the cold was ok,
as it was probably in the mid-90s out there. Then we walked to dinner.
My stomach was not quite settled, and I picked at my food. My friends
nagged me, and I forced down more plain noodles.
Then I had a massage -- two therapist had set up a center at the
adjacent preschool. Ahh. Really, the highlight of the day.
I tried to get to sleep at 8:00, but it took a while to cool down, so
I mostly read and fell asleep finally at 9:00 PM. Up at 4:30 (ulp) and
packed up. We had the Legion Hall pancake breakfast and hit the road
at 6:00 AM.
On our ride the next morning, just at Vader, Nona had a pinch flat.
Lucky that it happened right there at the mini-stop, as her tires are
impossible to get on and off. Even the professional shop guy at the
tent broke two tire levers and ruined a tube trying to get the tire on
and off. I have a photo of Carol and me from this stop, which I will
put up on a website eventually.
I was in one of those improvised pacelines after Vader when I
mentioned to the person in front about how I've done meditation at
Cloud Mountain Retreat Center (which lies just off of the ride course
between Vader and Castle Rock), when the guy behind says, "yeah,
there's this lady who has this bicycling meditation website". I said
that I was the author. He was very enthusiastic, and I was jazzed to
have run into a fan. This was probably the highlight of Day 2 for me.
A bit further down the road, one of the people behind me in the
paceline said that my rear wheel looked a bit wobbly. Since the
Lexington stop was just ahead, I pulled up directly into the repair
tent. I had broken a spoke, and it needed to be replaced and the wheel
re-trued.
Carol and Nona took off shortly thereafter. I was quite a bit slower,
and now I had a bike that needed fixing. About 15 minutes after they
left, I picked up my bike with its retrued wheel and hit the road
again.
Then it was headwinds, headwinds, headwinds all the way to St. Helens.
I couldn't find the right paceline, and I was dyin', man. It's odd:
the first STP I did, I found that section to be hellacious. When I did
it as a one-day two years later, with tailwinds, it was an eye-blink
between the Bridge and St. Helens. I'm not sure how much it really is
wind speed, and how much of it is just mental state.
I couldn't face the sandwiches they had at St. Helens (mile 178), but
for some reason, the popcorn was very appealing. Salt, probably. I
finished the rest of the Napavine gatorade those boys sold me the day
before, and it actually tasted good. I ate two bags of popcorn, as
well as five watermelon slices and two bananas. According to the
paper, the 8000 riders of the STP end up consuming 11,500 bananas over
those two days. I certainly did my bit in the banana department.
The official Scappose mini-stop was not far enough away from St.
Helens for me to stop there. Instead, I had another banana, a bottle
of water, and more gu just before the Welcome to Portland sign at mile
195.
This time I was mentally prepared for the evil little turn off Yeon
onto Wardway, in Portland, the nastiest little piece of hill you'd
ever want to see at the end of a long day on a bike. The gu helped. I
didn't zip up it, but it wasn't the huge imposition on my life that it
was last year.
Then it was across the Steel Bridge, up to Multnomah, and then the
FINISH! Yea! It was 2:00 PM when I finally hauled it over the line.
There was no one to greet me, and after being abandoned by Nona and
Carol (sniff sniff), and my husband not even available on the phone, I
was feeling a bit let down. Then our mutual friend and co-worker,
Steve (who did a one-day this year) spotted me. He gave me a hug,
despite my grotty condition, and invited me to the beer corral, which
really lifted my spirits. So I took a shower (the fabulous thing about
STP's skewed male/female ratio is that the men wait in the world's
longest bathroom line, while us women get to waltz immediately into
the hot showers), got a chicken fajita wrap, and met with Carol and
Steve for beer. Nona had already gone home. So I had a couple of
celebratory beers with Carol and Steve.
The bus trip home was a little agonizing, as STP adds to the usual
weekend traffic, and it takes four hours to get home via the freeway.
But we finally pulled in to Seattle at about 8:00 PM.
Did you really read this to the end? Wow! Thanks for letting me share.
Warm Regards,
Claire Petersky
Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm