Boy, I seem to be very lazy lately. I still haven’t written up my STP ride and it’s been almost 2 weeks!!
So, this year, Steve and Denise convinced me to do the STP in one day. I, of course, am up for reasonable challenges.
Our official goal was to start at 4AM and finish by 8PM. I figured this was doable, though somewhat optimistic because you have to average a bit better than 12.6 mph including rest breaks. Seems reasonable enough.
The weather was being reported as very warm, up to 90 degrees, but with a tail-wind. I was not looking forward to riding with it that hot after my experience of 2 weeks ago, but at least I knew that dumping water on my head was a good idea!
I woke up at 2:30 AM, Saturday, July 12th. I’d packed the night before and was mostly ready. It was hard moving and I ended up staying up much too late unfortunately. Next thing I knew, Steve and Denise were at my door and I was still running around in my underwear!! They were more than 5 minutes early!!
I hurridly finished getting ready: slapped my sunscreen on, got dressed and gathered my stuff together. Miracle of miracles, I didn’t forget anything! Yay! We drove down to the starting line. Steve and Denise’s friend Brian was kind enough to drive. How they get him to get up well before the crack of dawn is beyond me! I figure they must have some good dirt on him that he doesn’t want revealed!
We got to the start line, Husky Stadium around 3:30 AM. There were a few people already arriving and a surprising number of folks who actually slept at the starting line! After unloading bikes, getting set up and hitting the port-a-potties, we were off right at 4AM.
It was cool and dark. We had to use lights to see the road. I almost fell over twice in the first couple of miles since we were following Dan Henry’s that were difficult to see in the dark. The first couple of miles you zig-zag through Seattle streets before getting down to business and riding south along Lake Washington.
About a half-hour into the ride, I was following close behind Steve and Denise enjoying the cool morning air when BAM!! I hit a pothole. Hard. Did I mention hard? I hit hard enough that one of my water bottles flew from it’s cage! I stopped to get the bottle and realized that not only did my water bottle pop off, but my rear tire was flat!!
Grumbling, I pulled off to the side of the road. By dumb luck we were at a nice spot to change a tire: a small park. I set about fixing the flat. That was when I discovered that I’d left the one of my pockets of my bike bag unzipped. My phone was gone!! Steve walked back to where the pothole was and found my phone: in pieces. Fortunately, when we put it back together, it worked!
I discovered that I’m really slow fixing flats! Since I got my Ultra-Gatorskins tires, I’ve had very few flats, so I’m really out of practice. It took me 15 minutes to fix it. In the meantime Steve spoke with a ride official and they spray-painted the pothole so nobody else would run into it. I got all packed up and was wheeling the bike to the road when, guess what, I discovered that my front tire was flat too!!
So I had to fix that. My prior practice didn’t help me much. It took me another 15 minutes! I was stressing about the fact that both of my spare inner-tubes were gone and we’d only traveled 6 or 7 miles! The clock went from 4:45 to 5:00AM as I worked on fixing my front tire. The bike traffic when from almost non-existent to quite heavy. By the time we were on the road again, there were a lot of bikers on the road. This would prove costly.
So instead of whisking along by ourselves getting passed only by faster riders, we were in the middle of the morning pack of people. Our speed was slow!
We rode to the first stop: REI. According to Denise, this is an “unofficial” stop. But it is probably the best stop on the ride. They had a Vegas/Elvis theme going on. It was fun. We were just slightly ahead of the crowds. When Steve and I went to the port-o-potties, there were about 4 - 6 people in line. 5 minutes later, there were double that in line! I’d bet that by the time Denise got to go, there were 3 times what we saw initially.
I grabbed some food and went to buy some inner-tubes. The REI repair guy gave me one for free! Very cool. I would have preferred 2 tubes, but I wasn’t going to ask for a free 2nd one.
We were there probably 15-20 minutes. Of course, I’d planned on keeping a more detailed log of what we did where and when but my pen had gotten lost in the bottom of my bag, so I had nothing to write with.
We rode on. Many of the miles are a haze. It was nice in the morning. It kept getting hotter and hotter though. I drank lots of water. So much that I had to stop every 10 miles or so! At the REI stop, we were there long enough that I really felt like I wanted to go again but the lines were so long, that I didn’t. That was a bit of a mistake.
10 or 15 minutes after leaving the REI site, I really wanted to go, but I kept quiet and tried to suck it up. We were really behind schedule now because not only did we lose a 1/2 hour fixing flats, but the REI stop took much longer than ideal.
Eventually I started to really suffer. We rode on though and I managed to make it to our next stop in Puyallup. We stopped at a small coffee stand where Steve got an iced mocha (?? I didn’t pay that much attention). I used the bathroom. Twice as it turned out.
The big hill in Puyallup wasn’t that big, just longish. I’ve climbed worse.
We rode and rode. At some point in the later morning I got stung in the mouth by a bee or wasp! Yes. Inside my mouth on my upper lip. Nice. I was thinking that this ride is not going so well. We had to stop and I felt around for a stinger. It either came out or was never there in the first place. I took a Claritin antihistamine to help the swelling. I think it did help as it didn’t swell up too badly. It was tender for the rest of the ride.
We rode on. It was getting hot! Fortunately, we had the air to cool us as we rode. At one point, we came to some fresh chip seal road. It was black and hot! You could feel the head radiating upwards. We rode by some poor guy who’d crashed on this stuff. I felt bad for him. It would be like crashing on a cheese grater. Yuk.
Now we were in the heat of the day. There was nary a cloud in sight. Every stop I would dump lots of water on my head and soak my clothes. I had to be careful not to get my camera wet! Despite having my camera, I took a handful of very uninteresting photos. I was too busy trying to keep pedaling in the heat!
The miles and time rolled on. 100. 120. 140. I was in uncharted territory. Overall, I was feeling OK. My wrists and shoulders were doing OK. My butt was fine. The heat was my main enemy. I just haven’t trained enough in the heat. I started to fall behind a bit with my water. Certainly I didn’t do that well with nutrition. I seem to be able to tolerate Perpetuem for about 6 - 8 hours and them my stomach doesn’t like it so much. That left me with not a lot to eat. Eventually, I bought some corn chips and a Baby Ruth, which went down pretty well!
I was really happy when we crossed into Oregon, though we still had over 40 miles to go! It was in the 4PM timeframe. Without my pen and paper, I didn’t keep an exact time-hack.
I’d been watching the clock for most of the ride. We were averaging barely better than 10 or 11 miles per hour through the first half of the ride. Fortunately, we had a tailwind which helped us. We made up a little time on the 2nd half, but even then we were not going anywhere near fast enough to make it by 8PM!
Along the way, Denise revealed that their real goal was to finish before 9PM, which is the official end time of the ride. Steve and Denise have ridden the 1-day STP 4 times prior and something always conspired to prevent them from finishing in 1 day!
By the time we crossed into Oregon, I figured that we had a slim chance of making it by 9PM. The heat just melted us!! Even at 4PM, the heat was intense! Our rest stops were too long. We spent a lot of time watering up and puttering around. Some of it was a comedy. Steve would go to the bathroom and then come back. Then I would go. Then when I got back, he’d wander off to get some food. Then I’d wander off to get water. Then he’d wander off to get some water and I’d go to get some food. Then I’d need to go the bathroom again, so Steve would wander off to look at stuff. By the time he’d get back, I’d already have drunk enough to need to refill my water bottle and spend a minute drenching myself with water! And so on. A 10 minute break would turn into 20 minute break in the blink of an eye.
On the other hand, we needed the rest because it was so hot!! The whole day I was taking tons of Enduralyte caps. 4 at time. I think it helped. I do think I was still running low on salt because the corn chips were very tasty!!
Eventually we were at St. Helens, just 25 miles to go! Well it was more like 28 miles, but who’s counting! I remember seeing a couple of bank thermometers. One read 90. The other 89. This was at 6PM or even a bit later! And the most distressing thing is that we things felt cooler! By St Helens, I was really dragging badly. My calfs were constantly on the edge of cramping and I was just feeling weak and a bit shaky. Nothing like the deathmarch from 2 weeks ago, but I was feeling like I was on the way!
We ate at McDonald’s. A small burger and lots of fries with some water. I was hungry. I wished we could have stayed there longer! I loaded up on ice and water in my water bottles. The cold water was very welcome.
After McDonald’s, I felt better. The cold air of the restaurant and a real sit-down time plus some high-calorie food did wonders. I also think the fact that we were starting to ride in shadows helped a lot. The temps were definitely cooler, though still quite warm.
Now I guess Steve wasn’t feeling so hot. We sort of dragged in this section. We passed the point of no-return on finishing before 9PM. I estimated about 9:45 which turned out to be almost exactly correct.
All along the way at this point, we rode by people who were sagging themselves out. Dozens of people were parked by the side of the road or were loading up their bikes on cars. We saw dozens more cars with bikes mounted on top heading into Portland.
An hour from from the finish-line I was actually feeling far better than I’d felt for probably 10 or more hours. Despite being at mile 190-ish, I was feeling good and strong. Peppy even. Our spirits improved markedly as the clock ticked by. We knew we weren’t going to make it by 9, so we just relaxed and enjoyed the cooler temperatures.
It was getting dark enough that I stoped and changed to my clear lenses and put my headlight on my bike. I rode for a few minutes before discovering that my headlight was almost falling off! The impact in the morning had just about sheared the lamp from the plastic clip used to mount to my bike!!
Fortunately, it didn’t get really dark till we were nearly at the finish line and then we had a good number street lamps to see by.
I was very glad to finally finish! There was a small group of people lining the finish cheering and clapping, which was cool. I got my 1-Day STP patch, thanks to the volunteers who stayed after the official end time!
Stacy was there to meet me. We chatted for a few minutes and then went our seperate ways. I loaded my bike up into my Civic, a bit of a challenging affair and we headed to the Paramount hotel, where we’ve stayed a number of times.
I took a shower and washed all the sweat and grime off. I discovered that I should have been a bit better about applying sunscreen. My arms were slightly sunburned. Fortunately, my face didn’t get sunburned.
After showering and changing, we headed across the street to Stacy’s favorite Portland wine bar. Of course, the name escapes me! It’s right across from the Paramount. You can’t miss it.
We had a cheese appetizer plate and a meat appetizer plate and I ordered a beer and a burger. The burger took a really long time to show up. I fell asleep sitting on my chair a few times. When the burger arrived, it was very red/pink in the center! So we sent it back. Eventually, it came back again in much the same condition! Oh well. I just ate it.
After dinner, we went back to the room and I crashed. Of course, it was 1AM or later, so I’d been up for nearly 23 hours straight!
The next day I woke up around 11AM. I was still rather sore. Not my butt so much as my quads and calf muscles! We left the Paramount around noon. We drove around for a short bit looking for a breakfast place but I was very hungry and didn’t feel like screwing around any longer so we headed south to Bridgeport Mall in Lake Oswego, OR (maybe 15 miles south of Portland). We missed the exit so had to drive to the next one and turn around. As we were getting off the exit, I saw the Fudrucker’s sign!
We sat down for lunch around 12:45. I’d forgotten how good their burgers were! They’re very tasty and they have the best buns too! Freshly baked and freshly ground meat! You can’t go wrong. Highly recommended!
After lunch we wandered over to Old Navy to shop. I didn’t see anything that inspired me. We then headed over to Bridgeport for some real shopping. Our first stop was Z-Gallerie. I sat and slept on a comfy love seat while Stacy shopped. I needed the rest!
When we walked around outside, I couldn’t believe how hot it was! But it was only 90 degrees! It was crazy hot. I couldn’t believe that I was riding around in that heat the day before!
We went to see the 5:30 showing of Wall-E. It was a good movie. Very entertaining.
After the movie, we went to the Blue Tangerine for dinner. It’s a Greek-style place. I had a tasty beef shishkabob (sp?) and rice and a beer. Yum.
It was 9PM, closing time, when we finally headed home. We stopped by a gas station before hitting the highway. Gas is cheaper in Oregon than in Washington by somewhere around 10 cents per gallon. And that’s with full-serve only. So you can imagine how high gas taxes must be to be more expensive. I remember the day when you always filled up in Washington so you wouldn’t have the pay the usurious Oregon cost. No longer.
The drive home was uneventful. Traffic was light so we made it back in just over 3 - 1/2 hours, which is amazing considering that I drove the speed limit for nearly the whole drive!