It’s 2:50 A.M. and my alarm is beeping insistently. It’s an ungodly hour to be awakened, but a bit of pre-ride trepidation has made my sleep light. With a limited degree of excitement I am setting out to ride the third in the Northwest Brevet series sponsored by the Seattle International Randonneurs. Work commitments have recently changed, allowing me to do the ride, but I haven’t done much training since the 300k approximately a month ago. That ride had turned into a sort of "night of the riding dead" for me and I am a little worried about adding to the challenge. Still, I the alarm is off and I’m out of bed.
Jan arrives at my house just as I bring my bike out to my car, and together we embark on an uneventful trip to Arlington where the ride begins at the Arlington Motor Inn. Thirty-two dedicated riders set off at 5:00 A.M. under dark, cloudy skies. Showers are predicted.
Quickly, the lead group forms. Jan takes over Kendall’s usual spot at the front of the early pace, joined by Andy, Paul (providing a primo draft on his mountain bike), Ken, Steve, and myself. I’ve made a personal vow not to be sucked into going too hard too early, but I feel comfortable as we begin rotating leads. My resolve is tested when we reach a long but gentle incline and Steve jumps ahead. Jan jokingly intones that Steve will pay a price for his early attack. But I’m happy when the group re-forms and the pace hasn’t crept up beyond earlier levels. Steve does drop back not long after this time. We don’t see him again until later.
On the ride in, Jan had made it very clear that it always rains on the North Cascades Highway. When we make the turn onto the highway, he is soon proven right. Sprinkles begin as we make our way to the first control and turn-around point past Marblemount. We reach the control having made good time and take a bit of a break. I drink a can of Ensure plus, a new type of ride-food for me, but one that seems to go down well, at least in the current cool conditions. I’m making conscious efforts to eat more calories, earlier in the ride, with the goal of preventing the nausea that made the 300k and its aftermath very unpleasant.
As we ride back West, we see the other riders in groups and singly. Everyone waves and looks good at this point. There is almost no other traffic on the road as it is still rather early on a Saturday morning and the road is closed for winter at a point beyond our turn-around. The clouds obscure the more grandiose scenery at altitude, but the trees and river are beautiful in their own right.
Several of us have commented that moving toward the mountains had brought cooler air temperatures, but chilliness is really starting to creep in as the earlier showers have returned and intensified. It’s a cold steady rain and although we all have fenders of some sort, Jan’s mud-flap got torn off at some previous time and Paul’s MTB fender does nothing to limit the water flying back at drafting riders. I seem to have one or the other of those wheels a good share of the time, and before long my jacket is covered with road grit. My strategy is to ride just slightly to the side and take the brunt of the spray on my shoulders rather than my face, but I also ingest my daily mineral requirements. It certainly isn’t like last weekend when I rode a perfectly sunny 60 miler with Andy, Paul, and Kent, but it is an awful lot like the training rides we rode back in January and February.
The first century has passed in a little less than five and a half hours. I’m wet to the skin but not feeling completely chilled as of yet. Unfortunately, when we stop in Sedro Woolley and hang out in the AM/PM all the cold blood from my extremities seems to rush to my core and I’m soon shaking and my teeth are chattering. Ken shares some hot cocoa but it doesn’t seem to have much of an effect. I’m longing to get back on the bike simply to get moving again. My past experience is that I’ll warm up much more quickly that way than by standing still, even in a warm store. Jan jokes about heading South to Arlington rather than continuing with the ride and it’s hard to tell if he’s serious. Eventually we set off again, and it’s immediately apparent that the rain has slacked off a bit. Nonetheless, I’m shaking and am evidently matching the natural resonance of my bike frame, creating a speed wobble that is controllable but kind of humorous as I wobble through the raindrops. Experience from those training rides holds true again as a decent pace on the bike does more to warm me up than the cocoa or warm store. I still feel cold but I have on all the clothes I brought with me and I feel strong. The place I want to be is on the bike and making progress, and that is where I am.
We soon find that we made the right choice by taking Jan’s suggested route as a joke. Before fifteen miles have passed, the rain has ended and we get our first glimpses of blue sky. We pass through the "blink and you’ll miss it" town of Deming and decide that we like it there. It’s obvious that this town care’s enough to keep its streets dry for bicyclists. We appreciate the effort.
The weather has gotten better but unfortunately one of our paceline is suffering. Andy has had knee problems and they are flaring up again. He decides to call a relative who lives in the area and get a ride back to Arlington. Discretion is the better part of valor, and Andy makes the better decision.
Miles pass and we reach the border town of Sumas. We also turn back South into the prevailing wind and begin a long segment of switching between headwinds where we ride straight paceline and sidewinds where we ride varying echelons – narrow ones when the traffic and shoulder were limiting, and wide ones on the quiet roads. We are a group of four keeping a good pace and the miles roll under our wheels. Ken is the keeper of the route sheet and the head navigator, Jan is taking long pulls and Paul is doing likewise. I’m trying to hold up my part without burying myself or escalating things into a contest. Except for a two-mile stretch of nasty broken concrete on Sunrise road, the riding is on pleasant flat roads. Before long we’ve worked our way Southwest to Birch Bay and a wonderful control at a park on the Strait of Georgia. I have no more Ensure left and none of the sweets and snacks at the control appeal to my slightly balky stomach. I eat what sounds best (cheese flavored crackers) and hope to get enough calories to avoid bonking later. Still -- sunshine, clouds, wind on the water, a sheltered spot with a propane heater, and a nice long rest off the bike do us all some good. 173 miles are done, less than a century to go.
After our rest, Jan is eager to pick up the pace and I still feel pretty strong, so we push ahead of Paul and Ken. Jan takes on both the navigation and long-pull duties, and I do my best to maintain pace and provide company. Things go well until we reach the outskirts of Bellingham and I start to feel the dreaded beginnings of a bonk creeping in. One of the key indicators is a deep-seated, irrational feeling of extreme crabbiness. Luckily for Jan, we have been riding largely in silence, so my ill mood is kept largely to myself. I don’t want to be the one to suggest stopping, but eventually I’m forced to tell Jan that I need to stop and eat. I’m hoping to see a grocery store where I can buy more Ensure, but none are to be found along the route through Bellingham. A very nice park overlooking Bellingham Bay does appear presently, and we pull over and take a seat on a park bench.
One of the basic lessons of riding bicycle is that as long as you are moving, cyclists coming from behind take a long time to catch up. However, as soon as you stop entirely, you are quickly overtaken. You’d think that this simple idea wouldn’t surprise me anymore, but the fact that Ken and Paul show up in a relatively short time somehow seems unexpected. I’m glad when they turn off the road to join us at the park. I’m not feeling as strong as when we split up and will appreciate more riders to share paceline duties. Also, it’s getting closer to the fall of darkness when it’s nice to ride in a larger, more visible group. I manage to force down some of the crackers carried from Birch Bay and drink half a bottle or so of Gatorade and we set off again.
Chuckanut drive is renowned in the Northwest as a scenic drive and with the sun setting over the water I’m sure it would be gorgeous if I had the spare mental energy to take it in. Unfortunately, my energy is taken up by trying to ride the right pace on the rolling hills, avoiding overlapping wheels, and making sure that no one (including myself) falls too far behind on the climbs to rejoin the group on the descents. Ken points out a park where in a past brevet he was forced by fatigue and cold temperatures to sleep on a restroom floor. I’m hoping that we all avoid such a fate tonight. I’m confident that we will, given that less than 60 miles remain and we are still moving at a decent pace.
The final descent from the Chuckanut hills onto the Skagit flats reminds me that I rode this segment of highway only a month ago on the 300k. It looked a lot different from the other direction. Only ten miles to the next control and about forty miles to the finish – it’s really starting to feel like the home-stretch now. We stop briefly on Bow Hill road to turn on our lights and take a brief stretch. A passing car stops to ask directions. It’s a high-school couple obviously on their way to the prom. With their fancy outfits and freshly-scrubbed appearance they make quite a contrast to four scruffy randonneurs. Ken fills them in on how to find their destination and they head one way while we head the other.
We stop at the Texaco control on Highway 20 and although the stop seems relatively brief, time now seems to pass more quickly in the store than it does on the bike. A flat 21 miles to the final control at Stanwood is the next order of business.
It’s fully dark but the road is smooth, traffic is light, the winds are either dead or favoring us, and we are riding a well-practiced drill of moderate-length pulls. My legs still feel pretty good, but my upper back muscles are burning and cramping. I do my best to move around on my handlebars and stretch when possible, but mostly it’s a matter of endurance at this point. We pass what seems to be just another rural home when suddenly three or four kids jump up in the ditch along side us and yell loudly before breaking out in peals of laughter. My heart skipped some beats and then quickly made up for it when the adrenaline hit. What were they doing out there on a cold night? It made no sense to any of us.
In Conway we make the turn onto highway 530 and continue our smooth and silent trip through the darkness. I hear a sound behind us like an overtaking truck, but there are no headlights in my mirror. For a moment I’m confused and startled as the noise grows closer, louder than any truck. Then I realize that there are railroad tracks alongside the road and a freight train is coming alongside. We ride in the small pools of light cast by our headlights, our legs spinning a quiet rhythm while next to us, seemingly close enough to touch, the train rumbles forward with a harsh and forceful mechanical pounding that is almost overwhelming. I feel like it is drawing us forward, a force that both provides energy and mocks our puny efforts at the same time as it rumbles past. It’s hard to tell how long we ride alongside the train, but before I have time to fully comprehend the scene, to break it down from the magic and power of its raw impact on my senses, the last car passes and the cacophonous, dark hulk of the train is fading away, leaving us behind to drop back to our comfortable pace. It is an experience I know I can never fully describe, but one I will never forget. I don’t know exactly how far it is to the finish, but the rest of the ride will be anticlimactic.
We make a very quick stop at the Stanwood control and leave the flats behind for the gently rolling route Southeast for I-5 and the Arlington Motor Inn that we left behind this morning. I haven’t been watching the route sheet or mileage so I don’t know the exact length of this final leg of the brevet. For once, this works in my favor as I’m surprised at how quickly we see the orange lights of the I-5 overpass. It’s the final tiny obstacle before reaching the finish on the other side of the freeway. We ride into the parking lot together and are soon gathered in room 119 handing in our cards. It’s about 18 hours since we left and it’s very nice to be finished.
Special thanks to Ron Lee and the rest of the crew that put on a great brevet. It was a challenging course in what seem to be typically difficult Northwest conditions. Lots of images and experiences that I won’t forget on the longest ride I’ve yet attempted.