111km ride + camping

This past weekend i did a pretty challenging ride (for me) out to Chilliwack, to meet up with some friends for some camping, critical massing, and beer-drinking. My original write-up is here on my blog (and with pictures here), but i thought i'd throw a few details up here.

I've done several 100km rides on my fixie before, but this was the first one where i actually carried a load, and also the first one where i had a hard deadline. I had to leave at 4pm because i had to work, and i also had to get there before dark (at about 9:45pm) so that i could find the place. I ended up riding 111km in 4:50 riding time (6:00 after rests were counted in), for an average riding speed of 23kph.

there were several things i learned that might come in handy for other people. One is that if you're carrying a load, then it's going to affect your speed a lot even if you're on mostly flat ground like i was. Every time a headwind slowed me down, it took more energy for me to accellerate the extra weight back up to my preferred speed, and every time there was a slight hill, more speed would get shaved off than usual (plus more effort required to accellerate again). If i had some experience in this beforehand, i could have estimated things a little better. I also would have taken a much lighter tent instead of my 3-person monstrousity.

I also learned a nice trick for food energy from a friend. if you have a baggie of trail mix or raisins or whatever else you're munching, you can mix in a bit of brown sugar with it, and you'll get some extra energy punch. great for going over a lot of hills and tiring yourself out...just keep munching the sugared raisins and you have perpetual energy boosts :)

One thing i'm going to try for next time is one of the hammocks that wendell was talking about. that'd enable me to camp anywhere i want, and to do it more stealthily. when we were packing up one morning, in an obscure recreation area near Mission, some park rangers came by and warned us that we couldn't stay overnight...which was fine because we were just leaving. but with a hammock, i could have pulled off into any kind of crazy wooded area and set it up without worrying about flat ground and without getting pointy rocks in my back all night.

I'm going to try to put some of these things into effect this weekend when i ride up to squamish and back (75km each way, with some decent hills). I don't really know how fast i can do it, but i'm going to try to find out :). we've planned enough time that we can take 5 hours if we need to, but i hope to do it in 4. I'm really gonna need the sugared trail mix, and a nice bag of pitted dates. i've found that pitted dates and cycling are like power pellets and pacman...hopefully it'll be enough to get me through 150km of cycling before mid-afternoon ;)

Ride hard, ride free