Congrats ttaylor508! Awesome job, and awesome story.

I am disappointed to say I didn't get to meet any other TE'ers. I'd forgotten just how huge the crowds are for STP and even if I did see any of you, I'd probably have been to overwhelmed to notice.

DH & I got up at 3 am, left the house by 4, and started riding just after 5. During the first 50 miles or so, I was telling myself that if I ever do this ride again, I'm either going to leave way earlier, or try to plot my own alternate route to avoid the massive groups. Even though it's easier physically to glom onto a huge paceline, for me it's mentally much more difficult, especially if I don't know the rider in front of me and his/her riding style. Plus I'm still a little shaken by the memory of a huge paceline crash during a ride last month...I somehow barely stayed up but the poor folks that didn't had some really ugly injuries, and that sight is still fresh in my mind.

Anyway, other than that things were going pretty well until a different nasty railroad crossing between Tenino & Centralia where my rear tire blew out. Now, I know how to change a tire and I've done it several times, but for whatever reason, I was having a really hard time getting the tube seated; one spot near the valve was geting pinched by the rim and it took both mine & DH's combined efforts to finally get the stupid thing in place. Then, after all that when we went to inflate it....the tire boot we'd put in had moved off of the hole and we had to do it all over again! I was so frustrated. We'd been on track to hit Centralia before 11 but after the flat, and cooling down a bit while fixing it, we didn't get there until almost 11:30. The food line was HUGE and we didn't want to wait that long, so we grabbed a chocolate milk and pushed on to the Winlock ministop instead where we were able to buy food quickly...but then ended up waiting forever in restroom lines.

As ttaylor508 mentioned, the headwinds were pretty rough and after the Winlock stop I was kind of wishing for a big paceline even though I'd been cursing them earlier in the day. But with most of the 2-day riders having stopped and most of the fast 1-day riders long past us, we had to tough it out switching leads every 2 miles or so instead of our usual 5. We'd been hoping not to stop again until the St. Helens stop, keeping to our plan of stopping roughly every 50 miles, but with the winds being so strong we stopped to recover at the Lexington stop too. The next 30-ish miles between Lexington and St. Helens were the toughest of the ride for me.

After a long stop at St. Helens, I kept a very close eye on my computer to manage my HR and cadence. I think this is where I was failing before....I was just riding, and not really managing my ride. If I don't pay attention, I tend to fall into a pattern where my cadence is up over 100 and my HR is up above my lactate threshold; because often on my shorter rides I will purposely push that hard just for training purposes. I guess my body just gets used to how that feels...but it's not sustainable longer-term. So on this last stretch, I carefully kept my cadence right at 90, and watched my HR. As soon as it started creeping up, I'd shift down, as as soon as my cadence started creeping up, I'd shift up. This made a world of difference in how I felt and I rode the last 30 very strong. I will definitely take this as a lesson to pay more attention to my exertion during these longer rides.

We finished at about 7:45 - a lot later thank I'd hoped to finish, but still in time to get our 1-day rider patches, so I'm super-happy about that. Our actual riding time was just over 11 hours which is right where I thought it would be; we just spent a lot more time stopped than I had anticipated.

We had just enough time to get the bikes boarded, clean up, and grab a snack before getting on the bus. I think staying overnight in Portland would've been smarter - the bus was stopped in construction on I-5 north of Olympia for what seemed like forever, and I couldn't sleep on the bus because it just wasn't comfy. We finally made it back, got unpacked and took a real shower, and just as I was getting into bed, the 3 AM alarm that I'd set for Saturday was going off again, to cap off our 24-hour adventure. I shut it off, then slept until noon.

Overall I'm feeling pretty good. I'd like to do a short recovery ride for the legs, but I think my butt won't be able to handle the saddle again for a few days. This is the first time I've done the STP 1-day and I'm happy to check it off of the list. Next up, RAMROD!

I'd like to hear how it went for the 2-day riders...did you encounter much rain? It was pouring when I woke up Sunday, and I kept hoping that the rain & winds weren't moving south.