Solo 400k

Yesterday I rode my Four Rivers 200k permanent twice back-to-back. The intent was to see how I did riding a flat, hot 400k because that's like the first day of the Cracker Swamp 1200k in Florida coming up in October. My target was to complete the ride in 20 hours.

I started at 5:30 am. My first problem is that there is nothing open at that time except the McDonalds drive through so I had to get my receipt by driving through and then find somewhere to park. The first half of the ride went well although it got hotter than expected when I got back to the start and it was over 90F. I ate at the Chick-fil-a - Meh.

I was drinking one bottle of Perpetuem with Endurolytes between each control. Seems it fills me up quite well. Didn't have any bonking or cramping issues.

The second 200k was very different. A strong wind set in from the north and I had a headwind for fifty of the first sixty miles of the loop. What was soul-crushing is the knowledge that the wind would die down before I could turn around and make it a tail wind. My time out to the around control at mile 58 was about five hours and I was exhausted holding even that pace.

I turned around and within an hour the wind died down from about 20mph to about 10mph. Still - at least it wasn't a headwind any more. Riding on the Rio Hondo and Los Angeles bike paths at night is a scary process. There were lots of people furtively standing by the bike path and groups of young men walking up it that looked very suspicious to me. One guy shouted angrily at me in Spanish. I have no idea what he said but just kept riding. I would not recommend doing this to anyone.

I finished the ride in 19:54. Very tired but not sore.

I wonder how long it will be before someone is killed while playing Pokemon Go? Perhaps it has already happened. I had a couple of incidents on the beach path with people running across the bike path in front of me while holding their cell phones up in front of them. It's just a matter of time.