PA400k (5/16/09 edition) Results and Report (Updated 5/20)

[Tom Rosenbauer]

Preliminary results for the Eastern PA's, Blue Mountain 400k, have been posted at:
http://users.rcn.com/trosenbauer/PA400k ... 090516.pdf
... please let me know of any corrections or other issues. Results will be submitted to RUSA, shortly, and will then become final, pending RUSA/ACP validation.

With 27 registered riders, 24 made it to the start and 23 finished -- a 96% finish rate. Congratulations to all the riders who braved the torrential thunderstorms that swept through the night. And the riders out on course the longest, got the wettest -- with the last two riders reportedly getting the closest to the lightening activity. Many finishers saw 6 or more hours of rain, in the dark, at the end of a challenging 400k of riding -- a gritty, character building experience, to say the least -- and I'm sure a confidence building boost for other challenges that lay ahead.

The Blue Mountain 400k is perhaps a notch kinder and gentler than the Water Gap 400k of previous years. With most of the climbing concentrated in the Wind Gap to Swarta Gap segment, that was probably not the general sentiment of the riders arriving at the Jonetown controle. But the next segment in the Lancaster area, along with the first segment along the Delaware River, many participants agreed that it was a fair and balanced course.

A group of 8 or so riders really flew to the first controle stop -- averaging over 18MPH, despite having to walk over two Delaware River bridges. While that group stayed to gether for several miles after that, ultimately, Chip Adams, John Fuoco, and Craig Martek would stay together as first finishers, coming in at 17 hours and 35 minutes --- a very good result, indeed! The final two finishers, Bill Olsen and Walt Pettigrew came in at exactly 25 hours, after being delayed by some mechanical issues (like a broken seatpost) and waiting out some of the severe thunderstorms that rolled through. I was happy to see just about everybody teaming up in groups for the overnight hours. Steve Scheetz, having injured his knee at work a couple of weeks ago, realized that it wasn't well enough to get through a 400k ride -- he not only made it to controle #3, but he also got over the Blue Mountain ridge at Rt 309, using just one leg clipped in, before getting picked up and returned to the hostel.

Special thanks to volunteer Bill Slabonik for manning the Jonestown and New Holland controles -- assisting with a couple of mechanical issues and offering encouragement to the riders on the western extreme of the course. Thanks also, to Craig Martek for leading the way with the sign-in sheets at all the controles.

I'm looking forward to any other ride reports or pictures, that the participants might offer.

Regards,

-Tom Rosenbauer
Eastern PA RBA

[jud]

I have been riding Tom's courses in PA since he started designing routes there in 2003. This new Blue Mountain 400k course he was billing as lacking any "major extended climbs." One thing I have learned about Tom (or any other RBA, for that matter). When he says a route is less hilly, make sure your granny gear is in good working order. Now that I've completed the 248-mile course, I can confirm: While no one hill was especially bad, in typical eastern PA fashion, there were literally dozens of shorter, yet very steep, pitches, especially between controles three (mile 83) and four (about mile 135), when it seemed like we climbed up and rolled down the same ridge six times.

Getting to Quakertown from my East Brunswick, N.J. home takes about 90 minutes. I have grown lazier (or perhaps more appreciative of sleep) and so had slept until the late hour of 3:30 a.m. for the 6 a.m. 200k start and 2:30 a.m. for the 5 a.m. start on the 300k. For both events I arrived at the hostel only about 10 minutes before the official start. I am not particularly fast moving in setting up my bike, so it was 15-20 minutes after the starting time that I got onto the course for the 200 and 300. What was worse, I didn't have time to eat a proper breakfast, instead filling up my Camelback with Accelerade and pockets with Clif bars and electing to eat on the road.

The bad part of starting 20 minutes late is that you can ride in the dark alone and it may take an hour or two before you catch up with another rider. The good part is that, if you relax and accept the fact that you won't set any personal best finishing times, you actually pace yourself better. For both the earlier events, I ended up settling into a reasonable pace and saw most of the field by the time I finished. This time I decided to start with the main field. So I got up at 2 a.m. for the 5 a.m. start of the 400k. I arrived at the hostel by 4 a.m. about the time some of the overnight hostel registrants were just getting up.

This year I have built my season around Tom's new 1240k Endless Mountains (some wags have dubbed it "Needless Mountains") event in late September and I have been working on a more efficient riding style, as I tend to overdo the first days of multi-day rides and pay the price on days two and three. My key innovation is a higher pedaling cadence. My powermeter data for the past three years shows that I have averaged anywhere from 58 rpm (on the second day of the 2007 PA 600k) to 74 rpm (on my personal best 8:29 finish on the 2006 PA 200k) on brevets. My goal is to get up to an 80 rpm average. On PA's steep and rolling terrain, that means shamelessly using the granny gear. My 30-27 low gear got plenty of use Saturday, but I still wasn't able to spin enough on some steeper pitches. I'm thinking of putting on my mountain bike cogs (giving me a low of 30-34) on the back. Bill Olsen (who has entered and finished virtually every 1200k imaginable) has that ratio. Bill also favors eating tuna subs on rides, another suggestion I am following with some success.

My 200k was a failure in the cadence department. Perhaps because the 20-40 mph headwinds were unpredictable and made it hard to concentrate on cadence, I averaged only 71 rpm for the ride. Not bad by my previous standards, but still 10 rpm lower than planned. I felt very fatigued at the end of the 130 mile ride and vowed to improve on the 300, which I did, averaging a new personal brevet high of 78 rpm. Still just short of the goal, but much improved. Best of all, I felt noticeably less fatigued in the latter stages of the ride and my legs retained some of their suppleness for climbing longer than usual. I noticed the same thing for the 400k. despite the frequent and sometimes heavy rains, I again averaged 78 rpm for the ride. Again, I noticed a drop in fatique and an improvement in leg flexibility late in the ride.

My early arrival of 4 a.m. meant that for the first time in the three rides, I was starting on time. Bill Olsen found a cycling glove I dropped near my car (I didn't say my day was mistake free) and I left with the pack. I fell behind Rick Carpenter and a few other very strong riders and decided that during the 30 minutes of darkness I would try to stay with the group. We caught two riders ahead of us and formed a pack of 8 that would stay together for most of the first 50 miles. Noticeably missing from this pack was Juan Salazar. Perhaps, like me on the earlier rides, he got a late start. I stayed with the pack through the crossing into New Jersey on the Delaware and decided not to drop off. A quick pack is very appealing, even on a long brevet. I was taking advantage of others' pulls at the front, especially Rick, who always makes a ride look like a Sunday recovery ride, with his chipper good spirits and effortless style.

Rick took one monster pull at about mile 33 during the flat approach to the first control at mile 36 at Ahern's Cafe in Bangor. We rolled into the control at 6:57, only 15 minutes after the official control opening time and three minutes before the scheduled opening of the cafe. We had averaged 18 mph, including stops. Eric Keller and Craig Martek then took off ahead of the rest of us and five other guys and me stayed together up the gradual climb that began the next section. My cautious approach to bumpy unknown descents got me dropped from the pack on the way down. I rode alone for about 10 miles until I caught five of the group again at the Petro Mart in Wind Gap. This time fatigue set in and I just flat got dropped. I made a half-hearted effort to catch back on, but realized I had already burned too many matches for a 400k and had better slow down before I really fried my legs.

During this 30-mile stretch into Blondie's restaurant and the third control, I encountered Eric, who had taken a wrong turn at Bowman Hill Road and added an extra mile, and Juan, who steamed past me on a rather steep hill. Juan would end up finishing with the second group, only an hour behind the leaders, having passed most of the field. I rode alone into Blondie's, where I downed a BLT on whole wheat toast and a root (make that birch) beer. Again, I rode alone up the seeming endless (don't like that word) up and downhills of this section of the course. Up the ridge along a stream, down the ridge along a stream, over a metal grate bridge, up the ridge along a stream, down the ridge along a stream, metal grate bridge, etc.

After these ups and downs finally eased, I caught up with Andy Brenner, one of the most experienced local randonneurs, who had finished the Princeton 300k a week ago and obviously had not suffered enough. Andy had been part of that group that had dropped me and apparently had been dropped (or sensibly slowed down) himself. We would ride together the rest of the way. His knee problems were affecting him on hills, so I did a fair amount of pulling, but his experience, superior lighting system and GPS navigation were a great help to me. Shortly after we began riding together we encountered about 10 minutes of torrention, you-can-barely-see-the-road rain. Thoroughly drenched and hungry, I suggested we stop about 10 miles before the next control to regroup. After about a 20-minute break, we set out again and encountered Eric, who would stay with us to the end. This was Eric's first 400k, but his high spirits and staunch determination were much appreciated.

At the Sheetz control in the Amish country at mile 181 we asked a fourth rider, Guy Harris, if he wanted to join us in what would prove to be a dark and rainy last 66 miles to the last two controls. Guy and I usually see each other frequently at controls during PA events, though we generally ride at our own pace and often split up. It made a lot of sense to stay together, especially with the report of thunderstorms in the area. Up and down the rollers we went, encountering light to moderate rain, and seeing and hearing thunderstorms ahead and around us. Fortunately, no lightning bolts ever got more than a few miles of us. I hate riding in the rain (the only thing worse is cold rain) and the stretch to the Wawa in Pottstown was the longest 32 miles I can remember in a long time. We took a short break and set out again. Despite a small amount of confusion about the cue sheet, we successfully made it in as a group of four at 1:10 a.m., taking just over 20 hours. We were the third group to arrive. The two earlier groups of three consisted of the five other members of our previous group of eight, plus Juan, who had caught Rick and Robin Landis to finish with the second group.

I learned a number of things or relearned them: One, I need to set up my Son generator system. The Cateye battery powered lights don't cut it. Two, not having contact lenses in the rain at night is a real drawback. It is extremely hard to see with eyeglasses. I had no choice, because tree pollen has caused my left eye to be inflamed and the contact lens wouldn't stay centered. Lastly, as Andy tactfully pointed out, my taillight was blocked by my seatpack, making me less than obvious to passing motorists at night.

On the positive side, my legs stayed in reasonably good shape and my new riding style appears to be working. This was first 250-mile event since last year's fleche and I came out of it reasonably well. I really needed the support of Andy, Eric and Guy, to get me through a tough day. And thanks Tom, it really was a good course and probably would have been kinder and gentler without the rain. And thanks also Tom, for staying up all night as we riders drifted into the finish, drenched and tired.

Jud Hand

[jsalazar1978]

Hello Tom and fellow randonneurs and randoneuses,

I think we all agree it was a great ride. It should be called the Blue Mountain "I haven't ridden over so many rollers in my life" brevet. I hope none of you are infected with the illness that struck a couple of days prior to the event and still afflicts me. I did my best to keep the coughing under the bed sheet and to a minimum. I would like to thank Tom for all his effort in organizing yet another wonderful event. The cue sheet was great! Because of an accidental resetting of my cyclocomputer I finally learned how to use the segment mileage. I loved it. After each cue I would reset my mileage, which is very easy to do on my cyclocomputer. This way I split the 250 mile ride in many many increments and did not have the annoying total mileage discrepancy with the cue sheet that for one reason or the other is almost inevitable on such a long ride.

Ride report and pictures here: http://www.cycloblogger.info/2009/05/bl ... -400k.html

[EricKeller]

Thanks for the ride reports. I enjoyed riding with Andy, Jud and Guy. However, I still think Guy was sandbagging. After my glasses fogged over in the rain, Andy's gps was a lifesaver.


As this was my first 400k, I'm definitely still learning. Turns out the two most important things I learned from Jud.

The first thing I learned was that I need to keep my cadence up, this was by observation that Jud was opening big gaps on me on climbs. I also learned that turkey subs are like a drug, I ate a couple on this ride and it was like throwing a switch improving my mood and the energy in my legs.

I also re-learned the notion that an experiment is worth a thousand calculations. I had a new light and I calculated that I had enough batteries to make it through 20 hours of darkness. In practice, this somehow translated to a little over 4 hours of light output. My backup light didn't like the rain, and so I was surviving on my helmet light. I had decided not to switch over to the dyno the day before. Bad decision.

I liked the course a lot. However, I think there are a few more roads in Pennsylvania with the word "hill" in them that Tom missed, and hopefully he can fix that for the next time. Does anyone else feel dread when they notice the next turn is onto "mountain road?"

I started thinking that the cue sheet had a little too much information at the end. I'll have to go back and look at that now that I can actually read it.

[Guy]

Loved the course, a less intense version of the long ones still one the schedule. The 1000K and 1200K not only have rollers, they have "up rollers" as we came to call them last year.

As Jud pointed out, he and I are usually on our own but overlapping so it was great to finally ride some distance with him. Also thanks to Andy and Eric, it felt like I was pulling a sandbag at least. Definitely good to finish this one in a group. I did enjoy overlapping with Juan also, but those miles at his pace increased the size of the sandbag!

Congrats to all who finished their first 400K!

[Tom Rosenbauer]

Kelly Smith, commenting on the revised routing to the finish:
This was really a good decision, it would have been almost impossible to finish in the rain safely if the roads at the end hadn't been in such
good condition.
Thanks again and please pass on my thanks to Bill who was a welcome sight as well as giving us a hand with a bent chain.

Robin Landis writes:
Thank you for designing such a wonderful ride and running it so smoothly. I was quite excited when I saw from your website that you had constructed a brand new route, much of it through brand new (to me) territory, and it exceeded my expectations. With a few noteworthy but very brief exceptions, the roads had very little traffic, and the scenery was spectacular--farmlands, mountains, beautiful old stone houses, even log houses. I particularly remember the horsedrawn carriages in Amish country, but there were lots of cows, horses, sheep, goats, and even the occasional groundhog (which Rick Carpenter barely missed turning into roadkill as it lumbered across the road). There were some exhilarating downhills, but the bulk of the climbing was in the first part of the ride, before fatigue (or nightfall) set in. It was great to ride roads mostly in good condition, with so little traffic that the roads seemed to have been built for cyclists. Even the weather turned out better than the forecast--it didn't start raining until the night time. And the hospitality and food provided before and after the ride at the hostel were outstanding.

I also want to thank the other randonneurs I rode with, who without exception were good natured and good company. Early on, I enjoyed talking with Jud Hand, Craig Martlek, Chip Adam and John Fuoco. Late in the ride, Rick Carpenter and Juan Salazar kept up my spirits, slowed down to allow me to keep up with them, and generally saw me safely back to the last controle. Their encouragement and generosity exemplify, in my view, some of the best things about randonneuring.

Thanks again for putting together such a great ride.

Jim Logan writes:
Thanks for a well run ride as always. It was unexpected and nice to have Bill at several of the controls. I found the first half of the course surprisingly gentle, despite what the profile showed. Though I euphemistically call the small hills “rollers” like many, I decided a better name for them is “sloggers” in the many spare moments I had to think about things. I rode most of the ride alone as I often do, though I saw people at controls throughout the day. The tandem, Dan, and John were ahead of me at most controls, and Victor and the two women were behind me. I last saw the tandem at the Hess stop – they seemed eager to make time. I was surprised at one point to catch up to Dan and John after the Sheetz on the road. However, they rode away from me effortlessly on the sloggers.

This is the first time I’ve seen Mennonites(?) riding bikes. I didn’t know they did that. I knew about Amish as scooters. About a dozen young men passed going the opposite direction. In the dark I passed a middle aged couple, plus a woman drafting a buggy.

It was a good day for fenders and cycling caps with bills. The rain overall was a pleasant rain. At one point the gently increasing downpour, with a bit of rumbling thunder and lightning far in the distance, was like a soundscape CD, but real. One reason I kept pushing on alone was I was afraid of the temperature dropping to cold, but fortunately it never did.

I might have had got nailed on I believe Rt 23 by what might have been a drunk driver that seemed to be ready to ignore a stop sign on a side road probably before midnight. So I just stopped on the main highway, and he eventually did stop. The car following him seemed embarrassed by the situation, and wouldn’t continue until I continued. In the middle of the day I got buzzed by a motorcyclist which had his girl-friend on the back, which was strange unless he didn’t see me, because he was following a car. Sometime during the night as a safety precaution I dived off the road when one overtaking car that was running up through his gears as quick as he could, which isn’t the usual reaction overtaking a bike at night.

The strong headwind out of the south(?) was an unpleasant surprise – the wind was both stronger than forecast, and I just assume the wind always comes out of the west in PA, so I had expected a partial tailwind when we turned toward the SE. For some reason I perked up circa mile 190 and felt just grand, but the sloggers in the last leg ground me down pretty good. Still the last 5 miles or were a pleasant way to end the ride.
PS: If the 1240k is “Endless Mountains”, I named this one “Endless Rollers/Sloggers”

Volunteer Bill Slabonik writes:
Just a note to let you know what a pleasure it was to man the controle at Lickdale and later on at New Holland. I enjoyed the chance to get to know the riders and be of assistance as they nourished and refreshed themselves before climbing back on their bikes. I got a few photos and have posted them at this link.
http://picasaweb.google.com/slabfoot/PA ... eat=email#
I hope to be able to ride again soon.

John Dennis writes:
The thought of a 400 Km brevet does fill me with a certain dread but anything that starts at 5am on a Saturday, preferably in a light rain shower, can’t be too bad. Dan Barbasch, Juan Salazar, and I all survived another of Tom Rosenbauer’s Eastern PA brevets, all of which “cross the Delaware” into New Jersey at least once. Maybe I’m finally getting the “brevet bug” because controle stops were no longer the highlights for me. At a certain point—on this ride around midnight--you don’t notice the fatigue unless you stop. Alas, due to heavy thunderstorms that started around 11pm, our navigation capital had been badly eroded and by midnight and Dan and I were stopping ever more frequently to get our bearings. My cue sheets had been reduced to an illegible wet pulp. This was one wet brevet!

A great thanks is due to Tom Rosenbauer for orchestrating this ride and to Bill Slabonik for being out there at the nether reaches of the course at Controle 4 with a full set of tools, just when I needed them.

Dan Barbasch and I had arrived at the Weisel Hostel in rural eastern PA well after dark last Friday. As we set up our bikes in the hostel living room after checking in with Tom Rosenbauer, I sized up the other bikes and the other randonneurs who were either lounging about or fixating on some aspect of their gear prep. A snappily-equipped Cannondale tandem dominated the scene. Kelly Smith. the 54-year-old captain of this team was predictably focused more on the front of the bike, while a somewhat younger Mary Crawley was focused on battening down the hatches on the rear of the machine. It was clearly not a time for small talk. This was to be my first PA brevet using my new Schmidt 6 volt 3 watt dynamo hub in a front wheel constructed by Glenn Swan. On the front of my mostly steel Fuji, the hub would power a Busch&Müller Lumotec IQ Cyo Senso headlamp rated at 2.4 watts. This is an LED light that throws a brighter beam the further out it goes so about 30 yards of night roadway is evenly lit. On the back, Glenn had mounted Busch & Müller’s (S)Toplight XS. This senso rear light is also wired to the hub and like the head lamp, it can be switched to come on whenever light conditions cloud over. Dan had a tail-light wired to his new Schmidt hub as well, but he had a gear bag that drooped down over it. “On this ride, it’s just there to sop up the extra juice that gets generated whenever I go over 30 mph,” he explained. The next night I would notice that the pavement to 3-4’ on either side of his rear wheel was bathed in shimmering red light, as if Dan was putting on some sort of mobile wayang kulit shadow play for my benefit all the way back to the Weisel Hostel. I also had alternative battery-powered lights front and back on the bike as well as on my helmet.

Despite feeling fully up on the curve in the lighting department, I could tell from the crisp organization of the Smith-Crawley team and the carefully-rigged bikes of the other randonneurs already in bed or sitting about chatting that I was still a newbie at this sport. My RUSA number 5531 was the highest among the 27 participants. And I knew that I was under-trained and nursing a deep chest cold. C’est la vie! Dan had more or less promised to “hang back” with me though I knew that his “horse going back to the barn” urges sometimes over-take his professed camaraderie intentions. If there is any payback for me slowing him down, it is that I have reasonably good navigation skills, or at least think I do.

The hostel dorm room that has an open window facing a roaring creek was more or less full, so Dan and I bunked in the room labeled “Women’s Dorm.” The windows were all shut and the room hot and stuffy with 4 or 5 male randonneurs already sleeping. So, I pulled open the plastic accordion filler on one side of an air conditioner to set up a little out-door air flow near my pillow. For whatever reason, I kept waking up every 45 minutes or so, at one point waving to Juan Salazar who was joining us at close to midnight. Perhaps Juan is already training for the sleep deprivation that will come during his Shenandoah 1200. At about 3:20am, I was awake when I heard Juan descending from the bunk above mine. I nimbly shifted my foot out of the way just as I felt his foot begin to step on mine. “Does one really need to get up 90 minutes before the 5am start?” I wondered. I followed Juan into the showers and soon thereafter was enjoying Tom Rosenbauer’s oatmeal, which was as tasty as ever. A small chirp from my cell phone alerted me that it had less that 5% battery power, so I took it out to my car which was parked in the predawn gloom close to the estate’s old stone carriage house. I had forgotten to pack a wall charger, but seemed to have everything else in place except good health and fitness. More randonneurs were arriving by car and Tom was soon busy inspecting their lighting and checking them in.

I packed my brevet card, cash, and credit card in a sandwich bag in my capacious rear luggage case. Better to assume that almost anything light tucked in a rear jersey pocket can come flying out when you least expect it. On the other hand, I had more than 20 Endurolyte capsules in a small plastic medicine container, water-tight to be sure, but a hassle to open at 20 mph. It had the type with the child-proof top that needed to be pushed down and then rotated to open, but it was compact and reasonably heavy. In the past I had carried Endurolytes in a sandwich bag, but get several sandwich bags in the same rear pocket and it becomes difficult to tell one from the other and the relatively large surface area always threatens to drag other stuff out the pocket and into the wind stream. The other “idiot-proofing” I did with respect to my three rear jersey pockets was to limit additional contents to energy food and a small cube-shaped container of bag balm. Frequent food and water and frequent applications of bag balm to reduce saddle sores were to be a key strategy for making this 400 Km easier than my two previous ones. Much of my water I carried in a camel back, but I also had two water bottles. Eating, drinking, and bag balming “on the fly” was my key to reducing down time at controles and to staying as happy as a pig in mud on the route itself. Aware that all seasoned randonneurs seem to plasticize their cue cards days in advance, I folded and tucked the stapled 8-pages of cue sheets into a sealable plastic cue sheet holder that was attached to my aerobars with Velcro straps. Knowing that thunderstorms were forecast for Saturday night, I packed wool tights, leg warmers, arm warmers, a wool skull cap, a wool balaclava, glove liners, and an extra pair of wool socks. (Next time I will pack an extra pair of cycling shorts.) I had decided and Tom agreed that the air would be too warm and humid for even semi-pervious clothing like goretex to make any sense. This was to be the rainy brevet in which I would test wearing my long-sleeved SmartWool undershirt under my cycling jersey throughout the ride. The wool shirt would wick the moisture away from my skin. It would be about the closest I would come of experiencing life in the outdoors as a furry animal, you know, a river otter or a marmot, to name two.

Tom’s pre-ride briefing was brief. 21 randonneurs and three randoneuses departed in a light rain a few minutes after 5am. I veered through the parking area to lock my car doors, so on rejoining the departing stream it took me a while to find Dan and I could only suspect that Juan and Rick Carpenter (whom I had ridden with during my last PA brevet) were already ahead of us. Fairly early on, I struck up conversation with Kelly Smith and Mary Crawley on the Cannondale tandem and understood that they would not mind if Dan and I drafted behind them. Temps were already in the high 60s, so the light rain did not pose any issues. Although neither Dan or I had fenders, the Cannondale Tandem did, and so there were thankfully no rooster tails to contend with. Even though drafting probably exceeded my riding along side them, I noticed my heart rate was mostly in the low 160s, not a rate I figured I could sustain steadily for more than the first 50 miles. But Kelly was widely-read and a great conversationalist and Mary was a crack navigator, so the miles passed effortlessly, although I suspected Dan viewed our brisk average pace of about 15.5 mph as a foolish way to start a 400 km. Daylight was yawning upon us by the time—at Mile 16--we reached an ancient metal-grated Roebling Bridge across the Delaware at Riegelsville. Benjamin Riegel founded Riegelsville and built the famous Riegelsville Inn in 1838. The town is in the far northeast corner of Bucks County. We rode along Mansion’s Row, where executives of the Riegel Paper Company built their stately homes in the 1880s, the less seemly mills being located over on the New Jersey side of the river. It was further down stream that George Washington and his men had crossed the Delaware River and attacked the British by surprise in Trenton, NJ, a battle that proved to be a turning point in the Revolutionary War. For 99 years, the Delaware Canal, opened in 1832, kept Riegelsville on the commercial main stream. Today it is a sleepy historic village housing about 850 residents.

We were soon walking another bridge back into PA across the Delaware at Mile 27 on our arrival at Easton PA, where Tom’s home is located and where the Lehigh River joins the Delaware River. The streets were placid early on a Saturday morning and the trees fully leafed out as we cycled up College Avenue past Lafayette College. We were soon on PA Rte 611 that followed the west bank of the Delaware River all the way to Controle 2, the Aherns Country Café in Martins Creek. Mary called ahead on her cell and ordered take-out: sausage muffins for Kelly and herself and eggs in muffins for Dan and me. Imagine our dismay when on arrival at Aherns a) the food was not quite ready and b) when it came out it was packed in four large Styrofoam food shells. We hurried sat and ate; I enjoyed my eggs and home fries, but we all gave the muffin drenched in sausage gravy a miss. We guzzled coffee and loaded up on tap water. The four of us departed after what I sensed was for the others a disappointingly long pit stop.

The 47 miles to the next controle at Blondies Family Restaurant in New Ringgold PA contained the most significant climbing of the six sections of the entire 15-18,000 feet of climbing. About half the road names seemed to contain the words mountain, hill, gap, or fireline. We crossed the Appalachian Trail at Mile 47 while passing through Wind Gap. The cue sheet then instructed us to turn left onto Mountain Road with Tom’s helpful note, “on descent – don’t miss or you’ll be so sorry.” The total of 18,418 feet of climbing is the “exaggerated” Delorme topo map computation for the course. At the end of the ride, Dan’s GPS reported something in excess of 15,000 feet. In any case, I was impressed at the climbing tenacity of our friends on the Cannondale. There was no longer any utility in drafting as we lurched from one speedy downhill to the next slogging uphill. Perhaps 20 miles shy of the next controle, I realized I was very hungry but had no more food in any of my pockets. My remaining goo and energy bars were all scattered at the bottom of my travel case to the rear of my seat. With better packing, I could have pulled back a zipper and extracted one in seconds. Kelly kindly offered me a bar from his handlebar front bag, but I declined. I worried that my replacement bar offered at the next controle would not meet his specs. And I worried that we were proving to be a drag on this intrepid duo that had already done formidable rides, either solo or together, like Paris-Brest-Paris and the Shenandoah 1200. And the climbing had not helped my heart rate which was still in the 160s. Dan and I stopped for what seemed about 60 seconds, but we did not see Kelly and Mary again until the next control. Although he did not say it, I sensed that Dan was relieved to be traveling at a more languid pace of our own choosing. Like dullard steers being herded to slaughter, we knew we were destined to be out in the those midnight thunderstorms, groping our way pathetically from intersection to intersection, whereas Mary and Kelly would breeze in to the hostel not long after midnight, having never missed a turn or even paused to mull one over! But they did work incredibly hard. Within the first two hours, the hair at the back of Mary’s head was wet with sweat and Kelly’s respirations per minute were definitely up there. They seemed to thrive in attack mode. During this segment of the ride we proceeded due west, passing north of Allentown and under the NE extension of the PA Turnpike. In terms of counties, we passed from Northampton to Monroe, to Carbon to Schuylkill, all more or less terra incognita to me.

I guess it would be a mistake to say that the terrain leveled out after Controle 3. It didn’t and the road names again included Mountain Road 12 miles into the segment, Second Mountain Road 14 miles into the segment and Mountain Road again 31 miles into the segment. A highpoint of this segment was, for me at least, passing under I-81 and knowing we were now close to the westernmost extent of our route and would soon start our curve to the south and east. Controle 4 was at the Hesse Mimi Mart in Jonestown, just a few miles after we had passed back under I-81 in a narrow river valley. The Interstate crosses this river on two high bridges, a section of I-81 that was very familiar to me. As a college undergrad traveling home to Virginia, I had once ridden my motorcycle down the steeply-pitched red earth track of this now overhead roadway when 81 was still under construction. At the Mini Mart, I was delighted to find that Bill Slabonik was staffing the controle and had a full complement of tools. Apparently, a pilot of cargo planes, Bill knew his gear. My hub-driven rear light had fallen off during a descent and I needed a small crescent wrench to reattach it as well as a knife and needle nose pliers for reopening the wire connectors and then crimping them back over the copper leads that had pulled loose when the light had dropped to the pavement. Following the morning rain, Dan and I also re-oiled our drive chains.

The next 45-mile segment to Controle 5 in New Holland was one of the most memorable to me, but that’s me speaking as a farm-boy from Virginia. We were in Mennonite farm country much of the way, passing through towns with names like Kleinfeltersville and Farmersville. We passed alfalfa hay field that had already been cut and one dairy farm followed after another. Many farms had beautiful Morgan horses at pasture and were clearly farmed by Mennonites. We passed rural Mennonite Churches that had large “parking lots” which consisted of a combination of hitching posts in tree-shaded rows and long narrow sheds capable of protecting horse carriages from the rain. Perhaps it was at the beginning of Hopeland Road that, with Dan already well ahead of me, I stopped to take pictures of some magnificent old stone barns and houses and then took pictures of a young Mennonite man washing down a horse with soap, a brush and a hose. We then rode through the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area where some people were hiking and fishing. Much of the late afternoon we seemed to ride against a crosswind that was blowing more toward us than not. Leaving one town as darkness fell, there was a Mennonite carriage following behind us. I was feeling hot and so stopped to remove my wind-breaker. It was raining as I got back on my bike and the carriage driver called out to us, “It’s going to rain.” We passed the horses with a wide berth so as not to scare them.

I suppose I fall more toward the “laissez-faire” end of the brevet strategy spectrum if “control freak” is a the other end. I had not studied the cue sheet with any care before departure and with night falling my first sense of disorientation fell upon me. “How could we be approaching a control in Pottstown PA as that is so close to I-81 and so very far from Quakertown?” I wondered. Turns out, I was confusing Pottstown with Pottsville. By this time in the ride, Dan had lost his rear view mirror and, so, without being able to look back and see me, he tended to surge ahead, getting as much as half a mile or more ahead of me. Obviously, that caffeine surge I had gotten after the one Starbucks Double Shot Espresso that I had tried a la Juan had long since dissipated and Dan’s native abilities and many more miles of training were beginning to express themselves. A pseudo-crisis arose as we proceeded northeast on Route 23 towards Pottstown. Darkness had fallen, rain was falling intermittently and the valley before us was lighting up with lightning. I counted 12-13 second pauses before we heard thunder so the lightning posed no safety hazard to us. I had not put a fresh battery into my headlamp in weeks and my headlamp was operating at perhaps half its fresh battery intensity. The wet plastic cue sheet envelope reflected light so I had to pry open the envelope with my fingers and partially remove the sodden pages in order to read the text as I rode. With brain function no doubt showing signs of fatigue, I misread the cue as indicating that we should turn onto Morgantown Road after only 0.3 miles on Route 23 when in fact the correct distance was 4.2 miles. Convinced that we had long since passed the turn and knowing that both our cell phones were turned off to save battery life, I went racing ahead to catch up with Dan whose tail light was barely visible perhaps a mile ahead of me. When I finally reached him, Dan calmly reminded me that he had ridden this route once before and stated that the turn was still some miles ahead of us. It was during one of these on-the-shoulder route discussions that Jim Logan caught up with us and rode with us for a short while. It was on the Morgantown Road that we noticed Jim’s tail-light proceeding far ahead of us when the cue sheet called for turning right onto Joanna Road. He was no longer in hailing distance, so we let him go. We were progressing along Park Road on a more or less steady uphill in French Creek Park when Jim surprisingly caught up with us. But he seemed to have winded himself in the effort and dropped back not long thereafter as the climbing got steeper and a full-blown thunderstorm was dumping so much water the forest on either side of us sounded like riding between twin waterfalls. We were at about mile 200; it was almost midnight and it seemed utterly dismal that we had another 49 miles to go! It was on a remote section of on-going uphill climb that I noticed a car waiting to pull onto the road. It pulled out behind me and began to follow me at slow pace—perhaps 6 mph that I was cranking along at. What was up with the car? Knowing he was too far ahead to hear me, I nonetheless called out: “Hey, Dan, you might want to drop back a bit.” I had at least established my gender and that I had a loud voice. After another 100 yards or so, the car pulled off the road. The driver had lost interest. Jim rejoined us at the top of the rise and after a brief conversation with two park rangers, we proceeded down a curving two-mile decline. I was made the most of my powerful headlamp and while I waited at the bottom for the other two, I put my wind-breaker back on. I wondered if marmots had this much trouble regulating their core temperature in the rain.

We didn’t see much of Pottstown but the Pottstown controle was so inviting that we actually visited it twice. Within 5-10 minutes of our first departure, Dan announced that he was shivering and was heading back to add some newspaper lining to his jersey. He ended up having to purchase the Philadelphia Enquirer as the clerk insisted they had no spare newsprint lying about. Now we were on the home stretch with no more controles and Jim Logan now well ahead of us. We had over-lapped for quite a while during our first stop at the Wawa.

Leaving Pottstown, we still had a tad under 36 miles to cover, which at 12 mph would take us another 3 hours or well after 3am. It was not a happy thought. I was running on fumes and I wrongly assumed that Dan was using the back-up copy of his cue sheets. If I had known, he was still using his first set, I would have asked for his second copy. Dan had programmed the course into his Garmin GPS and he explained that once on a given road, we could ride willy-nilly until the Garmin warned him that the next turn was coming up, whereupon he could then read the details from his Garmin or on his cue sheet or both. It all sounded like technology at its best. But then we arrived at the intersection of Smith Road and Swamp Pike. The cue sheet instructed us to turn left onto Swamp Pike from Smith. The problem was we had reached Smith while already traveling on Swamp Pike. In our fatigued state, we were totally flummoxed by this development. We had no map and the one or two cars that passed us by were clearly not stopping. We dithered and I felt a bone-numbing tiredness start to creep into me. Finally, I mustered up the imagination to pretend we had just reached Swamp Pike from Smith. Duh! I made the indicated left turn, traveled the 0.0 miles indicated and, voila, there was our next road waiting for us, Steinmetz. We could practically have swung a wet dead cat to it from where we had been dithering.

Yippee, it felt so good to be moving again. Problem was we had about nine way-points or turns over the next ten miles. We were on Perkionmenville Road when we spotted Sumneytown Road going off to the left. Dan said he thought this was the next road we turned at but it was on the wrong side of the road and a sign indicated it was a dead end. We forged ahead for another mile or so but turned around before reaching Old Sumneytown Pike, our actual destination. Apparently, Dan’s first cue sheet was not that legible either. We returned to Sumneytown Road and were disconsolately discussing the options on the right side of Perkionmenville Road when we spotted two other cyclists approaching us on the left. Problem was, the lead cyclist was—I was sure of it—a clown act, you know, a normal person riding the bike, and then a grotesquely tall person on stilts or whatever standing on pegs attached to the rear frame and holding the shoulders of the first rider for balance. I was completely convinced this was what I was looking at. Dan, it seems, perhaps seeing the two bikes as a unit--thought he was looking as some sort of tall construction rig coming down the road, ungainly and with lots of lights. Then, the clown-construction rig spoke to us. It was Victor Urvantsev, riding his first 400K, and beside him was Kate Marshall, who—much to our surprise--also spoke, and who was also riding her first 400K. Dan and I snapped out of our respective hallucinations. We quickly realized that Victor and Kate, with no GPS on board, seemed to have little doubt as to the correct course. We meekly fell in behind them and immediately our pace ramped up from absolutely pathetic to “we’re going to make it after all.” Within a few miles, we reached Route 563 which leads to within striking distance of the hostel. “I can smell the barn,” announced Victor, adding a bit more speed. 563 was uncomplicated and gently rolling for about 12 miles. Dan or Dan and I together led much of the way; perhaps it was our egos kicking in to make up for our having to be “rescued” at the entrance to Sumneytown Road. 563 went on for what seemed an eternity until finally we saw the much-dreaded Dublin Pike sign. We knew from past brevets that Dublin Pike then makes a huge descent followed by an absolute bear of a climb. I had hoped and hoped again that Tom would have given us an alternative route around this particular stretch of canyon. I struggled on the uphill while the others seemed to spin gracefully upwards. Back at the hostel Tom and Juan were both there to greet us. It was about 3:40am. The first three finishers had arrived in 17 hours and 35 minutes. It had taken us 22 hours and 40 minutes with an average speed of 12.9 mph. My odometer indicated 251 miles elapsed. The Smith-Crawley team had arrived two hours and ten minutes ahead of us.

I had a large bowl of rice with a delicious black bean sauce that Juan’s wife, Grazie, had made. Life was good again and there were only about five more riders left to come in. I got about three hours sleep before Dan awoke me. It was time to pack up for Ithaca. In two weeks time Dan planned to be back for a 600 K. I on the other hand—no offense to my new Brooks saddle--had “rivet burn” on both butt cheeks. I imagined I might discover some other pressing life priority happening in precisely two weeks time.

[EricKeller]

I like the climb at the end. Just about the only one that I do like