Sugar River 200 km Permanent

My randonneuring career started in Montreal. Physically, the idea of riding 200 kilometers seemed feasible. And the start location was just across the St. Lawrence, about 15 kilometers from where I lived. Since moving to Madison in 2015, I have done plenty of long rides. But only one of them was an official brevet. The reason? The local randonneuring club is based in Richland Center, almost 1.5 hours drive from Madison. Being carless, this made the logistics of getting to the start of their rides very challenging. 

An alternative to brevets are permanents: Same distances, same time limits, but you do them at a time of your choosing. When Randonneurs USA, the national organization, revamped their rules for permanents, I decided to finally create my own permanent route, starting right in Madison: The Sugar River 200k.

 

Start and finish are at Pacific Cycle, on the Southwest Commuter Path. You can easily reach the start by bike, and if you arrive by car, it's easy to find parking there. The route heads south, very loosely following the Sugar River downstream into Illinois. You ride on the Badger State Trail (trail pass required) until its paved section ends, and then transfer to quiet rural road. The first control is a gas station in Albany, and shortly after the control the unpaved section of the route, on the Sugar River State Trail begins. The surface is crushed limestone, but because the trail doesn't see a lot of use, grass will often take over a lot of the trail. Generally, the trail is easily rideable even on relatively narrow tires during the summer and fall. In the winter, spring, and after big rainfalls, take an on-road detour.

The trail ends in Brodhead and you're back on roads again. We're getting close to the Illinois border now. The only sign of the border: A sign for "State Line Road," and all the roads now have numbers. You don't go very far into Illinois: The southernmost control is a gas station near Lake Summerset, a gated community around an artificial lake.

 

Overall route is flat, but the terrain around the border has some ups and downs. We now go west and north toward the next control in Footville. The roads here are very sparsely traveled. Evansville is not a control, but if you're tired of gas station food, the route takes you right past a Piggly Wiggly supermarket. 

 

We continue northwest until we get to the next control in Oregon. There are stretches of on state or US highways in this section, but they add to less than a mile total and have paved shoulders. The official control in Oregon is a gas station. My recommended alternative for a stop: Firefly Coffeehouse just across the street. It's a great cafe with delicious baked goods, sandwiches, and cheese boards. They do close at 3pm however, and so depending on your pace, this may not be an option. 

 

Rather than taking the direct route back to Madison, we now head toward McFarland. This involves a beautiful stretch on Rustic Road 20, Dyreson Road. The highlight is a one-lane truss bridge across the Yahara River. McFarland is the last control before the finish. Just where you transition onto the Lower Yahara River Trail, take a photo of the Andrew Larson Park sign. The remainder of the route is all on bike trails, including Wisconsin's longest boardwalk. On weekends, these can be busy with people walking and biking, so be prepared to take it slow. 

If you have any feedback on the route or the cue sheet, please leave a comment here

Just across the border

Big fake sheep

[content note: Lots of stuff about eating, and not eating]

It's been over a year since I last did a 200 km ride. With the pandemic, there have been no organized brevets, water fountains and restrooms at parks were closed, and I didn't feel comfortable doing my usual gas station stops. With three water bottles this limited me to 120 to 140 km, depending on the heat. With a statewide mask mandate and the research on mask effectiveness, I felt okay embarking on a longer ride and refuel at gas stations when necessary. This Saturday conditions looked perfect. A high of 28°C (80 F), mostly calm winds from the NE, sunny.

The destination for the ride was a certain retail establishment located just across the Illinois border in South Beloit. The Strava route builder did a good job of suggesting a route, and I didn't have to spend too much time fine-tuning it to collect a couple more Explorer tiles along the way. The total distance was 196 km. Far enough, but I figured I could always add a little detour or two to make it to 200.

Because I would have the wind in my back for the first half of the ride, I didn't want to leave too early. No point in riding with a calm tailwind, only then to ride back when the headwind is strongest. This was fine by me and accommodated my usual slowness in getting ready in the morning. Two coffees and one bowl of oatmeal in me, I was won the road by 7:18am.

My recently repainted Gunnar was in tip top shape (minor rear derailleur indexing issues aside) and I felt great. As predicted, the wind wasn't strong but definitely in my back. At the current speed I calculated that I could be at the turnaround point well before noon.

The Peace Trail follows the Rock River and will eventually connect Janesville and Beloit

One thing I have been struggling with on long rides lately is eating. My glycogen stores were still full of yesterday's pasta and the bowl of oatmeal. I know I should keep eating all throughout the ride, but in the first couple hours into the ride I just didn't feel like it at all. I had had some vague plan to stop in Janesville, about 75 km in, but then of course my route didn't really go through Janesville but around it on the lovely Peace Trail. So by the time I got to the Road Ranger gas station in South Beloit, my turnaround point, I had only had one Clif Bar and one bottle of water. There I bought a bag of dill pickle chips, a bag of actual pickles, and a bottle of V8, but only half the bag of chips and drank the V8. I kindasorta knew that this wasn't going to be sustainable, but bike brain also stopped me from doing something about it.

Well, it did go alright for another hour on the return leg, but then my body started sending some "cough, cough, didn't you forget something??" messages. The first sign was that the lukewarm, slightly plasticky water in my bottle suddenly tasted absolutely amazing! I quickly downed my remaining two water bottles and set my eyes on finding a gas station quickly. It didn't take long until I got to Footville. The gas station looked vaguely familiar from previous rides and I bought a whole gallon of water. So far, so good. But apparently taking care of one bodily need made me lose track of that whole eating thing. I really enjoy sitting down on a nice bench to eat, and neither the gas station nor the Footville Memorial Park offered such amenities. "Ah well, instead of following the signs to Footville Community Park, which would take me slightly off route, I'll just keep going and stop in Evansville! Can't be more than 20k!" Yeah, I know.

Next bodily message, at the bottom of a hill, probably halfway to Evansville: "I'm not going to ride up there unless you feed me. Right. Now." Who's to argue with that. I just stopped on the side of the road and ate both a Clif Bar and a Clif Shot. This was enough to get me to Evansville, where I stopped at Lake Leota Park. I finished the remaining half of the chips and the pickles (note to self: pay attention and don't buy the spicy pickles) and kept drinking more water. This was plenty to console my body and get it ready for the remaining 50 km.

Have I mentioned that I like pickles?

I realized I couldn't make it back home by 4:20. (I'll leave it to my readers to figure out why this is relevant to this report). This provided a welcome excuse to add a couple kilometers and make a pit stop at the Hop Garden in Paoli. This is truly one of my most favorite spots, and a beer and a Pepsi were extremely delicious, 185 km into the ride. Once I got going again I noticed that my average pace had fallen just under 25 km/h. Not that it really mattered, but it provided a boost of motivation to get it back up to 25 and complete the 200 km in under 8 hours riding time. There are a couple minor hills Paoli and Verona -- not exactly conducive to raising the average speed -- and I did what my legs allowed me to do. Once I reached the Military Ridge Trail I was able to push the pace. And indeed, the display of my Wahoo jumped from 24.9 to 25.0 km/h maybe 5 minutes before I reached the 200 km mark, just at the city limits of Madison. Pretty good for a solo ride.

This was a great ride, and despite the eating/drinking issue I felt pretty good the whole time. Nonetheless, I'd like to figure something out about the eating issue. Maybe strictly pre-planned stops? Bring real food like I used to do on brevets? Set up an obnoxious alert on my phone or the Wahoo? Maybe embarking on a 300 km route, or a 200 km with more climbing will force me to come up with a solution.

Illinois Incursion: 150 gravely spring miles

As part of his preparation for the TransIowa race, Michael had announced another "long training ride," meaning about 240 kilometers (150 miles), a significant portion of it either on unpaved rail trail
or gravel roads. In theory that sounded like something right up my alley -- except that it was barely April. I had gotten in a good amount of riding in the previous weeks but am of course still not in
the greatest of shapes this early in the season. Combine that with the vagaries of April weather, and suddenly the ride looked a little daunting. Once I saw, though, that the weather forecast was about as
good as it can get at this time of year, I committed to the ride.

Jacob and Tyler on one of the first gravel roads we reached

Maybe the collapse of Wisconsin road funds will get us similar roads closer to home some day...

Incursing Illinois with me were Michael, Jacob, Tyler, and for part of it Steve. We have all ridden together before, and I think the size and constitution of the group was just right for such a long ride. Steve and I met up with the rest of the group at 5:20. The sun wouldn't be up for another one-and-a-half hours, and it was cold. I was only wearing thin wool gloves on my hands and wool socks in my summer shoes on my feet, making for a somewhat miserable experience. On the upside, there is something magical about riding into the dawn on a spring day. Frogs, birds, and the occasional rabbit were already out and about, and once we got into the country, a thin layer of hoarfrost covered the fields and wooden bridges on the Badger State Trail. Despite the heavy rain during the previous days, the trail was in not-too-bad a shape. Still, ruts, holes, and fallen branches did require our attention, meaning that I didn't take any pictures during the first couple hours of the ride.

Jane Adams Trail

In Monroe we made our first convenience store stop and also left the Badger Trail. Instead, we rolled along on country roads, which meant a faster surface but also the beginning of some rolling hills. And a dog: Jacob and I were a bit ahead when we spotted a black lab coming towards us from on the farms. It didn't look particularly threatening, but you never know. So we stayed alert and kept an eye on our new companion. He just kept running along and along and along... Only once we got to a farm with more dogs, maybe 2 kilometers down the road, did he get distracted enough and let us continue by ourselves. Soon after crossing the border into Illinois we also hit the first gravel roads, which were in pretty good shape and fun to ride on. The Jane Adams Trail then led us to the turnaround point, Freeport. We stopped at a—well, not that great gas station, where Jacob and I were immediately approached by a toothless guy in a car who wanted us to buy lottery tickets for him. Uh yeah.

The beautiful city of Freeport, IL...

...offers great amenities for the driving population.

Gravel roads + tailwind = bliss

Now turning north, we had a great tailwind for most of the way back to Madison. I felt great and couldn't resist upping the pace a bit. Our little group got spread apart and reunited a couple times until we hit the final rest stop, the Piggly Wiggly (for those of you not from around here: yes, that's the actualy name of a supermarket chain) in Brodhead. Tyler and I hammered along, doing some nice paceline work whenever we had a stretch heading into the wind. I knew the pace was too far in the red zone for me, but with "only" 70 kilometers ago I threw out common sense and kept going hard. We were pretty close to Madison when I started fading. Tyler kept disappearing into the distance and I finished the ride at a more leisurely pace and a coffee stop at Barriques, clocking in at 235 km on what was my earliest-in-the-year-ever 200+ kilometer ride.