A 300km DIY brevet to Kettle Moraine

My 200k ride two weeks ago went well. Near the end of the ride I started asking myself, "What would it be like to add another 100k?" I've ridden two 300k brevets before, one going really well, the other less so. Of course, organized brevets have all been cancelled due to COVID, and there are no sanctioned 300k permanent routes starting from Madison. So I figured I'd do a DIY brevet.

The difference between a DIY brevet and just a long ride? I dug up some of my knowledge about how to ride a good time and made a solid plan. The standard reference to this is an article in Bicycle Quarterly, where Jan Heine describes how he created his plan to ride Paris-Brest-Paris, a 1200 km ride, in under 64 hours. One of the keys is to minimize the time off the bike, and to do that you need to specify how much time you're going to spend at each stop. Following the article's suggestion, I created a spreadsheet to help me with the planning. 

 

Based on recent rides and the wind forecast, I figured I should be able to maintain an average moving speed of close to 25 km/h (15.5 mph). I made some adjustments to account for presumed hilliness of the sections and the fatigue in the later parts of the ride. The break schedule was aggressive. A 15 minute break? Sounds long, but it's all to easy to, as the Brits say, faff about and waste half an hour at a gas station. This costs you time while also not really providing much rest.  

 With sunrise a little after 6 am, I aimed for a 5:30 am start to maximize riding time with daylight. I was happy enough that I was on the road by 5:34 but that happiness didn't last long. About 2 km into the ride I saw a face mask in the middle of the road. That triggered an immediate, "Oh shit, I didn't pack a mask!" An additional 5 km and already 17 minutes behind schedule. Sigh.

The ride to the first control was uneventful. My legs felt in okay shape and there was hardly any wind. My route incorporated a tiny detour just before the control to collect two Explorer tiles. I skipped the first control in Newville as I still had plenty of water and wanted to make up some of the lost 17 minutes. At this point an unexpected drizzle had started. But I was making good time and at the next stop, in Whitewater, I was ahead of schedule. The lakefront park I had chosen for a 30-minute rest turned out to be so-so: The restrooms were locked and the lake turned out to be more of a swamp or marsh. But at least it had comfortable benches. I cut the 15 minutes break time down to 10 to account for having to make another gas station stop for water. 

The underwhelming lake view in Whitewater

 

The next section of the ride was my favorite. Kettle Moraine was already in view from just outside Whitewater. Oak trees, pine forests on sandy soil, gentle climbs on windy roads, good views. If this were closer to Madison, I'd ride here all the time. And based on the number of roadies I encountered, I'm not alone in this assessment. 

 

Eventually the moraine ended and the country of giant mansions on private lakes and Donald Trump election signs began. The next control was in the Town of Oconomowoc (population 98.74% white; 2018 vote share Scott Walker: 74%). Nobody at the gas station but me wore a mask, including the staff... I had calculated my arrival time based on a segment speed of 23 km/h, assuming that the hills of the Kettle Moraine would slow me down. But they had been gentle enough for me to arrive at the half-way point or the ride with 30 minutes in the bank. 

Looking for ways to stay healthy? Wear your f'ing mask

 

Those 30 minutes would come in handy for the next segments. The wind had picked up and came from the northwest. Which way did my route take me? Well, first north, then west. In addition to the cross/head wind, there were constant rolling hills, which I hadn't expected. And the route was dead straight for the most part. So it was a bit of a grind, mentally and physically. 

 

By the time I got to the next control, in Watertown I was a few minutes behind schedule. Or was I? Losing 30 minutes over 44 km seemed like a lot. Trying to claw back time, I skipped the Watertown stop (only 5 minutes anyway) and pressed on toward Waterloo. Once I got close to town and checked the clock, it looked like I would get there ahead of schedule. Weird: I certainly didn't feel any faster between Watertown and -loo, and I wondered if maybe my schedule sheet was wrong (I checked today, and it wasn't). Who knows.

In Waterloo I was scheduled for another "long" break, at half an hour. I bought supplies at a gas station, but it didn't have any seating. By the time I got to the nearby Firemen's Park, only 20 minutes of break time were left. Let me tell you: This break schedule was brutal. But the schedule is the schedule.

From here on I was in semi-familiar territory again. It was nice to recognize some of the road names from previous rides. But the wind had gotten stronger and the grind continued. What helped me get through this was listening to a podcast interview (in German) with Phil, an ultra-cyclist with a very chill-but-intense and inspiring attitude about riding your bike over long distances.

 

I probably was dehydrated and undernourished at this point, despite what I thought to be a decent job of chugging water, Clif Shots and Bars, and (a new addition to the arsenal) Tailwind. My body was in underpowered Diesel engine mode: Fine at constant speed, but slowing down drastically on every uphill. My heart rate for the most part refused to go into Zone 3. 

The last control before Madison was the general store in Keyeser. I had been there once before and wasn't counting on the store actually being open. But it was closed indeed and the faint hope for a Pepsi was squashed. No luck. I was 19 minutes behind schedule now, with 35 km to go. All south from here on, that is, no longer into the wind. Maybe with skipping the 5-minute stop at Keyeser I could make up the remaining 14 minutes and arrive on schedule?

To increase my chances, I followed advice I had just learned from the podcast with Phil. He describes how during ultra races he often catches a second wind in the evening hours. "I'll put on an awesome set on my speakers, real bangers. And then: Kopf aus, Beine an." Brains off, legs on.

The "brains off" part probably worked; the "legs on" less so. And so it was 7:42pm when I rolled in. Twenty-four minutes behind schedule, with a total elapsed time of 14 hours 12 minutes and 12:40 in the saddle. This was faster than any of my 300k brevets (14:26 and 15:12). Of course on an actual brevet you don't have the option to just ride through controls -- you have to stop at least long enough to get your brevet card signed, which can easily cost you 5 to 10 minutes each time. But on the other hand, I didn't benefit from any drafting, and there were the 17 minutes lost to forgetting my mask.

 

Conclusion? Well, I'll just copy and paste the one from my ride report from the previous 300 km (where incidentally my moving average was exactly the same):

My moving average was much lower [than on my first 300k], 24.6 vs. 27.4 km/h, but I spent half an hour less at the stops. This pretty impressively shows that a fast brevet is not so much the result of riding fast but of having efficient stops.

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.