Grand Tour RR

[Pain Freak]

Pix will be added at a later date (my riding buds took the pics so I'll have to wait till they email me them).

The day started out just plain weird. I had to get up at 1 am to get dressed and over to my bud's house as we were carpooling and all riding over together. I was outside loading my car when my neighbor pulls into his driveway. He sees what I'm doing and comes over to chat. (It's 1:30 in the morning). He say's he's been out on the town and should have taken a taxi, but he made it. I could tell in 2.3 seconds he had to much to drink, but who am I to judge? He asks what I'm doing and I tell him I'm doing the Grand Tour 200 mile bike ride. He just shakes his head and I can see him biting his lip. Finally he comes out with it ...Why? he asks, and I reply almost instantly without even thinking about it, "because, I can". Yep, that's it in a nutshell, because I can. I tell him I've got to get going as my friends will be waiting for me. I drive down the street to my buds house and when I get there I notice the place is dark....Oh shoot, please don't still be asleep. I knock on the door, no answer. I call his cell and a sleepy voice answers "hello"', yep, he was still asleep. Now I'm outside his house at 2:30 am and the place is unbelieveable, people coming and going, garage doors open, with music playing...come on people it's 2:30 freekin am??? A neighbor comes over and I' not kidding looks at me loading my frends bike and my bike in his truck and asks, "Going for a bike ride?"' I wanted to hand him a sign. There were people everywhere acting like it was 2 in the afternoon not in the morning. We finally get everyone loaded and get on the road 2 hours later then we'd planned.

Now on this ride I knew we were going to be going a little faster then normal as the testosterone twins were in full race mode ( 2 brothers who have a competeive streak wider then the Mississippi) along with Suzy who does double and triple Ironmans and a few others. This is a nice ride in that for the most part it hugs the coast, but does venture out to Ojai for lunch.Well we start out just like I thought, way to fast. I personally try to slow the group down, which worked for all of 2 minutes and we are back at it again. We were doing between 20 to 23 and holding steady at this pace. I try to tell the hammerheads, "Guys this is a loooonng ride"' and now we have lost a rider. Finally the group settles down and our rider grabs a pace line behind us and is pulled back up. We jump in with this group which is now running 20 people or so, but the speed is somewhat manageable at about 20 mph. The group is pretty cohesive and the TT twins are pulling and keeping it reasonable, but we still manage to seperate the group. We make it to the first rest stop and regroup, and fill our bottles and I'm ready to go. One of my friends who usually is as ready as me to go asap, is now in a socailizing mood and is off talking to everyone and I mean everyone.Finally we pry him out of there and off we go.We make excellent time to the next rest stop averaging over 20 and we all manage to stick together. Again we have to beg him to leave the rest stop, but it's all good we are having a fun time and enjoy all the joking going on. Now on to the next stop and lunch. The rides goes up a couple notches here and a few of us drop off the back. We get to this little town and have to find our way through it and of course I manage to get us lost. (hard to believe,huh). I stop to look at the route slip and see where I went wrong. Now I have a big group following us, as it did get confusing at this point and these poor fools don't know who they're following. So I'm out front with this new group and peddeling away, when I notice my friend has been dropped. I peel off and go back to look for her. She's gone! I wait for a while then I start asking people and no one has seen her, so I assume she got ahead some way.(she did as another group took a little short cut and ended up in front of us). I continue on now by myself as almost everyone else is in the same mode. Not many pace lines in this area. Now we have already covered our first century and we did it in 5:10, by far the fastest 100 miles I've ever rode. Now I have to break out the route sheet on a number of occassions and I'm also following the orange arrows the've painted on the ground....but I still manage to get lost. I'm riding up the 150, when I notice a SAG vehicle go ahead of me and pull over, the lady inside asks "Where, you going?", I reply "I'm lost, huh?" she say's "Yeah, by about 6 miles", and she gives me directions on how to get back. I didn't know this would take me around the lunch break, and off I go. I get a call about 30 minutes later from my bud, and he asks "Where are you?". I tell him and I'm 6 miles ahead of them now. So we agree to meet up at the next stop.So by the time I get to the next stop, I've got 105 miles in with no real rest stop, and I ran out of water 20 miles from the next stop, but I make it in and drink a gallon of water when I get there. Finally my friends show up and we regroup, but my legs are getting stiff and I need to ride despertly or I'm not going to make it. So everyone is ready except one guy is using the port a potty, and I tell them to catch me as I'll go easy. Well, I hook up with a fairly fast group and I ride in their paceline the whole way to the next stop and we just flat hauled arse. Waiting agin for my buds at the next stop and they pull in 20 minutes later as they'd had a flat. So now I'm ready to go again, but my bud is doing the socailizing thing again, so I tell my firends I'll give them something to work for and to try to catch me again. I'd seen the group I'd rode in with was getting ready to leave, so that I'd give them a run. We took off and this group took it up a noch and after 20 miles I wan't able to hang any longer and I fell off the back. Still I managed to ride by myself and keep a very good pace till we got to the last 10 miles of big rollers. I was on my second to last when Ironman Girl and another bud caught me, less the two miles from the finish.Arrgghh!!! My other friends had been dropped and were as much as a half hour back, so I was jazzed about that. Best time for a double, finishing in 13 hours total time with 11:00 hours ride time.

If you ever get interested in doing a double I highly recommend this one as the scenery and the riding is superb. Cool temps for the most part and the SAG's are stocked with Hammer Products along with tons of other stuff. Suzy is sponsored by a bunch of different companies so she already gets most this stuff for free, but I filled my jersey pockets with hammergels.


Sorry for the long post, but it was a long day.

Now I'll shut up.

[S54MCoupe]

I'm really bummed I couldn't make it. My legs are shot from all the riding I did this weekend.

11 hour ride time? Great ride! You must have been hammering it pretty damn hard.

All that is missing from your story are babes in bikinis, MILFS and other assorted goodies. I'm sure they were there, you just forgot to write it out.

[CC]

That's a great RR Mike. Excelent time - even with getting lost ...wow... that was a shocker! hehe