2013 La Ruta Loca Randonnée / San Francisco Randonneurs

I have long romanticized about riding LRLR, but never quite had the guts or form or confidence to give it a try. I've been riding more and more dirt in the past year or so (better scenery, no traffic, and much more exciting riding), so I put this challenge on my calendar for this year. This month is also month ten of an R12 for me. I did one a couple of years ago, and found it to be tremendously stressful for me; told myself I wouldn't do another, but sort of fell into one by accident. LRLR seemed like a risky proposition as far as the R12 goes, but it came early enough in the month that I'd probably be able to squeeze in a perm as a fallback.

Making cue & map cards

I do most of my riding starting from home in the east bay; much of the LRLR route was fairly or completely unknown to me, especially the offroad portions.  I read many LRLR ride reports, and saw that at least one rider had not finished due to losing his way.  Given the 150 turns on the cue sheet, I dedicated many hours to studying the route during the week before the ride.  I downloaded PDF trail maps from the various jurisdictions that manage the parks through which we'd be riding, and marked out the route in detail.  To complement the maps and cues, I downloaded map tiles and the .gpx route trace into a phone app so that I could GPS-locate myself with respect to the route at any time during the ride.

I planned out water stop and food logistics.  I figured that the big killer on this ride would be time wasted by not moving, so I tried really hard to figure out ways to get through the ride efficiently.  I packed two water bottles and wore a small Camelbak.  I put two hours (about 600 calories) of Perpetuem in each of two bottles, and packed two more two-hour batches in Ziplocs in my Camelbak pocket...along with some big bandages & medical tape.

I started out with a full Camelbak and one full Perpetuem bottle; the second bottle started out dry with the drink powder, with the plan to fill it at Pantoll at about mile 20, two hours into the ride.  My RuthWorks handlebar brevet bag held about 1300 calories of Hammer gel, four little packs of neon-orange junk food pb&cheese crackers, a peanut butter and honey sandwich on whole grain, an extra 100cal gel pack, a SpotGPS tracker, a brevet card wallet, iPhone, and a Ziploc with sunscreen, lip balm, small bandaids, ibuprofen, caffeine, and electrolytes.

With all of these "just add water" calories, I could compactly pack most of my food for the ride, and I could plan on spending no time on food purchases aside from pastries in Tiburon, the only receipt control.

A medium saddle bag carried tools & spares (three tubes & a tire, boots, cables, brake pads); the plan there was to (hopefully) never have to touch that bag.  I ran fabulous lightweight Schwalbe 700x35 cyclocross racing tires:  Sammy Slick file tread in the rear, Racing Ralph knobby up front.  The emergency spare was a 700x30 Grand Bois, which is light and folds compactly.  Carlos reported muddy conditions, so I decided to go with fenders.

Schwalbe Sammy
Slick out back

Schwalbe Racing
Ralph up front

On Saturday morning I got up around 4am, had my tea, some oatmeal, and fruit, and headed out.  I had been sure to get solid sleep the whole week leading up to this, so I was feeling pretty good even for getting up so early.

Rando attire

I carpooled from Berkeley with James.  (Thanks, James!)  We made good time to the City, arriving at Crissy Field at 05:30.  Jim G. and Carlos worked the sign-in.  Eleven riders took the start.  Yikes...I think I've done Permanents with more riders!

Nice Marin Headlands
climbs in the morning

The daylight increased as we made our way across the bridge, which is always spectacular.  Instead of rolling right past the Marin Headlands and down toward Sausalito's restaurants, shops, cars, and stoplights, we went west after crossing the bridge, straight into the stunning park.

Jeffrey & Carl
of Box Dog

The group stretched out on the trails.  I found myself with Jeffrey and Carl after a bit.  I rode with them through to the Muir Beach descent, onto Highway 1 and the road to Muir Woods, and up the climb to Pantoll.  More up after that...a bit more road, then more dirt grinding.

I had told myself to not waste any time taking pictures on this ride, but I failed pretty miserably at that.  (Well, I did ultimately pass up many "Kodak moments" just the same!)

My (prescription) glasses were proving to be an issue for much of the morning, as they would keep fogging up.  I resorted to just wiping them with my fingers as I rode; the streaks were a lesser evil than the fog coating.

At some point Carl's rear metal fender had a partial failure, and began making quite a racket; he planned to junk it at the first garbage can opportunity.

About this time a new knee / IT band issue I've been dealing with started to complain a little bit.  Grr, not good with 100 miles to go.  I bid Jeffrey & Carl adieu, and took a pause to stretch and then to just walk a bit on a short ascent.

Carlos soon came upon me, and we rode together.  He made a sudden stop on a bumpy, gravely descent; turns out he'd spotted Jeffrey's cue sheet Ziploc on the ground!  Whoops!

We met up with Jeffrey and Carl at the next info control.  Carl was removing his fender, and Jeffrey was happy to receive his card from Carlos.

Deer ahead!

I continued on with Carlos as we made our way through the trails and eventually onto the road.  We were pleased to see Ernesto (and some deer) join us.

Say hi to Charles
for me, Mat!

After the dam, a racer type said hello as came rolling past us, making good pace at an easy effort.  It was Mat!  Mat's a Cat 2 roadie on Squadra SF, races a bit of dirt, and is an all-around nice guy.  I cranked up my effort a bit, Mat sat up a lot, and we chatted for a good while as we made our way up the hill towards Bolinas Ridge.  Pretty soon I had to ease up, as I had a long day ahead, and I didn't want to keep Mat off of his pace for too long.

Carlos on Bolinas Ridge

Carlos, Ernesto and I turned off onto Bolinas Ridge.  THIS WAS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, AND WAS ENOUGH TO MAKE THE ENTIRE DAY WORTHWHILE.  Wonderful, magical forest, stunning, jaw-dropping views, tons of slippery roots, mud puddles to sail through, banana slugs to avoid, and lots of short little ups & downs and turns.  You could go hard as you liked, fast as you dared.  Woohoo, that's bike riding!

Local resident watches over
Carlos as he repairs shift cable

I followed Carlos, and Ernesto was behind me.  A bit of the way down the trail, Carlos stopped:  a broken rear derailleur cable.  I stopped too.  Ernesto seemed to have fallen behind or stopped earlier, as he was not there.  Carlos immediately began digging for his spare shifter cable.  I waited for him to find it -- I had one of my own to offer if his was AWOL -- and then headed on down the magical trail.

I wasn't solo for long, as Jeffrey and Carl soon caught up to me.  Jeffrey is a cyclocross racer; don't know whether Carl is or not, but they've both got mad skills.  I was happy to try to follow them and learn from their lines.  I'm sure I went way too fast through some of the mud, muck, roots, and sticks, but it was INSANELY fun riding hard and sliding / hopping / skidding / whatevering, anything to just hang on and get through.

All too soon, but after a lot of fun, hard work, we were at the next info control at the head of a mile-and-a-half descent to Highway 1.  This was a faaaast dirt descent.  I took third wheel, as appropriate to my relative skill, and down we went.  J&C stretched out ahead of me, but then, with Jeffrey ahead, Carl had come to a stop.  His edeluxe headlamp mounting bolt had liberated itself, leaving the lamp hanging by its wires.  I immediately inventoried my M5s, but each of them seemed to be dedicated to holding something together on my bike.  Carl immediately went to work to scavenge one from his fork; I resumed the bomber descent to go tell Jeffrey the news.

It's as if somebody
yanked Jeffrey straight
out of a BASP race. :)

I had to lift my bike to pass through the pedestrians-only barrier (strange on a bikes-permitted trail!) at the bottom.  I let Jeffrey know that Carl should be down in a minute.

He wasn't.  Hm.  Maybe his replacement bolt was not long enough?

I wanted to ride with company on 1 to PRS.  It's nice to ride in groups on the skinny roads with cars, plus there can be headwinds on that stretch.

I snapped a pic of Jeffrey and his muddy machine.  I stretched.  Carl didn't show.

Now, my plan was to treat PRS as nothing but a toilet and a spigot; no bovine bakery, no couch, no whale of a deli; just in & out.  I'd heard others saying the "L" word...but lunch, as an event, was something I was planning to not do until Sunday.

Collecting soil samples.

Ok, so how to both wait and use the time?  Ok, take off the Camelbak, extract another 600 calorie bag of soy+maltodextrin, and dump it into an empty water bottle. That way I could just pop the bottle top at PRS and fill & shake & go.  Done.  I also grabbed a nice, salty, dayglo pb&cheese cracker packet...that had turned to complete powder due to the rough ride...down the hatch.

Brakes!  Organic up front for modulation/control, metallics out back for longevity and for scrubbing lots of speed on long descents.  Disks, that is; cable models with fixed inner pads.  Both front and rear needed two clicks of adjustment on the inner pads at that point, and I'd started the ride with them adjusted close!  Wowzers.  Ok, got that done.

Carlos showed up next!  He said that Barley had stopped with Carl.  Huh.

Carlos headed out, and I jumped on his tail; Jeffrey waited for Carl.

Brilliant sunshine here on the highway, out from under the trees.  A ways down the road, Barley came out of nowhere like a steam train, went to the front, and pushed the wind for us for miles heading toward PRS.  Woohoo!!

I thanked Barley for his monstrous pull, and went directly to the little PRS public park a block over from the main drag, kind of behind the supermarket.  I washed the crud off of my bottles, filled up, and headed out of PRS solo.

Ohhh so *that's* why
they call it Platform
Bridge Road.  Huh.

What to say next?  A gorgeous day; PR/Petaluma Road, Platform Bridge, the entire length of the bike path through Samuel P. (with horses!), SFD, White's Hill.  I believe I rode this section with an intentionally-empty Camelbak, just using the bottles.

I had planned to stop for water at the cafe in Fairfax.  I hitched up with my long, thin cable with a tiny luggage lock; just enough to keep honest people honest, you could say.  A good bathroom break (didn't wear bibs, in the interest of time haha...TMI, I know...), a nice face wash (that feels soooo good!!), and waters all filled up.

I went back to my bike (still there! yay!), and saw World Champion Potis rolling past on his you-can't-spell-Pelican-without-"I can" Pelican.  Woot!  I got my steed unhitched pronto (I had started to lollygag, mentally), and raced stopsign-to-stopsign to catch up.

We made our way through the continuum of hamlets, and drifted apart.

The route sidesteps Camino Alto and does the Tiburon Paradise loop.  Really, the hamlets/bike route and much of that entire pavement stretch of LRLR was the most tedious slog segment for me on the day.  Sure, some nice glimpses of the bay from Paradise, and fantabulous weather, but it paled in comparison to the rest of the route...plus it had cars.

My IT band thingy really continued to nag all day.  I would compensate by favoring the other leg, which was getting tired faster, which became its own annoyance.  I had taken ibuprofen at 09:30 and again at 13:30.  It seemed to help, but the knee issue was a limiting factor for all but the first couple of hours.  (Figures...just when I get the saddlesore problem licked, I get this new limiter...sigh.)

Oh -- even though I'd ridden Paradise loop before, I stopped for a measure-twice-cut-once map check after turning too early onto Paradise at the car dealerships.  Potis rolled past and I got back on course.  I worked my way up to him, and I sucked his wheel (and nursed my knee) all the way into Tiburon.

If doing things at a control wastes time, John was showing a Zen-like mastery of not doing anything; he was in & out of controls like they were a speed bump.  (I dunno, it was almost like he was late for a hot date at the finish control or something...ya think?)

I bought my receipt...and a banana, cinnamon twist, and a berry jam cookie to go with the receipt.  That was enough calories to fill out the deficit in what I'd packed from home, plus a bit more.  I cycled my fluids, and saw Megan as I was making my way out to my bike.

I headed out in search of the World Champ jersey down the road, and found John by about the bike path or so.  Pretty soon Barley and Megan swooped in, and we were four!

What was particularly cool to me is not only were Barley, Megan and I each riding a Volagi Viaje...but Barley designed the dang bike.  How cool is it to ride with your bike's maker?!?

Au fur et à mesure (how do you say that in quite the same way in English?) we three Viajes separated from John.  I had well over 90 miles in my legs at that point, and was feeling them...but I was pining for the forest and the dirt.

I knew that that meant a looooong climb to the Inn, and thousands of feet of dirt climbing yet to go in the last stretch, but this ride was really amplifying the differences between street and trail riding for me.  On the dirt, I was *riding* my bike.  I was *operating* it, having to pick my line, negotiate obstacles, shift my weight, balance my brakes.  On the street, I was engaged in navigating the road and traffic.  Plus, of course, the scenery from the offroad portions was all fabulous parkland.  The dirt was more physically demanding, but even that was more gratifying.  Bring it on!

Volagi Viaje 3-pack.

Soon enough we were grinding our way up Tam.  My banana was delicious.  I had been wearing a long sleeve poly base layer, Mavic Vision jersey, and SFR Voler winter vest all day.  (The first few hours of the morning had a Mavic Vision vest over that.)  I finally got hot enough on the climb to the Inn to take off the winter jersey.  Yeah, ok, I run cold.  Still, though, it was sunny, gorgeous, and not really very hot.

People out on the trails, mountain bikes descending, and even a couple of MTB tandems!  The Inn was fairly quiet, aside from some folks playing horseshoes.  If I remember correctly, it may have been from here that we could see some fog starting to come back in over the ocean-side ridges.

Chatting with Barley, I learned that he not only designed my bike, but my hi-viz Camelbak model as well!  (He used to work at Camelbak.)  Dang, Barley, I need to have you autograph all of my gear or something.

Volagi Viaje 3-pack.

We posed the Viajes for some pictures.  Barley got a nice shot with the bikes up there on Tam, with Mt. Diablo in the distance.  (That's two of the four sacred Ohlone mountains, along with Hamilton and Umunhun, or so I understand.)

...and there was World Champ Potis!!  Wait -- and did Ernesto show up, too, as I recall?

John left before he arrived, I'm pretty sure, even though they would have allowed him on the porch.

Our three Viajes had The Will to Go, so off we went.  It may have been then that I donned my winter vest again; if not then, then soon after.  (Ok, so it wasn't that cold for normal people, but I'm funny that way.)

Cooling down

Pretty soon back on pavement, lots of zippy descending for the most part, right past Pantoll with bottles still full from the Inn...and pretty soon Miwok trail!

Even tired, it felt good to work it in the dirt.  Well, except for my dang stupid knee issue.  More wonderful natural scenery.  More stunning views.  Musings over whether or not "black" merited being counted as a color.  More very steep pitches...I like to try to grunt up them if I can, but figured it wouldn't slow me down much to walk the steepest ones, and it would give my knee a rest.  That was good.

I keep saying things like "stunning views," but the views of the Pacific were absolutely unreal that late afternoon.  The water was so very blue, and we were looking down on it from on top of the world, with low sun stretching through under the clouds.

We were making fabulous time, in the scheme of things.  I kept doing the math as we progressed.... "No problem if we hold 7mph average."  "We could have a couple of flats and still make it in."  "We're going to have real time to spare!"

Barley, up, up, & away!

The (mostly) smooth Headlands descents meant that swooping, easy speed could be released from right under your brake levers if you dared.  It was soooo fun.  Also, I was so torn....knowing that you're mentally and physically tired, that one bad or slow decision would spoil the whole ride, when all we needed to do at that point was to stay upright and bring it home.  Cross winds were a factor, too, but were relatively steady and predictable, as those things go.

But, yeah, I probably should have ridden slower both up and down at that point.  I probably shouldn't have caught so many glimpses of the ocean while the fine but potentially treacherous gravel crackled and zipped by under my tires, even on a bike made for exactly this kind of riding.  I didn't care; I couldn't resist having that much fun!

I was surprised by a fountain of cold water over my right side, when I realized I'd lost my Camelbak's bite valve.  Whoops!  I locked out the nozzle and rode on.  That turned out to be my only "mechanical" of the day.

Barley set a really nice pace up the last climb, back to Conzelman.  My bike was powered by elation and excitement at that point.  Could we really be set to finish with an hour or more to spare?!?

You shoulda been there to see this.

When we crested at the Conzelman circle, the Bridge had a surprise for us.  Its International Orange paint job was bathed in golden, nearly-horizontal sunshine at the end of the day, and we were viewing it from the "lit" western side.  So many of the bay's islands and buildings were bathed in this light, and it was made even more dramatic by the low, dark cloud layer covering the bay.  Magic again!  We took pictures.

Down, down, down Conzelman, through the turns, and the Bridge would duck out of view, and pop back again larger each time as we got lower and lower.  We found ourselves among the poor souls stuck in lines of barely-moving cars, all vying for unavailable parking places at the viewpoints.

The Bridge crossing is always exciting.  The wind delivered on its promise at the stanchions, of course!  Not the most crowded west side crossing, but plenty of oncoming Blazing Saddles handlebar bags comin' atcha just the same.

The trail along the bay was packed full of Multi-Users, for a little more excitement, but tailwinds at this point...and then the finish!!  Juliayn and Rob were working the finish, and Carlos was already done and kicking back.

Yay!

Juliayn took care of my paperwork, and I dug into the goodies.  We had finished with over an hour to spare!  It was only at this point that I came to understand how big of a goal this ride really was for me.  I have never done a ride that was this beautiful, AND this physically demanding, AND this mentally challenging.  I knew going in to this that there were many ways to DNF this ride:  wash out in a turn, get lost from the route, or just have a few too many important parts shake off of your bike.  Plus, for better or worse, there are a lot of bailout points on this ride.

And then I even cried a little bit, I was so happy!  I think that that was the biggest surprise of all for me; I really hadn't seen that coming.

Yay!

We learned that one rider had finished in true record time.  Soon after we arrived, Ernesto rolled up, and then Jeffrey & Carl not long after.  James had reportedly called it a day after losing a good deal of time due to multiple flats; that left two riders out on the course at the point, I believe.

I have homework.

I had a bowl of Rob's SuperMegaAwesome potato & leek soup, but that still wasn't enough to stave off the onset of post-ride chills, even with all of my layers on.  I bid the little group adieu, and made my way to BART.  I warmed up quickly pedaling across town in a tailwind.

I got back to Berkeley at 19:30, the happiest of campers, to a warm home, a hot shower, and a hot meal.  Wonderful!

(Strava record of ride.)