{"id":3666,"date":"2021-10-10T12:10:29","date_gmt":"2021-10-10T18:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/?p=3666"},"modified":"2021-10-10T12:10:29","modified_gmt":"2021-10-10T18:10:29","slug":"epoch-caldwell-300k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/2021\/10\/10\/epoch-caldwell-300k\/","title":{"rendered":"Epoch-Caldwell 300K"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/ridewithgps.com\/embeds?type=trip&#038;id=76718486&#038;sampleGraph=true\" style=\"min-width: 100%; height: 700px; border: none;\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After scratching in <a href=\"https:\/\/transambikerace.com\">TABR 2021<\/a>, I decided I needed more experience with distance riding before I attempted it again, so I joined the local <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Randonneuring\">randonneuring<\/a> group. Randonneuring has two kinds of ride\u2014brevets, which are organized date-and-day events, and permanentes (or perms), which you can ride whenever you want. There are certain standardized distances in either case, and yesterday I rode a 300-km perm. I covered about the same distance on <a href=\"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/2021\/06\/06\/ride-report-corvallis-or\/\">Day 1 of TABR 2021<\/a>, although that was cold, rainy, and windy; yesterday started out cool and warmed up to be pretty hot, with a slight tailwind on the outbound leg and a stronger headwind (it certainly <em>felt<\/em> stronger) on the return. In any case, this was only the second time I&#8217;ve ridden this distance.<\/p>\n<p>I started out at 6:00 AM in darkness and rode for about an hour before there was any sunlight. After that, the morning was very misty, and whenever I would ride through a low-lying spot, visibility was probably only 50&#8242;. The mist burned off by 8:30 or so. Riding through that was surreal. I was mostly on roads I know well up to that point, but not being able to see around me made them unfamiliar territory.<\/p>\n<p>I pushed on past the first control in Taylor, about 40 miles in, without stopping. After that point, the route took me on unfamiliar roads to get to a familiar place\u2014Apache Pass\u2014and then to Rockdale, where I did stop for a snack at the second control. Pushed on from there through the community of Black Jack, which I had never heard of, to Caldwell, where I discovered I had crossed from the burnt orange zone of football allegiance to the maroon one. Stopped at a Subway for solid food, topped off my hydration pack, had a Snickers bar for good measure, and headed back.<\/p>\n<p>I had been making pretty good time to this point for relatively little effort, but knew I&#8217;d be facing a headwind on the way back. I can see now that my average heart rate for the first half was 120 bpm, 125 bpm for the second half. In hindsight, I think I could have pushed the pace on the outbound leg a little more, but I was mostly concerned about having enough in the tank to make it home.<\/p>\n<p>When I made it back to Apache Pass, at mile 132, I was dealing with hotfoot and stopped to give my feet a break. That helped a bit, but not enough, and not for long enough. I stopped again in Taylor to fill up on water, even though I probably had enough to make it the rest of the way back. I wanted to give my feet another break, and I wasn&#8217;t sure how long the next 40 miles would take, since my speed was dropping steadily.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I can ride through hotfoot and get comfortable again. That didn&#8217;t happen. I just toughed it out. Apart from that, and being generally sore and tired in all the ways you&#8217;d expect, I felt pretty good when I finished. My left knee felt a little tweaked over the last 30 miles or so, but was not concerning. I didn&#8217;t feel any of the Achilles&#8217; tendon trouble that I did in the TABR. I ate half a family-sized King Ranch Casserole from Central Market for dinner, and went to Bobo&#8217;s for a beer.<\/p>\n<p>This morning when I woke up, I did not feel pretty good. I had a headache and nausea, in addition to fatigue. I can get by for a long time on a deficit of water, electrolytes, and calories\u2014I rode the recent <a href=\"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/2021\/09\/12\/mueller-lexington-mueller-200k\/\">200K brevet<\/a> on four Clif bars, one Snickers bar, a bottle of Gatorade, and the water and electrolytes I was carrying from the start\u2014and I think I set a personal best for 200K. But clearly my limit for riding on deficits is somewhere short of the 300K mark, and I&#8217;m pretty sure it was the insufficient water and electrolytes that did it. I took in a couple glasses of electrolytes (I use Vitalyte, fwiw) and felt a lot better.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3668\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3668\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/content\/0DB2E054-117E-4119-8E45-953F0D1B7B6D-scaled.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/content\/0DB2E054-117E-4119-8E45-953F0D1B7B6D-1024x768.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3668\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3668\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This was a lucky shot. The light was changing very quickly, and as soon as I stopped moving, my glasses fogged over.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3669\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3669\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/content\/6392590D-6EC7-4649-AB86-4D402F9DCA0C-scaled.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/content\/6392590D-6EC7-4649-AB86-4D402F9DCA0C-1024x768.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3669\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3669\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">You don&#8217;t usually see a lot of longhorns. Unlike most cattle, these guys were curious about me and were approaching as I shot this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/content\/CF438E84-A6F3-4FE7-8F67-38CE566F8BAF-scaled.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/content\/CF438E84-A6F3-4FE7-8F67-38CE566F8BAF-1024x768.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-3670\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/content\/9E0740C1-C6DA-455F-BC7D-29BA47D464AD-scaled.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/content\/9E0740C1-C6DA-455F-BC7D-29BA47D464AD-1024x768.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-3671\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After scratching in TABR 2021, I decided I needed more experience with distance riding before I attempted it again, so I joined the local randonneuring group. Randonneuring has two kinds of ride\u2014brevets, which are organized date-and-day events, and permanentes (or perms), which you can ride whenever you want. There are certain standardized distances in either [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epoch-caldwell-300k","category-ride-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}