STP 2007

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Saturday July 14th was the annual Seattle to Portland (STP) bike ride. For the third year in a row, I was dumb enough to do all 204 miles in one day. I did it with the same core team of Peter Kellogg-Smith, Steve Wyand and Steve Schock. Also teaming up this year were Brian Patton, Laura Spencer and Kyle Yurchak for a total of 7 riders.

I commented in last year's report that I was in the best shape I had been in for some time. Well, this year I'm even stronger. I learned last year that doing a lot of long rides early in the season serves me well, so I focused on that again this year. That along with my daily commuting has given me some really nice conditioning.

We rolled out of the start at about 5:15am and avoided the usual chaos of the first few miles (STP attracts tons of riders who have no idea how to ride around other people). It was uneventful until the first food stop at mile 25. Brian was riding a little away from the rest of us and apparently we didn't communicate that we were stopping (he thought we weren't stopping until mile 55). He also left his phone in the car, so there was no way for us to reconnect. We were all bummed to lose a teammate, especially only 1/8 of the way into the ride. But there wasn't anything we could do so we rode on.

We had the usual great paceline riding along the West Valley Highway through the Kent Valley all the way to Sumner. Then up the only big hill of the ride at mile 44 in Puyallup (Laura's comment at the top: "That's it?!") and on to the second food stop at Spanaway.

Bob, father-in-law of the Steves (they're married to sisters), drove sag for us this year. We all got to provide our own food, so we knew we'd have vittles we liked. When we got to each stop Bob would already have a blanket spread out for stretching and the huge cooler with cold beverages. It was heaven.

Between Spanaway and Tenino we leapfrogged a guy in a CSC jersey a couple of times. I guess he liked our pace because he eventually joined our line. Normally you don't want strangers to join because you don't know and trust them (riding in a fast paceline is a huge exercise in trust), but he was doing well. Peter eventually introduced himself and found out the new guy's name was Amos.

In this stretch we also came across the guy I call the Bumble Bee. We first saw him on the Chilly Hilly ride in February and have seen him on several organized rides since. He is a big round guy and every piece of clothing on him and every piece of equipment on his bike is yellow and black. He's apparently a pretty strong rider (he was keeping pace with us for a few miles), but he could stand to learn some bike etiquette. I noticed in Tenino that he had laminated his bike number placard and added the text "Killer Bee" sort of like a license plate frame.

You don't really feel heat while riding at speed on a hot day because you're making your own breeze. But when you stop, you feel the sun like a heat lamp. That's how it felt when we stopped at the Tenino food stop. And it was only 11am.

After Tenino I was commenting that Amos must have ridden on by himself, but suddenly there he was in our line again. He had seen us leaving and hurried to catch up. So we adopted him and invited him to join the feast at the halfway point in Centralia. Amos rode with us the rest of the day, doing strong pulls and giving Steve Schock a run for his money.

Bob's sag catering got more and more seductive the farther we rode. Plus we started making the mistake of taking off our shoes at every rest stop. We have this pattern every year: ride really fast and blow by everyone on the road, then stay way too long at the rest stops so they all pass us again. We end up passing everyone else in the ride five or six times during the day. Oh well, the passing is fun! There is no feeling in the world like flying along in a paceline at 26 or 27 mph with friends you trust.

My main goal this year was to avoid the bonk. I especially wanted to avoid bonking in the section after crossing the Longview bridge (mile 150) into Oregon. I ate a Hammer Gel just before the bridge this year and it served me well. We all rode strong and stayed together to the last rest stop at mile 175.

At the last stop my body was done with eating. We estimate that someone of my size burns at least 7,000-8,000 calories on this ride, but you just can't eat that many calories in a day. To put that in perspective, if you ate only Clif bars (for example) that would equate to 35 to 40 bars. So while my body still felt fine, I was really concerned I'd run out of gas somewhere in the last 30 miles. I soldiered on and before I knew it we were coming into the outskirts of Portland and then we were at the finish at 7:13pm. 10:20 riding time (19.7mph average) and 14 hours wall clock time (see? long breaks!). Guess who was there? Brian. He had arrived at 5:30.

The weather was hot and muggy. Carol said the car thermometer hit 90 on her drive down to Portland. We all did well staying hydrated, although I had a pretty good headache by the finish. Several of us had big salt patches on our clothing. We had no flat tires or other mechanical issues. We had a couple of wheel touches with each other, but nobody went down.

Each year has gotten better for me. In 2005 I felt like the strong riders in the group dragged me to Portland (and I bonked at 80 miles but recovered). In 2006 I felt much better but bonked at 160 miles (then recovered). This year I faltered a little mentally at 175 miles but never bonked. Plus I felt like I really pulled my weight for the first time. That was satisfying.

There are more photos from Laura Spencer here.