Logistics

Let's kick Tuesday off with a comment.

Walter

"Norm, I know you are an early riser, but with a 9 am start and an almost 3 hour drive, you would have to leave bright and early. Plus I dont know how much time it takes once you arrive to get ready. Would you pack the car the night before or the morning of? I guess now that I think of it, you could probably handle a 4 am wake up. What about food, do you eat on the way, or before you leave? Just stuff to consider. I agree with you on the movies, Airplane, Spaceballs, Naked guns, all get better every time you see them, you always catch something new. Found Dyslexia For Cure"

You're right, absolutely. I'm glad you guys are here to point out my egregious errors in judgment. While I can pull off a 4:00 am wakeup, driving to the venue the morning of the race just presents problems. First of all who wants to get up at 4:00? Secondly, you won't drink as much water as you should because you're in the car and stopping to pee makes the drive that much longer and more tedious. Third, driving just tires you out which is a bad way to start a big race. Being at the registration earlier makes the process go faster. So yes, going out the night before makes much more sense which is what I'm going to do.

With that I will say I really enjoy planning for big days and events. While the race Saturday doesn't qualify as quite the same caliber as the 24 Hours of Allamuchy, it is an overnight, full day affair that takes more planning than hopping in the car and riding around Chimney Rock for 2 hours. As I have repeated, I look forward to it.

So the plan is to work from home Friday, which has been cleared with my boss. I'll leave around 4:00 and hopefully be out there around 7:00. I would prefer to leave later but I'd rather setup camp in the daylight so I'm not going to push for too late. There's local camping, the details of which I need to work out. I also need to register for the race but I'm going to save that until after I make sure I can camp somewhere easily. I also want to make sure that the forecast isn't for 99 degree heat or a torrential downpour.

I'll need food for driving out, breakfast, and driving home. And coffee. It would probably be a good thing to bring the cooler with plenty of water and food. After the race it will be nice to have some cold food and drinks to drive with. They supply dinner after the race but you never know what you get with that or even what time it starts. It would suck to have to wait 2 hours to get a burger.

I need on-bike calories as well as salt/electrolytes. Not sure if I'm going with just salt or both. The food will be Perpetuem. Also going to need the normal bike checklist stuff plus a printout of the registration. I need to take my list from Granogue and edit it to make it more complete and take out some of the overkill items.

Directions to camp and then to the race. Failing that I don't think there's much else I need. I tend to think in big steps. Basically as such:

* Register to race
* Prep to ride (standard)
* Drive to camp
* Sleep
* Drive to race
* Ride bike for 6 hours
* Drive home
* Eat and drink through all of it

If you can cover those basics, you're good to go. I really don't go crazy with the bells and whistles you get used to at home. Basically you need to get there with your bike and equipment, then from there you can more or less buy what you need on the fly or wing it. The race has 4 aid stations so even if you brought no food you'd be fine. If it's not too hot you could get away with bottles. I may even mount the lower bottle cage and bring a small bottle on the underside of my down tube and see if I can hop between aid stations on nothing more than bottles and use the camelbak as a camelbackup.

So now.

This is where I ask you for help. You come in at this point and tell me what I'm forgetting or fucking up in my plan. I look to you, my trusted readers to guide me in my usual errant ways.

Motionbased was never able to upload yesterday's file. I got impatient and mapped out the course on Bike Route Toaster and it came out to over 3000 vertical feet in 33 miles. My average was 15.5 for the ride. So really, less is more. My advice to me: Ride like that Saturday and everything should work out well. Take the hills as they come, don't plow up them. Slow and steady, nice and easy, everything will work out from there, cha cha cha.

On the bike again today. I had been falling into the habit of not getting myself ready to ride the night before which made getting out the door take longer. Last night I was good for a change. I packed my lunch and got both my bike clothes and work clothes ready. Then I proceeded to hit snooze to wash away any time I saved. When I got out the door, I needed to put my battery on because it's getting darker every week now. And then my backup rear blinker which I never got to last week.

As an aside, for those of you who ride the road at night (or early morning) the rear blinker light is by far the more important of the lights to have, in my opinion. Mine cost 6 dollars at Target. The front light systems are prohibitively expensive. But the rear blinker is a few bucks.

By the time I got rolling it was 5:17 as opposed to the usual 5:19. So baby steps here. I'm still getting mentally adjusted to the fact that it's squarely mid-summer and I'm riding in the dark already. Let's not forget the temperature this morning, a balmy 56 degrees at roll time. Upside? I got to take another rare summer hot shower.

The ride was basically up a huge hill, then down the other side, then back up a different way, then back down and home. I didn't have a lot of juice today so I didn't even average 15 mph. That's fine since this route probably had close to 2000 feet of climbing in 20 miles or whatever. Legs still tired from the weekend so tomorrow I'm just going to cruise control my big swamp loop for 90 minutes.

After the ride was another mad rush to get everything done. Walked in the house at 6:45 which gives me 33 minutes to get back out. Grind coffee in the basement, brew coffee, pack bag, eat watermelon, shave (huge time waster here as I should really do this at night), shower, post-shower, toast bread, get dressed, drink coffee and eat, breathe, fart, write senator, cure leprosy, shave cat, acquire cat to shave, and get out door. I forgot to drink any water but I managed to make my wife coffee and half a bagel while I inhaled my cashew butter and honey on toast and tried to enjoy my coffee.

Tuesday means that Saturday shows up in the 5 day forecast. Harrisburg looks fair for the week, some scattered thunderstorms which is typical for this time of year. Temps in the mid 80s down to mid/upper 60s at night. Really the forecast is exactly the same each of the next 5 days. No heavy rains and no mid-90s so we're good to go.

I feel like a breakfast sandwich. Food tastes too good sometimes. Be good.