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| I had my own fan club at the starting line - felt VERY cool :) |
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| There were about 10 guys who didn't join the photo. Here, 52 riders at the starting line, but only 14 left at the finish. |
First Half - Flat with a few hills, breezy, very warm, lovely countryside views.
Second Half - Intense climbs, rain 3 times, steep descents, steaming hills, beautiful beyond belief...
I got annoyed at my partner for showing up late to the starting line, and that was not the best thing for my attitude. It even took me many hours before I decided to get over it, and actually thinking about it now, it is hard to remember the details of the first few hours of the ride. I like the group ride aspect because I would finally get a chance to meet several other riders ALL interested in longer rides, I don't actually have a single friend (that I know of) in my province who likes the idea of 200+km rides. I am always riding alone, and paying to enter this event meant that at least I would be guaranteed some long hours to chat with, or just ride beside, some new people. Instead, getting there late (because I did still wait for him), meant that all the other riders were already ahead, and riding in a group, getting a 10-15 minute head start, meant that either
A) we would need to push hard to catch up to them, using very valuable energy totally unnecessarily that early in the day, facing tons and tons of miles left to go
or
B) we wouldn't see many people again until the 2nd or 3rd checkpoint, several hours at least. By this time, the groups will be breaking up, and many people will not be nearly as talkative once the Thailand sun starts to work on their already tiring bodies... ours as well :)
This area is between the provinces of Sukhothai and Phrae, very lovely rolling hills, none of them more than 10-20 meters up and down, pretty much the ideal way to make the first hours (and first 100km) go by quickly.
In this photo you can see my birthday present, the bag that hangs from the seat and seatpost, made by the British company Apidura. Quite expensive, but after several weeks of long and rainy rides, I can say that it is completely waterproof, reliable, strong, lightweight, everything it advertises, it is a really great bag. Also, it can scrunch up, or extend quite far out, I am sure it would fit a small sleeping bag if I needed it to... In this ride it was holding some tools, some dry food, an extra change of cycling clothes (I appreciated the rainproof part IMMENSELY about 15 hours after this photo was taken. I had a full set of dry clothes to change into, and at 6AM after riding very close to all night, oh the relaxation, the lifted spirits, the simple things in life :) ). Nice bag!
This is around the 200km mark, and where we started reaching the first actual hills (not just 15 metres up, 15 down). This was about 4pm, blazing hot, and I was behind my planned schedule by about 1 hour. Not worried about that at all yet, but it was just so hot that I chose to stop and take a nap. I actually had some friends in Phrae, the route passed directly in front of their house!, and I stopped to knock on the door, they were home, so I slept on their porch for about 45 minutes. Took a shower, had dinner together, and then I set out again at about 6pm.
The next 80km to Uttaradit is where things started to diverge from what seemed to be my well-planned schedule. Some cool wind began to blow, the kind that smells like rain. A lovely smell, but not one that I was ready for... I expected it to rain the next day, once we really got into the mountains, and guess I just need to be better at mentally handling the adverse conditions. Keeping my spirits up was a bit hard for the next 8 hours, and my ultra-sleepy self wanted to fall down and just sleep, sleep, sleep... I don't think I actually wanted to quit, but I just desperately wanted to see the sun coming up. This night was hard, super hard, harder for me than all the thousands of vertical metres climbed the next day. Dealing with a sleepy head while riding is clearly the toughest part for me on the massive riding days.
This photo below is from about 5:40am, the lovely rays of sun just peeking over, the rain slacking off as the air warmed up again, I felt relief breaking over me as we pulled into the 6th Checkpoint only 30 minutes ahead of the cutoff!! This marked exactly 24 hours, the distance so far was 368km, and we were way, way behind. We had stopped at the previous checkpoint to wait for the rain to pass, and decided to catch a few hours of sleep. Between the mosquitoes, the hard benches, and driving wind/rain, I think we each managed about 90 minutes of sleep. The guys running the checkpoint actually left us, with the kindness of parting gifts even :) leaving us the remainder of the snacks, a ton of water, and maybe some hopes and prayers :) clearly they didn't think we would continue, and it seemed as if they were leaving us breakfast for the next morning.
I can gladly say, it was with GREAT pleasure, and no hard feelings whatsoever, that I smiled in their faces as I passed them on the slopes of the steepest climb, about 18 hours after they left us in Uttaradit. Seeing those rays of sunlight were everything to me, and even though I was still nearly exhausted pulling into that 24 hour checkpoint stop, even though my legs did not feel like standing up again, those beautiful rays of sunshine just put some hope back into me, and it was enough to keep going. I read some other rider's blog post, a rider of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Trail (many, many times more epic than the measly 375 miles I did here), and he said something like, "always wait for the sun to come up before you decide to quit. When the morning comes, many things can change.:"
Now, I don't want to overlook the help I got from this guy right here, Neung, the guy in the photo, he was a great friend through the night. I did end up finishing before him, I did better climbing the steep hills than he did, but I know in my heart that he could have been several hours ahead had he not waited to encourage me through the 2am-5am section. We must have been riding pretty slow (I have almost no recollection of anything except annoyed feelings at the barking dogs (which maybe weren't even there? :) ) the lack of light, the wetness, the want of sleep, haha nothing external really, almost everything inside my head)... He stayed with me, I followed his light, and although tortuously slow progress was made, it was still progress. We made it through the night! I only crashed once, simply fell over from being so sleepy. I must have been barely rolling because I wasn't hurt, and the spill at least woke me up for the next 10 minutes or so...
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| Still looking grim, but I had a feeling that we would be out into the sunshine soon! |
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| One of the guys in charge of the event planning, he called us all back to take some photos. |
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| He asked me to take these for him, but hey I liked them, I'll keep them here too! |
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| The road was more or less fully paved, the broken sections were easy to spot, and it was a great day from here on... |
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| Passing through the Phu Soi Dao National Park |
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| Very close to the park entrance, this is at an elevation of about 1,000 metres (3100 feet). |
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| This has to be my favorite shot, it does well to capture the feeling of our surroundings. Light rain off and on for all the hours of the morning, beautifully thick vegetation, jungle like surroundings, at times the sound of birds and insects would drown out any other noise around, so so cool... Thanks to the organizers for picking this route! You did well! |
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| Border with Laos, and from here we headed almost straight South, all the way down to Dan Sai, and on to Lom Sak. |
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| Amazing, Stunning, I actually could not even force myself to stop grinning - these fields and views were of perfection, the countryside here was full of grinning farmers, laughing back at me even, many kids riding bikes of their own, beautiful birds, cows and buffalo, it was just Perfect. Right around the 500km mark, and I felt better than I did at kilometer 200! My mood changed with the scenery, it went up and up and up... |
There were 5 big climbs, all in a row, 1 smaller climb before them, and 2 more large climbs right before the end. After coming in at the halfway point in absolute last place (many riders had already dropped, but of those remaining I was indeed the farthest back). After passing people on the climbs though, ones and twos, sometimes a group of five or six riders strung out in a row, my mood just got even better. You can see an example below, those were all guys in this event (there was one girl too, but I guess she doesn't use Strava). The order you see there was pretty much the same on every climb, I made up a lot of time in this section, and finished only a few hours behind the leader. I was very excited to learn about this along the way, but really what happened was both awesome and not so awesome. I had amazing energy pretty much out of nowhere, I could not have expected to enjoy all the climbing like I did, do as well as I did, and really all the guys I was passing were doing what I should have been doing. Saving energy, taking it all in, stopping when the body said stop, taking care of themselves, stuff like that. I was basically racing, pushing myself to get back into a reasonable time limit, and I will fully admit that I was NOT at all in the mood to ride again the next day. Of all the guys I passed, I am sure that many of them were just relaxed, ready to ride the next day, maybe even several days, and that Brevet events like this are not really about who finished first, who passed who, and they are much more about endurance - being able to ride 4 back to back days of 300km each is much, maybe taking 16 hours to do it, but still doing it, that 1,200km is much tougher and much more impressive to me now than being able to do a 300km in under 10 hours, but being near exhaustion by the end of it, not fit for much more than sleeping and eating for the whole day.
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| Last photo of the ride, just before it started getting dark. This is beginning the descent down from Dan Sai, the town is in a valley, very picturesque from both the bottom and top. You have to climb and descend to reach the town, and then climb again to get out of it. I think my highest speed was reached just passed this point, I think I hit 68kph (37mph?) |
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| A list of what I ate over the past 40 hours |
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| On the way home, stopping by to visit yet another of the little lookouts I have found exploring with my mountain bike. This one is a Fire Tower, very close to the main entrance of Nam Nao National Park. |
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| Putting my bike in the back of the rental car. It fit so easily, such a blessing. |
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| I got to act as tour guide for this trip - one of my absolute favorite things to do, showing other foreigners (or Thai, which I have also done!) around Thailand, showing them how many cool things this country has to see and do, none of which have to be expensive! This is a little coffee shop someone built behind their house, they grow rice on terraces extending down the hillside. The view here is incredible, and you can see all the way out to Loei provinces (I am in Petchabun, and you can see a mountain in Loei, Phu Reua, maybe 200km away?) |
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| Climbing on some cool rocks we found along the way. In my opinion this is one of Esaan's best kept secrets!! Hin Chang See, not a National Park, but it is a protected forest area. A personal goal of mine is to take the KOM on the climb getting up here, its about 10km long and has 1km of 9% gradient. (I am currently 6th out of 220, still got a ways to go for that top spot!!) |
A good chance to think about the year, focus on things that I have done wrong that I could have done better, a chance to be thankful yet again for all the great things I have in this life, and a moment to self-motivate and re-coordinate my own decisions to fight on in the face of whatever it is that I may be struggling with at the time.
This year has been a bit easier work-wise, the easiest year of teaching I have had yet, and the only struggles I have come across have really been more along the lines of struggling to be useful! I have more free time than I am comfortable with, but I am forced to spend much of it sitting at a desk, waiting for my fellow staff to be both free and willing to approach me for help on their papers, or just their everyday conversational English skills.
I have appreciated my time outdoors more than ever this year, loving the miles I put in on my bicycle, and enjoying more and more the beautiful places I have been able to visit, the cool and memorable people I have met along the way (most of them not cyclists, but there were definitely those as well!).
Last year, I happened to read about a group of cyclists called 'Randonneurs,' a type of ride which puts more emphasis on endurance, but also on enjoyment of the act of cycling in general and all that it brings with, as opposed to competition. The idea is, in my mind anyways, that the planned routes are hard enough that it is worthwhile just to make the effort to finish. The 'place' one comes in is not really the focus, but just having finished this race or that route, build friendships through the tough times and beautiful views shared while enjoying the main thing that brings them together in the first place - love of this two-wheeled vehicle.
The events are of set distances, 200km, 300km, 400km, 600km, and finally 1,000km. Yes, that is not a typo! These are all to be completed within time frames as well, using checkpoints along the way to act both as a safety net, but also a measure of progress within the ride. If you do not reach a certain point in the event by a certain time, you must try again another day. You can keep riding of course, its all fun and good practice, but you will not be awarded the honor of finishing the course on that day.
Many people only do the 200's, some just the 200-300, which are plenty hard enough! These two distances though, rarely see the need to consider sleep deprivation as an added difficulty. With the 400km distance and above though, things start to get pretty tough, in more ways than one might think! The longer distances start to require lights, safety clothes (high-visibility clothing for night-riding), maybe some extra food as the route stretches into areas without 24-hour serviced stores, one may have to consider packing rain gear... a big difference than just setting out to ride 120 miles in one shot (the Imperial equivalent of 200km).
Ever since I heard of this group, the number 600 stuck in my mind. It immediately seemed to be the toughest, in terms of planning for sleep, having enough down time, while also balancing the checkpoints along the way. I very nearly missed the 4th checkpoint in my own 600 (the 4th of 8), and I can't say I wouldn't have been more than a bit disappointed with myself over the poor planning that caused this...
Last year, I climbed the highest mountain in Thailand, Doi Intanon, on my actual birthday, but this year the thing I wanted to do happened to be a few weeks before. No matter, it was still such an epic way to say goodbye, not just to the 29th year of my life, but also the 3rd decade of my life as well!!
Having only done 200 and 300km rides before (I failed on both of my previous attempts at a 400km ride, and I would chalk both of these DNF's up to my lack of planning for sleep!), the jump to a 600km sounds pretty significant. I think of it like this though - riding 200km in one shot is already a pretty crazy thing to do. For someone who is not (not yet :) ) a veteran cyclist, imagine some place 62 miles from your home (100km), and then how long it would take you to ride a bike there and back. You can take however many breaks you want, even take a nap if you need one, but you have to make it out and back in under 13 hours. All distances for these events require an overall average speed of 15 kilometers per hour. Not a riding pace, because 15kph is actually quite slow, its almost difficult to ride this slow unless in a headwind :), but this is 15kph total speed.
So, the math looks like this:
a 200km Brevet must be completed in 13 hours,
a 300km in 20 hours,
a 400km in 27 hours,
and a 600km in 40 hours.
This is the series required to be called a Super-Randonneur, and the series must be completed in 1 season. The 1,000km is a common enough distance (now that I look for these people, there are quite a lot of them, in every country in the world!) but the thousand is beyond the requirement for a Super-Randonneur. This distance has a time limit of 75 hours, and actually there are also time limits for a 1,200km ride, 90 hours, as the biggest, most famous Brevet is the Paris-Brest-Paris, an event which has over 6,000 people participate in 2015! It runs once every 4 years, so if you feel like joining in 2019, start saving money, and start riding insane amounts of miles on your bike :) in the rain would be best :)
Does it sound tough? For sure, its a crazy thing to do! Riding that far on a bike is not something that one can do without a bit of practice first, but, after a few times, and then after a few dozen times, it is kind of incredible to me that I now somewhat consider 200 to be the baseline for any solid day of riding. Not kidding! Of course there are a small group people who ride their bikes way more than I, can handle incredible things that I would faint in the attempt, people who could do a 200km ride literally on any given day, and then there are also professionals who train with numbers like that all the time. But, for a normal person to go out and spend 8 hours straight, doing nothing but pedaling and sipping water, smiling at the world passing by... it might seem funny.
This was a goal of mine, all the way back when I chose to buy a bicycle instead of a motorcycle. I wanted to be able to ride anywhere, no matter how long it took, and still be able to be useful, in one piece, and smiling, when I got there. One of my favorite places in Thailand, Chiang Mai, is about 600km from where I live now. The thought of riding there in one shot sounds incredible, maybe even idiotic, but the ride I did from July 19 to 20, 2016, actually makes that ride sound fun!
According to these rules then, a 600km ride needs to be finished in 40 hours. Over the past 12 months or so, I see that I can average about 24kph on any terrain, any weather, a grand total of average speed over all my rides this year. As I was going to be on a road bike, I would easily ride faster than this, but given the time needed for eating (for me much more important than sleeping), grabbing water, checking on bike issues that may arise, and any other problem which could happen day or night while out alone on the road for 40 hours, I knew that 24kph riding speed was a pretty safe (if not maybe even too fast!) number to shoot for. This was to be my riding goal, but one must also mind the 15kph total average as well. Riding at the quite fast pace of say, 32kph for 3 hours, using a ton of energy but flying past everyone else, but then just suffering from the effort and having to spend 3 hours by the side of the road eating, resting, and recovering, that person might find themselves in last place once they re-mount the bike.
