900910 0900 400K - Again Ordeal, challenge, trial I rode the 400K course again with Elaine yesterday. We got on the bikes around 0030 on Sunday. We were a bit late, as the headlights on the van went out mysteriously when we were at Amy's house. So, we had to go home, and shift all the crap into Elaine's car before leaving. Elaine had arranged for Amy to follow us until dawn. I was vaguely against it, but didn't object. Still, 0030 wasn't too bad. It wasn't very cold, I rode in my long-sleeve jersey and windbreaker and tights. We saw foxes, a big owl, and other critters. Also a couple good shooting-stars. There were chilly little micro-climates which we both noticed. Eventually, it did get generally colder and my hands suffered. At Valley Ford, I borrowed some socks from Amy to use as gloves. We were doing OK, not great, but OK. I had sunk into a sort of stupor and funk. I had about an hour's nap the previous evening, Elaine was running without any sleep at all. We got to the first checkpoint at Monte Rio at 0449, about 15mph. Elaine had been complaining of being sleepy. She found some boxes and curled up in them on the sidewalk for a catnap! I pushed her to continue. Dawn found us a few miles later on River road. I would have been happy for a breakfast break myself. We stopped at a market just short of 101, Elaine climbed in the car and was instantly asleep in the only vacant seat. I got some coffee and Amy and I stood around for about half and hour before I woke Elaine to continue (visited with the newspaper delivery man who asked when we would do RAAM - we told him the lady sleeping in the car had done it three times and won it once). Amy took off for home, we continued on to St Helena. That is a very tough stretch. Elaine had failed to get permission to use the restroom at the market, we passed a service station near the freeway. Elaine figured it was only 17 miles to Calistoga, but we weren't going the direct way and it would turn out to take us about 4 hours to get there. There is gnarly climbing on St Helena road, probably 10 miles of up. You wouldn't think there was a hill that high in the area, but there it is. We hit the St Helena checkpoint at 0923, now running late. Elaine was starting to drag. Every time I got down on my aero bars, she automatically dropped off, even if I carefully maintained my speed. It was becoming clear that this was going to be a long ride. Continued on into Calistoga where Elaine finally got her potty stop. We also took a breakfast break and I called Davis from the market - he didn't recognize who was calling, he had put it that far out of his mind! Breakfast was a C-, maybe even a D, and it was a very long piece of ground time. By the time we hit the road again, it was late morning and already hot. We had both changed down to our shorts. We ground out the distance to Geyserville. It was painful, kind of like the bad old days circa 1984 when Elaine would hang back off my wheel no matter how slow I went. Anytime I tried to sit in front and set pace, no matter how modest, she would drop off. I couldn't help but recall chasing down people on the earlier ride on this stretch, where we were riding pretty strong and aggressive even though Jaye was in the yellow zone. We were at Geyserville checkpoint at 1303, it was very hot. We stopped at the same school which we found on the first 400K to fill our water bottles. Within 30 minutes, cold water turned bathtub temperature. I was eating pretty well. Besides the sit-down breakfast, I was doing two bottles or more of food per checkpoint, plus a pemmican bar plus a banana. I gave up on all my objectives - using the aero's, getting in under 18 hours, getting a real RAAM-prep workout, etc. Our speed had dropped to barely more than 11 mph. I rode a lot Pedro Delgado-style sitting up with my hands on the pads of the aero's. I started pushing Elaine to try to get her interested in finishing before dark, but it didn't seem to do any good. We stopped at a market before Healdsburg for water and refreshment, it was hot but I was OK. We pressed on and arrived at the last checkpoint at the Safeway in Guerneville at 1632. We made another long stop, got a shake, hit the head, shopped, reloaded water, put on tights and my windbreaker. As we rolled out, a remarkable thing happened - Elaine came to life! She sat out in front for the first time, setting pace into the wind that blows up the Russian River. It had cooled and was pleasant, I enjoyed just riding. The tailwind down the coast was noticeably weaker than previously, but a help none the less. I made a big departure from a 40-year old policy and intentionally took an Advil. Both my knees had been making little warning pains all day and my left Achilles tendon (which has been making itself known off and on for a month) was creaking. The rationalization is that aspirin (or Advil) keeps swelling down. My standard fear is that it will suppress pain and result in more damage. The end result would be that I felt great and didn't suffer any noticeable after-effects. Maybe it's not too late for me to become an aspirin addict! We hit the market at Valley Ford for more water. It was getting dark and we prepared for lights. Ran into a guy selling a Samoyed/wolf cross pup. Elaine held this beautiful white dog and recalled something the psychic she visited last week said about a white dog. We activated the lights approaching Tomales. The darkness which I had been trying to avoid was sweet. We talked and rode at a leisurely pace to the turnoff south of Marshall. I recommended a stop to do more ultra- energy and we stopped at the cement plant. It was a good thing to do, I was getting to be out of energy. The ride back to Lucas Valley park and ride was OK, we finished at 2310 for a time of 22h 40m. My outside estimate had been 20 hours, but we finished without major problems. Somebody had stolen one of the forks off our roof-rack, which pissed me off. But I was really pissed off that the beer I had planned was not available, since the cooler had gone with Amy.