I haven’t had time to finish my Black Forest report and am just now posting, several weeks after the fact.
I rode my first 300k Saturday, May 23. It was #3 of the RMCC’s 1-2-3 challenge. It was an awesome ride! I write that facetiously because every successful breakthrough workout or event is “awesome” after sufficient time has passed. In this case, it took about 15 minutes.
It was a nice route. Some of the roads weren’t great, (expansion crack problems mainly) but it would be difficult to find any route that had 180+ miles of perfect pavement and didn’t travel the same section of road more than twice. There were also a few miles of roads with heavy traffic and little or no shoulder, not bad to ride at 6 AM, but places I’d normally avoid on a Memorial Day weekend afternoon.
Physically the ride went well too. I wasn’t too tired at the end even though I’d tried to stay near the top of my aerobic HR range for most of the first 120 miles or so.
The weather was overcast and colder than I’d expected, but ok until the rain started after mile 70. There was a break in the rain for 40 miles or so, then alternating showers and heavy rain until the last hour. Not surprisingly on the wet roads, I flatted about 25 miles from the end. Fortunately, I made it to the finish on that tube. As I discovered the next day, with all the rain and wet (and no reading glasses) I hadn’t removed all the glass from tire and it had a slow leak.
If you’re riding in the area, the best stop was the Black Forest General Store, near Burgess on Black Forest Rd. Clean restrooms and a great selection of food, including Amy’s soup and Alternative Baking Company vegan cookies.
The route was something like this: