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rebeccmeisterThis past weekend, my father, sister ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sytharin, and a number of my friends gathered in Seattle for dinner and then the 200-mile Seattle-to-Portland bike ride. Amusingly, in the midst of all of the R workshop madness, I got a phone call from R, which happens so rarely I immediately excused myself to answer it. R just wanted to know what kind of smoky cheese we had put into the ravioli the prior year. I didn't know the exact cheese, but remembered that it came from the Pike Place Market, and from the looks of things the gang all had a grand old time assembling and eating the ravioli. If you've never made ravioli before - it can be fairly labor-intensive. My mom's ravioli-making equipment includes pasta rollers on the KitchenAid mixer and a ravioli form for 12 rav's at a time. It was a big technological innovation when I introduced the concept of putting the filling into a frosting piping-style bag - much faster than spooning it in.
Regardless. While they were all off cavorting around the Pacific Northwest, we here in the Republic of Texasland engaged in some slightly different activities. In the morning, we participated in the final segment of the R workshop, learning the tip of the iceberg for open-source GIS, using QGIS. Then there was lunch at a so-so Texican joint, then some frantic packing, and then we were in the car, headed down to Brookshire for a 300k brevet.
This was a tough brevet for me, for three reasons. Reason 1, I haven't been riding as much over the past month and a half as I rode in the spring, so my fitness level was noticeably worse. Reason 2, it was hot and humid, weather that I struggle with. Reason 3, I did way too much running around in the days immediately prior to the brevet. As my previous post may have made clear, one of the things I enjoy most about long-distance bicycling adventures is the opportunity to work up a big appetite and then eat delicious things. It's hard to eat delicious things when you haven't had time to either prepare them or scope out options along the route.
The three of us (scrottie, J, myself) also didn't really have a chance to discuss our plans for the ride in advance, which meant we started the brevet on partly empty stomachs at 6 pm and didn't have clear agreement on how to ensure a positive calorie balance throughout the ride. I'd only managed to grab sugary items (candied grapefruit peels, stale stroopwafels, two apples, two granola bars), and I believe S mostly had a huge container of dates (just not my favorite thing) and a bag of fruit.
Then we proceeded to miss a turn because we hadn't worked out the kinks in our navigational arrangements, and added 6 bonus miles onto the ride. Collectively, the calorie deficit, missed turn, and lack of clear strategy made me get all sharply drill-sergeant, which in turn made S deeply unhappy, and made for a less-than-ideal brevet.
What to do, under these circumstances? I don't have a great answer, but I do have at least one decision to decide: if I do not have adequate time to prepare for a brevet beforehand, I need to decide that I will not ride. It is not worth it if I turn into No Fun Rebecca and piss off S and make him conclude that he should not ride in brevets anymore. As mentioned previously, a good part of the fun lies in the eating - I'm quite happy if the eating consists of things I've cooked and brought along (see: burritos), so I need to make sure I've had a chance to prepare to eat.
I also don't know that I want to ride another summer brevet out here. We finished at 12:40 pm on Sunday, and much of my shrewishness was also tied to a desire to avoid riding during the heat of the day. I wound up with heat rash, a partial sunburn*, and a bit of chafing and mild saddle soreness, and of course my skin has broken out some more, too. S wound up with soaking-wet feet at one point. Somehow everything was easier on the last 600k at the beginning of May, even though that brevet was also warm. I think it was the cooler nighttime temperatures that made the biggest difference.
What can ya do. Sometimes, you have to chalk it up to experience, ask for forgiveness, try to learn something, and hope that things go differently in the future. Not every ride will be amazingsauce. I'm still really missing the ocean, mountains, and tall evergreen forest right now. It's hard to live only on memories. And so, onward.
*I'm still amazed that the sunscreen on my face and arms actually worked. I had to wipe down with a bandana and then immediately apply it, and even so, it only kinda-sorta greased on because my skin was instantly humid again.
sytharin, and a number of my friends gathered in Seattle for dinner and then the 200-mile Seattle-to-Portland bike ride. Amusingly, in the midst of all of the R workshop madness, I got a phone call from R, which happens so rarely I immediately excused myself to answer it. R just wanted to know what kind of smoky cheese we had put into the ravioli the prior year. I didn't know the exact cheese, but remembered that it came from the Pike Place Market, and from the looks of things the gang all had a grand old time assembling and eating the ravioli. If you've never made ravioli before - it can be fairly labor-intensive. My mom's ravioli-making equipment includes pasta rollers on the KitchenAid mixer and a ravioli form for 12 rav's at a time. It was a big technological innovation when I introduced the concept of putting the filling into a frosting piping-style bag - much faster than spooning it in.Regardless. While they were all off cavorting around the Pacific Northwest, we here in the Republic of Texasland engaged in some slightly different activities. In the morning, we participated in the final segment of the R workshop, learning the tip of the iceberg for open-source GIS, using QGIS. Then there was lunch at a so-so Texican joint, then some frantic packing, and then we were in the car, headed down to Brookshire for a 300k brevet.
This was a tough brevet for me, for three reasons. Reason 1, I haven't been riding as much over the past month and a half as I rode in the spring, so my fitness level was noticeably worse. Reason 2, it was hot and humid, weather that I struggle with. Reason 3, I did way too much running around in the days immediately prior to the brevet. As my previous post may have made clear, one of the things I enjoy most about long-distance bicycling adventures is the opportunity to work up a big appetite and then eat delicious things. It's hard to eat delicious things when you haven't had time to either prepare them or scope out options along the route.
The three of us (
scrottie, J, myself) also didn't really have a chance to discuss our plans for the ride in advance, which meant we started the brevet on partly empty stomachs at 6 pm and didn't have clear agreement on how to ensure a positive calorie balance throughout the ride. I'd only managed to grab sugary items (candied grapefruit peels, stale stroopwafels, two apples, two granola bars), and I believe S mostly had a huge container of dates (just not my favorite thing) and a bag of fruit. Then we proceeded to miss a turn because we hadn't worked out the kinks in our navigational arrangements, and added 6 bonus miles onto the ride. Collectively, the calorie deficit, missed turn, and lack of clear strategy made me get all sharply drill-sergeant, which in turn made S deeply unhappy, and made for a less-than-ideal brevet.
What to do, under these circumstances? I don't have a great answer, but I do have at least one decision to decide: if I do not have adequate time to prepare for a brevet beforehand, I need to decide that I will not ride. It is not worth it if I turn into No Fun Rebecca and piss off S and make him conclude that he should not ride in brevets anymore. As mentioned previously, a good part of the fun lies in the eating - I'm quite happy if the eating consists of things I've cooked and brought along (see: burritos), so I need to make sure I've had a chance to prepare to eat.
I also don't know that I want to ride another summer brevet out here. We finished at 12:40 pm on Sunday, and much of my shrewishness was also tied to a desire to avoid riding during the heat of the day. I wound up with heat rash, a partial sunburn*, and a bit of chafing and mild saddle soreness, and of course my skin has broken out some more, too. S wound up with soaking-wet feet at one point. Somehow everything was easier on the last 600k at the beginning of May, even though that brevet was also warm. I think it was the cooler nighttime temperatures that made the biggest difference.
What can ya do. Sometimes, you have to chalk it up to experience, ask for forgiveness, try to learn something, and hope that things go differently in the future. Not every ride will be amazingsauce. I'm still really missing the ocean, mountains, and tall evergreen forest right now. It's hard to live only on memories. And so, onward.
*I'm still amazed that the sunscreen on my face and arms actually worked. I had to wipe down with a bandana and then immediately apply it, and even so, it only kinda-sorta greased on because my skin was instantly humid again.
