Hey, I did a 300k (185 mile, ok 192.4 with our slight detour) ride yesterday. It broke two personal records. It’s the longest ride I’ve done in one day (my previous record was 162 miles – Cochise Classic last year, 157 miles plus riding to and from the hotel a couple times that day). It’s also the longest I’ve been on my bike in one day (total time on the bike was about 11.5 hours, just over 13 hours total, the Death Ride was my longest before this at just over 10 hours on the bike).

I experienced a couple arrhythmias about a month ago and saw a cardiologist about it. The first time was near the end of the Casa Grande Century. My heart rate went from the 160’s up to the 220’s during an extended hard effort. As soon as I stopped the effort, it went back to normal, but I could feel a tingling in my chest when it happened -- like when you have a bad chest cold. The next weekend it happened again after about 3 hours of hard riding, but this time it went from the 160’s down to the 110’s with the same tingling in my chest, so I figured I better have it checked out. Based on my description of what happened, the cardiologist didn’t think there’s anything wrong with my heart, but he wanted to run through some tests to confirm that. So, I went in for an “echo stress test.” In Nov 2003, I had a regular stress test (because of the same issue) that came up normal. With the Echo Stress Test, they take a sonogram picture of my heart before and after the stress test and compare the pictures to look for abnormalities. The EKG during the stress test was normal, but the sonogram revealed a slight enlargement of the left ventricle. He indicated that it may be caused by pre-hypertension and prescribed a mild (25mg) daily dose of Hydrochlorothiazide to help bring my blood pressure back down to normal. Other than the slight enlargement, my heart looked good and everything appeared to be clear and functioning normally. He said there is less than a tenth of one percent chance that I’ll have a heart attack caused by clogged arteries over the next 3 years. So the arrhythmia isn’t being caused by blockage or heart damage. If it was I should have felt pain and the pain should have progressively gotten worse.

He also gave me a “loop” monitor to wear when cycling and told me to go back to a riding normally. He wanted to try to capture 3 or 4 instances of abnormal heartbeats. I have the loop monitor for a month, but the only time I’ve had those abnormal heartbeats have been several hours into long, usually hard, rides and even then it has been a rare occurrence. But if I can’t capture an event, it will make it harder to diagnose what’s going on. He took a baseline reading with the monitor when he setup the service. The monitor can store up to 6 readings at a time. It has two wired electrodes that connect to a pager like device. When I notice an irregularity, I push a button and the device will store the previous minute and 30 seconds after the button was pushed. The readings get transferred via an audio tone over a phone line.

Anyway, I’ve gone on three long, hard rides (including the 300k brevet) since then without any anomalies. It could be caused by an electrolyte imbalance (if I wasn’t drinking enough or wasn’t replacing the sodium and potassium lost during sweating). I have the monitor for another week, but don’t expect to be able to capture an event. My coach’s wife has a similar kind of issue, at least my description matches what she experiences. She said it’s caused by an electrical misfiring in the heart muscles and a good hard cough clears it for her. Unless it happens more frequently or I figure out how to trigger it so I can capture it, there’s not much I or the cardiologist will be able to do to fix it.

Anyway, my 300k brevet report is below… The route started in Casa Grande, went to Coolidge, then Oracle Junction, down to Tucson, across Ina (sorry we didn’t stop by Leo), out to Gate’s Pass, past the Desert Museum, through Avra Valley, Marana, Picacho and La Palma, then back to Casa Grande.


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What an epic ride! It was raining when we left Elliot’s house and most of the way down to Casa Grande. But it was just sprinkling when we got to the start. We arrived about 5 minutes before the start and weren’t ready until about 10 minutes after everyone else left, which was fine since we planned on taking our time and riding our own pace. There was occasional light sprinkling, but the roads were saturated and it was really dark. At about the third turn leaving town, I went through a stream that had a rut in it that caught my front tire and I almost went down. The wet conditions also caused a strange noise on El’s bike, so we stopped for a minute so he could check it, but he couldn’t find the source and the sound went away shortly after. As we went down one dark road near the edge of town Elliot yelled “MUD!” The right lane just ended, no real warning. Elliot made it to the other lane, but I rode through some deep mud for a few feet. Did I mention it was really dark? A light on wet roads is almost as good as no light at all…

Anyway, as we approached the last light in town, we saw a small group of riders approaching from the other side of the street. They had apparently missed the turn. We passed them when we went over the freeway. Then it got just pitch black dark. Susan (the RUSA Regional Administrator) was waiting on the other side to direct people – “Next Left, then the Next Right.” I had my cue sheet in a plastic cover on my handlebars, so we stopped after we made the next Right to confirm that we were on the correct road. We were a few hundred yards up looking back when a large group of riders went by on the road we just left. We didn’t think it could possibly be our group since we left so late after them, but apparently they missed two turns at the beginning and wound up putting an extra 8 miles on the ride.

The rain stopped completely for quite a while and we were going around 17-18 mph most of the way. I tried to keep my heart rate in zone 1/bottom of zone 2. The directions weren’t really clear on the turn out of Coolidge, so we stopped a couple times to re-read the cue sheet, but we had made the correct turn. Susan drove up as we were making the turn onto SR79 and said we were the lead two. That’s when we found out everyone else had missed turns. SR79 is an extremely long gradual climb. According to my Polar data, the climb is 2170 feet over 43.5 miles. 9 Mile hill will never be the same again.

Heading into Oracle Junction we could see heavy clouds and fog. It started raining pretty good going down Oracle road and didn’t really ease up until we got to Ina road where we stopped for drinks and snacks. Three riders passed while we were refueling. I don’t know if we stayed a minute or two too long or the wind shifted or what, but all of a sudden it just got cold. I wanted to warm back up, so I pushed it a little going down Ina and caught the three that passed us. Elliot had dropped back some, but caught us before we crossed the freeway. I wanted to keep my own pace, so I went to the front as we started the climbs up to the top of Gate’s Pass. The climb wasn’t nearly as hard as I recall from college. Elliot and I dropped the other three on the climb and I stopped at the top to use the facilities. We took that first descent pretty cautiously because of the wet conditions and because there are two tight corners at the bottom, but made really good time after that up to Sandario Road. Somewhere near Gate’s Pass, Elliot’s Power Tap crapped out. He said the display blinked a few times, the low battery warning popped on, then it died.

The rain stopped until we got close to Avra Valley road, then it started sprinkling again. In my mind I remember “We’re supposed to be going to Marana… Marana is by the freeway…” So I turned right onto Avra Valley road without looking at the cue sheet – DOH! About 2.5 miles after the turn, I looked down to see what the next turn was and it said to take a RIGHT onto Trico road. Right? That would send us back to Tucson… That can’t be right… Then I looked at the previous line on the cue sheet and it said to turn LEFT onto Avra Valley road. Damn. We wound up putting an extra 4.9 miles onto the ride. There were three riders at the turn onto Avra Valley road (when we finally got back to it!) The next checkpoint was a Minit Mart where you had to get a receipt as proof that you were there, so we stopped for drinks and snacks. The other three riders didn’t spend as much time there and left before us. We saw them again at the next checkpoint, but they were leaving as we were pulling in.

Somewhere between that Minit Mart stop and the Frontage road by I-10, both of our bikes started squeaking in various places – I think mine was coming from the front hub. Elliot said the bikes sounded like a couple of K-Mart specials. Shortly after we turned onto the Frontage road, my Polar Power crapped out. I was still getting Heart Rate, Elevation and temperature data, just no speed, power or cadence. There’s a 10 mile stretch on SR 87 going to La Palma. That stretch was the hardest for me mentally. There was a little headwind. It was sprinkling pretty good again and I didn’t have any speed or distance data to show me how far we had gone. It’s amazing how quickly you start relying on the accuracy of the Cue sheet and how it compares to what your distance shows.

Anyway, we made it to La Palma, where there was another convenience store checkpoint where you needed a receipt. I went in and bought drinks and snacks, but forgot to get my receipt. While Elliot was in the store, Susan pulled up and signed my Brevet card – no receipt required. The store apparently didn’t have a working receipt machine, so the clerk hand wrote a receipt that said “Elliot was here.”

That store was about 17 miles from the finish. I was ready for it to end, so I got in my drops and just maintained zone 3 from the convenience store to the freeway (about 10 miles). I didn’t have a speed indicator, but we got there in well under ½ hour so I figure we were going 23-25 along that stretch. When we got to the freeway we sat up and started easy spinning the rest of the way through town. There must have been a pretty heavy rain shortly before we got there because all the streets had a lot of running water. About a mile, maybe two from the finish a truck passed us just as we were crossing a stream. It completely soaked El and got me pretty good too. What a way to finish!

So, our total distance was 192.3 miles with 4019 feet of climbing. We left at 5:11am and finished at around 6:15pm. 13 hours on the bike. Boy, did it feel good to take that helmet off! We were the 2nd group in with probably 20-25 people still out on the course. All in all, it really wasn’t that bad and could have been a lot worse with the weather. I certainly don’t feel like I rode 192 miles. No heart anomalies during the ride, no cramping during the ride or after, no tight muscles even after a night’s rest. My legs felt a little tired, but not that bad. I’ll probably get on my rollers for a half hour or so of easy spinning this morning to flush them out.