Training and preparation

Preparing for the ride has been a challenge. Good! It should be. But I'm seldom as "prepared" as I'd like to be for these challenges I enroll in or find handed to me. Case in point: the Courage Classic bike ride here in Colorado. I've done it perhaps seven times. It's a 155-mile ride through Summit County from Leadville to Vail Resort to Copper Mountain, Frisco, Breckenridge and back to Leadville. It's three days of riding about 50 miles a day but with lots of climbing, some over 11,000 feet. Some years I was well prepared and it was a cruise; others I died a slow death on Vail Pass.

And so it is for this Oregon ride. With Sept. 27 the planned first day of riding I have about three weeks left to prepare. Let's just say I'm trying to convince myself I'm ready. Bad sign, huh? So what if I haven't yet ridden 60 miles in a stretch? I've done 40 to Bennett and back, does that count? And done some climbs to Lookout Mountain and Hoosier Pass. Another bad sign: saying I'll get stronger as the week progresses. "Train as I ride," kind of thing. A friend, Lon Nestrud, told me today that I could get stronger as my week of riding progresses. But am I in trouble here? I don't think so, but you'll probably hear more about this dearth of real training during the ride blogs.

"Roughing it" in the Airstream on our Colorado land

We plan three days of driving our 23 foot 2008 Airstream International trailer to Astoria. Then we start seven days of riding plus a rest day in the middle and four days to drive home. This will change in case it rains, of course. And this time of year we could be committing suicide by West Coast Drizzle! The guide book Elizabeth bought us says the best months for biking the coast are June through September. Okay, so we're starting in September (27) does that count?

Day One is a light 47 miles to Nehalem. Then the mileage jumps to just over 50, then a few days pedaling just under 60 miles with two days just over that before we get to the California state line. And just in case you were thinking this was going to be a flatlander's cruise along the beach, look again. So far I've calculated about 1,700 feet of climbing on the day with the highest elevation (Day Two) but several will have 1,500+ feet of climbing. I'm expecting that I'll be saved by the fact that here in Colorado one bike ride of a couple of hours can have that much climbing, not stretched out over four or five hours of riding.