Chris and I set out on our last unofficial ride of our R-12 on Saturday morning at 7am. Like so many rides before it, we were alone to tackle the course together. It was kind of appropriate really.

In our heads, this was our final ride. Thanks to some goofy rando paperwork logistics, the 300k that we completed on April 3rd counts as a March 29th ride. So we have a couple more months of riding ahead of us. Still, I am comfortable in being proud of our accomplishment. This is my first season and Chris’ second. We’ve come a long way.

We began the ride like we have on other Leschi starts, by riding over Beacon Hill to the Starbucks for the first control. It was a very cool morning, but oddly comfortable. I grabbed a last minute chocolate milk and we head off down south as the sun was rising over Lake Washington. It was threatening to be a wonderful day.

We caught the Cedar River Trail down south and were treated to some beautiful no traffic (foot or car) riding for a number of miles. There was a small section of the road closed where we had to get back on the roads for a mile or two, but it was a small price to pay.

The route eventually pulled us out into the roads where we had a few climbs along with some light morning traffic. Chris and I stopped for pictures of a building that had a dangerous love of decorations. There was a valentine’s day heart (pictured above), a skeleton in the window, a bunch of America jingoism, and some Cars lyrics wrapped around the building.

We pulled out on to some back roads that lead towards Black Diamond. I had never ridden to the town from North to South, so it was pretty fun to experience some new roads. There were a couple of real leg burners in the bunch of hills too.

The route lead us in to a gas station in Auburn. Nature was calling and I was glad to be at a control. There was a door inside that had a picture of a woman in a bikini. The haze in my brain concluded that it must be a bathroom. I opened the door and the lady manning the cash register freaked out on me. She repeated gave me lectures on why I need to ask her before I “go opening doors around here”. Everytime I apologized and explained it was a mistake, I got another lecture.

Sell me my damn peanut butter cups so I can get out of here. Peanut butter cups are delicious by the way.

The cue sheets surprised us with a trip back towards Black Diamond. The farms along Green Valley Road were as pleasant as usual. It took some climbing to get out of the valley, but we were soon on our way towards Cumberland, home of the infamous (in our minds, anyways) bar that we crossed on our overnight ride. Cumberland isn’t quite so imposing during the day though. We got some food and water at the store that was closed to us previously.

Chris had to haggle with the clerk to let him use his card. I wondered how many more people we could piss off before the day was through. Maybe we could make it a game.

There were many familiar roads by now on the way back north. From both the overnight 200k and the 600k, we’ve ridden these roads from Cumberland to Issaquah to almost go into auto pilot. I say almost because we missed a turn on the 200k and were determined to not repeat that painful 15 mile mistake.

Eventually we were on to the east side of Lake Sammamish. It seems to show up at the end of a number of rides where I am wiped out. There are always weekend warriors out whizzing by and I am usually embarrassing my SIR jersey. We were pretty determined to set the pace. Somehow we got into a rhythm that wasn’t being matched for the rest of the ride.

Our final control in Woodinville was an in and out affair. All that was left was well worn trails all the way back to the start.

I’ve written about my battle with sloppy 200k times for a while now. I always seem to end up with a 12 hour finish. I think one time I had 11 and a half. No matter how strong or slow of a start, we always seem to take about that long. Sometimes I’m hurting or fatigued and sometimes I feel pretty good. It doesn’t seem to matter. Chris and I finished this ride in 9 and a half hours. We were pretty damn happy with that actually.

We rode back through Georgetown and grabbed a celebratory beer and peanuts at 9lb Hammer. We’ve completed at least a 200k every month since last March.

Thanks go to everyone who has encouraged me, especially my beautiful wife (who was understanding enough to let me run around on Valentine’s Day) and Chris who has been there for every single one of them.

I mentioned before that the R-12 status wasn’t “official”, so what is next? There is a 200k Chili Ride coming up in March put on by Greg Cox’s family. He managed to buy a house at the very top of Kent so we can climb up right at the end of a 200k. How very SIR of you, Greg.