It is a shame; somehow I have never been able to ride SIR’s summer 100K out of Olympia. It always seems to fall on the weekend of Cascade’s Seattle to Portland Classic. Jane has a pact with some friends to do STP every year until they are physically unable to anymore. As they get more and more comfortable with the ride, the training gets reduced a little further each year.

This is year four of STP, and we only have a couple of solid rides together as actual training. With that in mind, I talked Jane into riding the SIR 100K Populaire. As an added bonus, I knew that she would get a sweet medal just for finishing.

I’ve been thinking about doing STP with a fixed wheel for a while now, so I set up my Salsa Casseroll as rando as possible (fenders back on and a saddlebag with all of my gear).

We left the house at around 8 or so for the 9am start. We both had in mind that Olympia would take about 30 minutes to get to. We both knew that it would actually take an hour or more, but I blame the pre-coffee haze. We rolled up to the sign it at around 9:15 with everyone gone. I did my best to hustle and change my shoes, pull the bikes off the rack, and get signed in. Jane almost forgot her helmet altogether. I asked the organizer Paul Johnson when the first cutoff time was. He said he wasn’t too worried about it. We weren’t really on the road until 9:30 though.

We rolled out through some nice bike laned and tree lined streets in Olympia before hitting some gentle rollers leaving town. Jane was a good sport about everything, including my attempt to keep a steady pace. I had to get used to my own bike again since I had just drastically lowered my gear ratio with a new front chainring (48 to a 42). Still, it was a pleasant morning, if not a bit cooler than we figured it would be.

The first control was in Rainier, WA (not to be confused with the mountain) at a convenience store that was terribly low on actual convenience. A good selection of their stock was out. They had a sign mentioning why, but I didn’t really take note of it. I’m guessing they are closing down at some point. We grabbed some candy bars and paid up. Once outside, I looked at our receipts and noticed that we had just made the cut off time by 2 minutes.

Back on the move, the ride turned us off on to a beautiful, almost no traffic road that lead out towards Skookumchuck Road. It was a really pleasant few miles and the sun started to come out of the cloud cover.

We didn’t see another rando on the road until well in to the ride. There was an out and back to the Skookumchuck Dam where SIR had a secret control setup. There were oranges, watermelon and cantaloupe on ice that all were amazingly delicious at the time. Bill Alsup and a (newbie) friend Amy were there. I talked Jane into keeping on the move and we ended up leaving before them. They stayed close to us for most of the ride though, passing us eventually when we made an unmarked stop in Tenino for supplies.

After a short ride along the one busy road of the day (Old Highway 99), the route pointed us north back towards Tumwater and Olympia. There was a final control about 10 miles from the finish where we caught back up with Bill and Amy. Once they left the store ahead of us, I knew that we would have the honor of the laterne rouge distinction.

We pushed on, dispite complaints of tender “lady bits”. We were almost there!

On the final turn in to the finish at Fish Tale Brewery, I handed off my taillight to Jane so she could have a steady red light to celebrate the placement and the finish.

Beer and burgers were eaten.