I got a mule and her name is Sal
369 miles on the Erie Canal.
In one go! What a ride. All the up and downs (and many wrong turns) on my first all night endurance ride. Lost a lot of pace on the night (just hard to keep speed - alternating between standing and coasting with the chafing setting in - all the standing was hard on the knees too), all the gear worked perfect enough. Was able to charge everything on the go when needed. Made good time for the first 1/3, paved mostly, pretty hot. Maybe overcooked myself a bit and couldn’t wait for the sun to go down and it cool off. The gravel slowed me down a hair then nighttime really slowed and the stiff headwind the last 60 miles was almost the nail in my coffin. It doesn't sound like a lot of miles compared to the 310 just ridden but the headwind and exhaustion and it's … 60 miles!! Was looking like 5 hours with the slowing pace, but made it in less than that with some final pushes. 4 stops: 70, 120, parents at 185, Marc K at 290. Ran out of ~2.5L of water by each stop, took a 16oz coke on the first two stops and a coffee on the last. I also stopped once to stretch for 1min and took that picture of my leg…tried to stay on the pedals I guess. Ate lots of sugar, a whole slice of buffalo pizza from second stop (S/O to Sam for the encouragement to eat real food), snacks snacks snacks, and a glorious full batch of nobake cookies and sourdough pbj from my parents. Other than the knee pain from the standing, my right foot hurt a lot on the bottom and I had to curl my toes repeatedly to keep the foot from tingling. Thought it would be worse after the ride but it was okay? Pinkies are tingly still ~24 hours out, the aerobar position was high up but also a new position - saved the hands a lot and to my surprise, no shoulder pain.
Special S/O to all the in-person and remote support, really pulled me though some of the hard parts.
Wrong turns feel like 30-60min in aggregate (?), there were maybe 20 (from small to large). it was hard to find the trail sometimes at night when it diverged from the GPX track, as the headlight lit up the road/trail but not the higher up signs. the triple closures on the shoreline trail at the end was a total mess, had google maps going and riding around with a big group of confused riders right through downtown buffalo on niagara st.
Could really go through and make a dialed-in GPX file at this point - but the closures would change I'm sure.
The Garmin routing was worthless - it's as-if Garmin doesn't have the bike trail at all - it mostly tried to route me on roads (you can see this on some of the photos/videos). So I just followed the actual GPX track on the map, as much as I could. Perhaps the worst nav was the GPX leading me to a closed fairground gate, the on-street signage leading me though an open gate, no signage inside the fairgrounds…and eventually realizing the GPX needed me out of the fairgrounds but all of the exit gates were closed! The other stuff is mostly minor - crossing a bridge to the other side of the canal the the GPX just goes right onto the path but I'm still on the bridge and need to continue to a connecting trail (on either side of the road sometimes).
Strava for a few photos: https://www.strava.com/activities/15392240733