# WA area - Anyone doing the Flying Wheels?



## AndrwSwitch (May 28, 2009)

It's going to be my first organized century. I haven't really been training for it, but whatever. Some teammates were talking about it and I've been curious to see what I can do with a century if I I'm not cobbling it together out of bits and pieces of routes and pulling friends.

Hopefully the weather's not too bad.


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## David in WA (May 4, 2012)

Please give us an after action report. 

I had wanted to do the Flying Wheels, but I mostly wanted to ride with my wife tomorrow since she's been gone on business a lot, and she wanted to do something closer to home. So we're going to cobble together a romantic little metric on Whidbey.


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## AndrwSwitch (May 28, 2009)

Well, I had fun.

It took me longer than I'd intended to drag myself out of bed, so it was right around 8am when I got to Marymoor Park to pick up my packet. I think I got rolling around 8:30, not sure when exactly. The sky was pretty threatening, so I left my fenders on and wore my jacket. I have a pretty fancy one now, and it's not too awful to wear for an extended ride. Big honkin' vent zippers.  I was cooking along at a pretty good pace - sort of high-sustainable for me. I had in mind that it would be cool to do the ride in under six hours, if I could. The route was pretty crowded at first, and the climbs especially were pretty choked up. The road surface was wet enough at the beginning that people's wheels were spraying a little, and there was even a period of drizzle. So I was glad for the fenders, and that I wore a cap.

Somewhere near Carnation, I bumped into a friend of mine. So we rode together for a while. We were pretty good together in the flats, but he got back from deployment not too long ago and isn't climbing as fast as he always does. Still, we managed to stick more-or-less together through the larger climbs before the first aide station. I bumped into a couple teammates there, which was fun, and then he and I headed on. Between Aid 1 and Aid 2, we were stretching the elastic a bit more on each tempo climb, and finally he sent me on ahead. I did some opportunistic riding for a while, sitting in with two pacelines on the way to Aid 3. The weather was getting a lot nicer toward Aid 3, at mile 55. Not sure what time that was.  I had kind of a funny experience with one paceline. They had a guy on a TT bike near the front and caught up to me, so clearly they were averaging faster. But they slowed waaaay down on climbs. I'd initially hopped on the back when they passed me, and wandered off the front on a climb, but when they caught me again later, I decided to try making pace on the next climb instead. I think it worked out okay; I rotated back to the back again at the top. By mile 55, I was starting to feel not having done a long ride since August. Oops. Maybe next time I do a century, I'll, like, train for it or something.

The group I was with had blown up a bit before mile 55. I was rotating with one guy, but he went on when we got there and I stopped to refill my water bottles, have a cookie, and visit the porta-potty. (Never miss an opportunity!) I ended up doing several miles more-or-less as a solo effort after that. The weather was getting nicer, but there was a south wind, so that kinda sucked. I kept spotting riders I was catching up to and thinking that maybe we could work together, but I was mostly keeping enough of a faster pace that we weren't necessarily a fit. I told a couple people to hop on, but it seems like a fair number of people don't draft. I wondered when people had started, or if they'd gone out fast and bonked. I was surprised to see people slower than me that far out onto the course. But now that I know my average in terms of elapsed time and total distance, I'm less surprised - it would be pretty easy for someone who started right at 8 and skipped aid stations to be pretty far ahead of me still.

A riding club wearing matching jerseys (and some with the shorts and leg warmers) caught up to me along High Bridge Rd. heading south. When I stopped for a traffic signal they shoaled me. That drives me nuts! And I said something about it. I'm more mature than that, usually, but oh well. People should stop behind vehicles or riders stopped at a timing line under a red line, not roll out into cross traffic. They should also learn to use their pedals. I opened up a decent gap just starting up again, although these guys did catch me again. There were about six of them, so no surprise. I paced with them for a while; they were doing the same tanking-in-the-climbs thing as one of the previous groups. Then we passed another of my teammates so I dropped off the back and rode with him for a while. He'd been planning to do the forty-five but followed the wrong paint markers. Some people seemed to know the color coding and I assumed I just didn't read the instructions closely enough, but I've re-read them, and I don't think they say what the colors mean! Very annoying, I sometimes dropped my speed a bunch to try to decipher my cue sheet at some of the intersections. (I need a large print edition of the cue sheet!  ) He sent me on ahead and I picked up the pace again. I was really hoping for another group to come by, because I was hurting. Some guys passed me, so I hopped in with them for a while. My pull was a lot slower than their pace had been, hopefully it's because I got more head wind. Yeah, that's it.  That was around mile 75. So we got to the last, biggest climb of the day and I suggested to them that we might find we weren't riding together after that. We actually did for a bit longer, but they eventually walked off on me. No surprise there, I was feeling cooked and really leaning on my triple. The course was getting crowded again, since the 45 and 65 mile riders were on this part of the route too. Actually, these guys were 65 mile riders too, but they'd ridden from home so I think their total for the day was going to come out around 90.

I tried to pick it up a little on the last stretch, along Lake Sammammish Parkway, and I managed to hang onto another pace group for a while, but couldn't quite manage it. I hadn't been watching elapsed time, just distance, to match my cue sheet, so I didn't really know how I was doing. Finally reached the entrance to Marymoor Park. I decided to sprint my finish, just because I always do, even though I know you can't win a Century. But Cascade had put it on a sidewalk after some bollards and handicapped ramps and there were people standing around all over the place. So I decided not to be too much of "that guy" and sat up.

I managed to do it in a few minutes under six hours, end-to-end. Probably not enough to have kept it under six hours if it was a full 100 miles, but whatever. I'd thought about doing laps in the velodrome to round it out, but I decided I was ready to be off the bike.

So, it was a lot of fun. I don't like words like "never," so I'll say this - I'll make an effort not to do a century again without doing some long training rides first, and I think now that I've done one to see how fast I can do it, I may save that sort of thing for actual races in future. But, I'm glad I decided, "what the hell," and signed up to do today's.


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## David in WA (May 4, 2012)

Sounds like a fun day. I think it would've hammered us a bit, because my wife (long-time mtb'er) is new to the road thing and doesn't like drafting yet so it would have been "parallel play" for us. As it was, we did a fun relaxed 70 mi. on the south side of Whidbey with a nice lunch in Langley. An "old married" ride.  

I did the Peninsula metric last weekend, and I found some of their markers suggesting early turns--wasn't just me, I saw a few people take wrong turns. Not so wild about the route, either. I'll try and do the Rhody Tour out of Port Townsend every spring I'm up here; it's close to home and a better route, IMO. 

When I was riding in the 80s in Portland I used to do the Portland Wheelmen Fall Century that went up into the Mt. Hood Nat'l Forest. Super fun ride. One year I managed it in about 5:30 solo, which I thought was okay for a little guy with heavy sprinter's legs.


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## AndrwSwitch (May 28, 2009)

I'm more of a mountain biker too, but the last time I did a 100 road miles, it took eleven and a half hours end-to-end and about seven and a half of rolling time. So like I said - wanted to see what I could do with a more focused approach.

Usually if I'm doing an event that involves an entry fee and some prep and travel, I'll do a MTB race. But this was a lot more fun than the Chilly Hilly, and I could see doing more centuries in future.


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## David in WA (May 4, 2012)

It'd be a hike from the Seattle side, but you might like the Rhody Tour. Maybe spend the night in PT. Not a big ride but well-marked and well-supported, through some pretty country.


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## AndrwSwitch (May 28, 2009)

Thanks, I'll keep it in mind. My fiancee and I have been doing a little riding together, and I think it would be fun to do some events when she gets the hang of it. We're talking about doing a 5k when I have my running sorted out enough to actually run the whole thing without crippling myself.


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## bigbill (Feb 15, 2005)

I used the Flying Wheels century for my final tuneup before STP. I'd use the wheels, gearing, and wear what I intended to wear for STP that day. The last time I did it was in 2008 and the weather was great. I rode with a friend and we picked our way through the riders to the first climb and got away from the packs. Once we were over the top, the riding in the valley was fast and we were able to get into some larger groups to get used to the conditions for STP. We finished up just a smidge under five hours with a 20.2 average. We did a 10:14 STP a few weeks later. On STP, we got into Centralia at around 4:45 but the heat hurt us later on in the day. 

The Peninsula Century is IMO, the hardest century in the area. I last did it in 2008 and it was 103 miles with 7700 feet of climbing in short, steep climbs. I started from Southworth, some people were saying it's better to start from Gig Harbor so you hit the hills earlier in the ride. 

The Rhody Ride in PT is my favorite. It's a great course, well supported, and I've found it had the highest quality bike handlers of any area ride. The food afterwards is great as well. It's well worth the trip.


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## David in WA (May 4, 2012)

bigbill said:


> The Rhody Ride in PT is my favorite. It's a great course, well supported, and I've found it had the highest quality bike handlers of any area ride.


Interesting. I was going to say that the Rhody seemed to me to draw much better riders than the Peninsula, but I'm a "returning cyclist" new to the area and wanted to be careful of my words. 

The rollers on the Peninsula route... I wimped out and did the metric just because of the incessant steep little climbs. 
1) Twenty-second descent
2) Four-minute grind 
3) Repeat x 93 

Good training, I guess.


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## smcnees (Aug 5, 2008)

I did the 100 with my wife, a friend and 5 guys from work (we were all sporting T-Mobile jerseys) Weather for us wasn't perfect but wasn't horrible either. It was a great fitness test for my wife who has been riding lots of solo miles in preparation for our trip to France next month. She did an incredible ride. In the past, her biggest downfall was her inability (desire?) to ride close enough to the bike in front of her to benefit from the draft. She overcame this Saturday was with our pack the whole way. We lost 1 guy at the base of the last climb due to cramping. His wife picked him up and drove him home. I suffered the only mechanical of the day for our group about 1/4 mile up the last climb. I was riding my Ritchey Breakaway that I'm taking to France and wanted to get some miles underneath me on it. The rear derailleur cable pulled out of the coupler and just like that I was restricted to the smallest cog for the rest of the ride. It made the climb my group refers to as 'bastard hill' into something even more challenging. All part of the adventure I guess. The last mishap for us occurred not a half mile from the left hand turn into the park. My buddy passed 2 riders riding 2 abreast on E. Lake Sammamish. When he called out 'on your left' the rider on the outside dove to the right, taking out her and her riding partner. She was dazed but we saw her in the beer garden later so hopefully all was well.


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## ChilliConCarnage (Jun 1, 2006)

Some good observations here. I think I've done Flying Wheels about six times, but that was mostly because the route passed my condo (when I lived up on the Issaquah Plateau). It was fun, but this year I did an RTS ride (Ramrod Training Series) on the Saturday before Flying Wheels that covered a lot of the same territory as the FW century, and I saved myself the entry fee!

My wife and I also love the PT Rhody Tour. We've done it twice (and got rained on twice!) but thought the support and scenery were worth it. 

We'll be doing the Mt. Adams Century at the end of the month. We've done it twice, and it's probably the worst support of any Century ride that you'll find. But we have some friends out there, so we combine a trip to see them with a challenging ride on the same trip.


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