Street Scramble Seattle Ultra, 6hr category. An event reminiscent of the venerable Seattle Night & Day of yesteryear. Usually 10mph is a good baseline for my 3hr Street Scrambles, so for this one I projected I could cover ~55 miles given the expected physicality (hills) and slowness (traffic, stoplights) of the terrain, plus natural degradation in performance - but balanced somewhat by lower density of checkpoints.
I ended up covering 59 miles, though to be fair I was overtime for the final two - so if we knock it down to 57 my projection was nearly bang-on. I could slowly see my pace falling behind 10mph as things progressed:
1st hr: 57:17
2nd: 1:10:04
3rd: 1:03:17
4th: 1:10:40
5th: 1:01:37
However, this occurred mainly due to external factors rather than natural fatigue, which means that either I paced myself well or I am a
tremendous machine. The main culprits here were Discovery Park (much walking/carrying of bike on steep and/or non-bike-friendly trails) in Hour 2, and slogging through the morass of downtown Seattle (uphill to boot) plus two time-intensive off-bike forays in Hour 4.
Route: 33 - 58 - 34 - 37 - 93 - 32 - 95 - 57 - 31 - 55 - 83 - 97 - 82 - 91 - 59 - 31 - 102 - 79 - 101 - 64 - 48 - 103 - 42 - 68 - 78 - 77 - 67 - 104 - 47 - 75 - 62 - 66 - 41 - 65 - 44 - 45 - 38 - 105 - 106 - 69 - 76 - 107 - 73 - 71 - 43 - 46 - 61 - 72 - 109 - 49 - 108 - 39 - 51 - 94 - 87 - 99 - 88
I couldn't figure a way to reasonably incorporate 63 and 74, so I basically left them out of the plan (as a possible out-and-back from 92). My fatal mistake was leaving 94 with about 40min to go, and heading toward 87-99-88, when I should have cut those out and instead could have conceivably achieved the 53-96-86-52-85-54-92-84-36-35 grouping in the same timeframe, and without being six minutes overtime. As it happened, I reached 88 with a paltry nine minutes to spare, so I had to do a 4.5-mile sprint down to the BG and back to base, wasting my nine minutes and incurring six penalty minutes. Ironically, my last three miles were my fastest three, and at 2:39 my 59th and final mile was my fastest one.
I provisioned myself thusly:
(1) bottle water w/Nuun added, carried on-bike; flavor Tri-Berry
(1) 20oz Gatorade, carried in mini-pack; flavor Fruit Punch ("Red")
(1) sandwich, carried in mini-pack; flavor peanut butter and raspberry jelly
(1) pack Sport Beans, carried in mini-pack; flavor Lemon Lime
(1) GU Roctane: carried in mini-pack; flavor Sea Salt Chocolate
My provisions were consumed thusly:
Water bottle: various/continuous; strategic replenishment at the Ballard Locks; water supplies exhausted ~4:45
Gatorade: ~2:42
Sandwich: ~2:50
Sport Beans: ~5:30
GU: N/A
I was pleasantly surprised at how well my energy held out, such that I didn't need the GU (nor were the Sport Beans strictly necessary, but they tasted good) and my legs are currently not as tired as expected. The power of a PB&J should always be respected. No doubt the weather accounted for my low rate of fluid loss; the day was ideally cool and mostly overcast with even a small rainshower.