The Bonii have been distributed, a week ahead of the rally, but the rally book will be distributed 1 hour before rally start. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Rick has been toying with the riders for the past few days, with vague answers, cryptic responses, and general innuendo. That being said, I have designed a route. It has one tight window, but beyond that is very doable. There are questions, however. What will the mileage cap be? There is one, but no answer from RM until 1 hour before the ride. What does "have you met your match?" (sub title of this year's rally) mean? Will there be paired bonii that are not on my route?
Nobody knows, except the Shadow.
So with some consternation, I am ready to head out and make an effort. We shall see what I can pull off. I have my goals. We shall see if I can meet them.
Before I get back, you can watch my progress here.
The rally starts at 6 AM Saturday and ends 2 PM Sunday.
Will post up Monday or so.
Wish me luck.
Update 5/28/2013
Well, I came in 8th. My worst showing so far. My route was solid, but I made a few bad choices and there you have it.
All the hand wringing related to mileage caps, and what does "Have you met your match?" were for naught. There was no mileage cap, so no need to change my route.
The match thing was interesting, however. In this rally, we were given both the questions AND the answers. The catch was, that when you got to a location, you had to figure out which question went with that location, and obviously you had to get the answer after that. With 48 locations, that was a lot of options.
The beginning of my route went well. It was very cold, but about 300 miles in I was 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Then I got to one location that sucked 45 minutes out of my time. I could not figure out the question. The bonus was worth big points, so I stayed there until I came up with the question and answer, but I was well behind at that point.
I then had a dueling GPS situation and ended up dropping an 800 point bonus, that I was all of 5 minutes from. Rats.
After that, I made good time, and managed to pull off a personal goal, which was to grab all 3 daylight bonii in the counter clockwise route. I got the last one with about 5 minutes to spare.
I then entered South East West Virginia. This was mistake #2. I could have ridden about an extra 50 miles, but all highway, but instead my route took me through the mountains, where I was behind a never ending string of slow cars. What should have taken 90 minutes too over 3 hours. I was well behind at this point.
I then headed up 81 and started grabbing bonii. My plan called for me to rest outside of DC around 3, then get into DC around 6 and Baltimore at 7. I was comfortable going into the cities at those hours, but no later.
Well, my plan had not worked and I had to make a decision. That decision led to me dropping DC, getting to western Baltimore at 5:30, and Inner Harbor Baltimore at 5:50. I had to start my documented rest bonus by 6AM, or be a DNF.
I managed to pull it off and started my rest at 5:54 AM. Pulled over, pulled out the roll mattress, and the dump trucks started rolling at 6:05. Right next to a construction facility. Awesome. SO I did paperwork and did not get any sleep.
At 8:57, I ended my rest and started the end of my ride. It was all of 200 miles. And it was the hardest 200 miles I have ever ridden.
The end went as planned and I got in with 30 minutes to spare.
Did my paperwork and got scored. I made an error at one bonus which cost me, the 800 point dropped bonus cost me, and I made a faux paux error. All told, about 1800 points. Not good. I ended up at 15,186 or so. Well short of a win.
Long Haul Paul presented me with my trophy for the MS5000 ride, where I had come in second.
Dinner was great.
I went to bed at 10PM on Sunday and had been up since 4:30 AM on Saturday. Rode about 1600 miles.
Monday, Bruce, Kate and I went to Centralia PA and witnessed how badly humans can mess up the earth. We also stopped at a religious grotto off St Anthony's Way.
Got home and went straight to bed.
The End.
No comments:
Post a Comment