Team Teriyaki Donut is Elizabeth Walkup and I, Greg Barnes. We have lived in Seattle continuously since 1998, and off and on for about 10 years before that.
We entered the bike division of Seattle Night and Day, riding separate bikes, choosing the 7 hour option. We are familiar with Seattle, having lived here for over 15 years.
The previous night, I checked out the bikes, and found my mountain bike back tire was flat again. I've gone through about 2 patch kits worth of patches fixing this tire over the last few months, so I finally decided the tire was worn out, and swapped in an older, skinnier tire that doesn't stop so well on wet pavement. I figured there wasn't much chance that would be a concern.
The previous weekend, I had ridden from Seattle to Portland, and my legs probably weren't 100%, but I knew I could do 7 hours on the bike, even in the forecast blazing heat. Elizabeth has been training for the Danskin triathlon, but unfortunately, in the previous week, she had to pull 2 all-nighters for work (a rare occurrence --- this is the first time this has happened), plus she stayed up until 1:30am the night before,
We started off doing well, then I got a flat (in my front tire, of course). Then Elizabeth started flagging, due, presumably, to her sleep deficit. Then she got so sick we gave up. Then, on the way back to start, her bike got a flat. But when you've got 2 hours to travel a few miles, a flat tire isn't a big thing. We returned at around 9:15pm, leisurely checked our answers, and officially checked in at around 9:20.
Despite all this, we won our division anyway, with a not-particularly impressive 1430 points. All this was too bad, since I thought the course was rather nice.
I had made some preliminary plans, based mostly on topography. I knew Beacon Hill would be a problem, so I studied how to get up and down it, and decided we'd only try to climb it from the north (the 12th Ave S bridge), or from various routes to the east (Cheasty Blvd, for example). I presumed there would be a loop to the east of Beacon Hill, and one to the west. All of these assumptions were correct. Finally, I knew we'd have to climb back up to Capitol Hill at the end, and I decided the best such route would either be from the west via Pine (if we ended up downtown after 9pm), or from the north via 10th Ave (if we ended up north of the ship canal after 9pm). I didn't want to end up anywhere else after dark, since these are the corners of Seattle we are most familiar with, and it's best to operate in familiar territory after dark (9pm).
Once we got the map, a number of obvious segments became apparent. I started with Beacon Hill, and up the shore of Lake Washington: 31, 85, 43, 84, 58, 102, 63, 64, 44, 83, 32, 15, 61. (We thought it was better to do 84 before 58 instead of 58-102-84, since 84 and 58 are at roughly the same level.) This segment leads naturally into north Seattle at the Montlake Bridge. The loop west of Beacon Hill was rather obvious as well: 35, 86, 108, 52, 54, then up the hill to join the other segment at 31, possibly visiting 47 first.
The main question was whether there were any checkpoints that closed before our ending time (11pm). A number of them were marked as having restricted hours, but we didn't know what the hours were until we got the question sheets, which didn't happend until roughly half an hour after we got the maps. Then we learned that none of them closed before 11pm. In the future, I suggest the question sheets be handed out at the same time as the maps. Either that, or the map needs to distinguish between checkpoints that close before 11pm and those that close after. Presumably no checkpoints will close before 7pm, so the 3-hour participants can just ignore the restrictions.
There was one time constraint we needed to work around: the Ballard Locks close at 9pm, and we definitely wanted to use them to travel between 66 to 87. We could have tried to time things so that we crossed the locks just before 9pm, and finished up in North Seattle after 9pm, but it's hard enough planning around one deadline, so we opted instead to do a loop with Ballard first. Our final (planned) route thus went downtown, sweeping South Lake Union, across the Fremont Bridge to Ballard, sweeping Magnolia and grabbing 103 on Queen Anne, then heading south to Pioneer Square and picking up the route already mentioned. From 61 in Montlake, we would head up the Burke-Gilman to 106 and possibly beyond, picking up as many of the rest of the North and Northeast checkpoints as we could, finishing across the University Bridge and up Capitol Hill, probably via 37 (on the Melrose bike connector) if we had the time.
In reality, as I said, we got two flats and Elizabeth got sick. We ended up giving up at checkpoint 84, having skipped 47. From 84, we first headed up to the I-90 lid, where we could have easily gotten 63 by going through the tunnel (thanks to John Zobel for that idea). But Elizabeth didn't even want to travel an extra two miles through a cool tunnel, so we headed back by Judkins Park, picking up the missed 47.
Here is our actual route at Gmaps-pedometer. We visited the following 23 checkpoints in this order: 53 [Seattle U fountain], 68 [palm tree triangle], 101 [otters], 51 [Kingstones], 42 [South Lake Union fountain], 45 [Waiting for the Interurban], 65 [Ross Playfield], 88 [downtown Ballard], 66 [Locks], 87 [Magnolia windmills], 107 [Magnolia puppets], 103 [SW Queen Anne plaque], 34 [Regrade Park], [my front flat discovered and replaced], 35 [Pioneer Square mural], 86 ['truck access' sign], 108 [Sodo firehouse], 52 [busway mural], 54 [International Children's Park], 31 [Taejon Park], 85 [dreamship], 43 [Jefferson Park], 84 [MLK Memorial Park], [E's front flat discovered, not fixed (we just pumped it up a couple of times)] 47 [Seattle Keiro fountain]
We rode 33.44 miles, according to my odometer. This is around 6.4 mph (in 5.25 hours).
The good: we won our division, and placed higher than all but one of the foot and duathlon teams. The bad: there were only two teams in our division, including us, and many of the really good foot teams were doing the 16-hour option. We were outscored by three solo men on bikes, which is fine, except they outscored us by 500-1000 points.
During the 2004 Night and Day, I felt sick (it was hot, but not this hot), but I managed to recover enough to finish. That year we got 1310 points going around 8.2 mph, visiting 24 checkpoints. So we did better this year than in 2004 in all respects except speed, but I think this course was easier. Note that on the Night and Day website, they said they thought previous year's courses were too challenging, and they were trying to make this year's courses easy enough so that an outstanding foot team could visit all checkpoints in 16 hours.
To engage in a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking, I tried to simulate the route we would have taken had Elizabeth not gotten sick. Last year we went 58 miles with only a minor mechanical problem. This year we had two flats, and both would have had to be repaired to finish (unlike last year's flat, which was a very slow leak), so I assumed we could cover 55 miles instead, and came up with this route. One can surely devise a better route; I was just taking a stab at what we might have ended up doing (for example, continuing NE on the Burke-Gilman to Magnuson Park, even though turning back earlier would probably allow us to pick up 104). This route would have slightly beat last years point total with 2190, so I conclude the course was indeed slightly easier, since we would have gotten roughly the same score with 3 miles less work.
Furthermore, I think this year's course was much flatter, so we likely could have done more mileage than last year. The real key to getting a higher score would be to take the 55-mile route above and add a loop around Greenlake up to North Seattle Community College, which gets you 360 more points and roughly matches Erik Brooks impressive 2430 points. Since this route covers most of the area, I concluded that it was likely that a good bicycle team could indeed have visited all checkpoints in 16 hours (much less than 16 hours, in fact). And, indeed, Enger Management did visit all the checkpoints, although I don't know how long it took them.
After zipping down Cheasty Boulevard and crossing the spiraling pedestrian overpass over MLK Boulevard and Rainier Ave S, we landed at MLK Memorial Park (around 8:30?). Elizabeth flopped down in the grass at the bottom of the park for a long rest, while I trudged up the hill to answer the question (remaining in sight the whole time so we didn't break any rules). We discussed our options; the next checkpoint [58] was largely at the same elevation, but it was to the south, and I didn't really want to head away from the finish line given how badly she said she was feeling (nauseous, and with a bad headache). A few other reasons argued against continuing: my rough calculations said we had a good number of points, so we might win anyway, and I knew that if we went to 58, we would likely end up down on the Lake Washington shore, where it is much harder to get up to Capitol Hill than from the Rainier Valley.
As it turned out, Elizabeth had trouble mounting her bike, which was pretty much the last straw. I plotted a course back to the start that picked up the previously missed 47.
At the finish at Seattle Running Company, they were still in the process of moving boxes from the park. Eric was kind enough to mix up a bottle of his favorite electrolyte drink for Elizabeth while we waited for her father to come pick her up. I decided to stick around in case we won.
It was much more comfortable outside on the sidewalk than inside, plus there was salsa music emanating from the Century Ballroom upstairs. After Elizabeth got picked up, I went over to QFC, thinking I would get a Coke and a snack, when I realized I could get some better food at any number of local takeout places, if they were open. It was just before 10, and I got a chili verde burrito from Tacos Guaymas as they were closing, then took it back to Seattle Running Company to eat and wait.
When I got back, a volunteer (Sue) was manning the door to take answer sheets and write down times. I grabbed a chair and sat down next to her, and soon started helping out. We were fearful of a huge rush around 11pm, but it never materialized. I did notice that the temperature around 11pm was still over 80. There were lots of people walking by, some of whom muttered something about a 'hiking party' at the store. The Seafair Pirates also drove by a few times, honking the horn of their ship/truck.
In case you're wondering, Elizabeth is doing fine. So it was probably just sleep deprivation coupled with the stress of biking in the heat.
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gsbarnes [at] drizzle.com