I crossed the finish line of the 30th Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic a couple of hours ago, wet and dirty after 95 miles of cycling in the rain.

As Gary Brooks, one of my riding partners said, “We look like we just finished a mountain bike race.”

Of the 10,000 riders who did this year’s 202-mile STP, the happiest had to be the 2,000 or so who did the entire ride Saturday.

The rest of us spent Sunday morning eating the muddy rooster tails of the cyclists in front of us as we wrapped up our ride.

My usual riding partners bailed on me this year so in May I posted a plea for riders on Facebook and heard back from two friends.

One, Brooks, didn’t even own a bike. The other, Mark Grover of Portland, is so physically fit he doesn’t believe in training. (Earlier this year he ran a 1:50 half marathon without training, and his 22-mile daily bike commute was his only STP training.)

Neither had cycling experience comparable to riding even half an STP.

I figured we might be slow, but at least we’d have fun.

We did have fun, and, as it turns out, our pace was quite respectable (About 18 mph on the open road).

Considering Brooks was on a bike he borrowed from a friend two months early when he started training and Grover was in cross-training shoes, I was quite impressed with both of them.

Our little adventure couldn’t have started more ominously. Grover and his wife, Tina, picked me up early Saturday morning and on our way to meet Brooks a coyote walked in front of the SUV.

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