I got an e-mail this morning from a reader who had a much more positive experience than I did making the 204.5-mile pedal from Seattle to Portland. I thought I'd share it with you to let you its not all flat tires and wipeouts if you want to try this next year:

Craig,

Sorry to hear about your STP experience. Mine was almost the opposite. My training sounds about the same as yours. I was new to cycling this year and did this as a committment after having arthroscopic hip surgery in late October (at the age of 36). I started in March and trained with a buddy who has done a few STPs and some other races (Flying Wheels 100, MS150, RSVP) and are pacing was similar. He is a much stronger rider than I am, but I grew up being a long distance runner so I knew I would have the mind set to be able to focus and get into grooves while riding. We did some good hill training, so I felt prepared for the hills that awaited.

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As far as the actual day went, we started a little later than we had planned, so we rolled across the line at 5:15am. We started with 4 riders (3 of us trained together and the 4th was someone I knew and he wanted to try and stay with us as long as possible) and had a decent pace going by the time we reached the Spanaway stop. That was a little longer than we had planned (30 minutes) and were on about a 16.6 mph pace. We were all pretty close together until about 95 miles in. One of our riders was having a knee problem and with all the yellow jerseys out there we had lost him a bit as some faster pace lines went by us. We were in Centralia at 11:25am so we had picked up the pace a bit, but our 4th was about 5-8 minutes behind. He told us he had an idea that his knee might pose problems so he had a back up of being able to call family members to get him if needed. We ended up pressing on without him as he made his call for family to come and get him.

You are right, the temperature did begin to pick up after noon but I wasn't paying much attention to it. We kept hydrating as much as possible and I kept eating a combination of Clif Bars and the Clif gel blocs. By the time we were at the 145 stop we had increased our average mph to 17.2 and it was 3:30pm. At that point I knew we were going to make it before the line closed, but I didn't know how I would feel. The push over the bridge wasn't as bad as I thought, but Highway 30 was no fun at all. I didn't like the long straight stretches and the humidity jumped quite a bit once in Oregon. The three of us were pretty spent but we knew we were getting closer so we continued to push. We rolled across the line, sore in many spots, at 7:20pm with actual pedal time of 11:59. I consider that not bad for a first time rider of the STP. From doing the 100+ training ride earlier in training, I knew I would not want to ride 100 miles and then get BACK on a bike the next day to do the same thing. I'm glad I pushed 1 day.

A few stats that may defy some other experiences that I have read about on some blogs and posts:

0 - mechanical failures on any of our bikes!!!

0 - crashes. In fact, we narrowly escaped one right behind us but saw no others during our ride.

0 - bad experiences with cars. I've read about a few who had people honk and yell at them. We ddin't have any of those experiences.

1 - fewer riders than we started with, that may have been a little more typical. We felt a little bad, but we also didn't start with the expectation that we would all start and finish as a complete unit. We didn't all stay together the night before and we all had separate plans on how to get back after.

100 - percent glad that I did it, had fun, and would do it again.

I must say that it was one of the more difficult physical challenges I have trained and accomplished. It took me a day or two to recover, but I did get on a bike Sunday evening to bike up to a 7-11 back in Seattle to get Slurpees with my family. I will say the one thing that always confused me as I was riding, and this was my first STP so I had no basis of comparison, was how some riders were ahead of where we were on the course. I just couldn't imagine how the person wearing cargo shorts, sun shirt and flip-flops on a beach cruiser with a tire rubbing against the front brakes got to St. Helens before I did. When you are that tired I was just flat out confused, then realized that there was no way they started at the same place, they had to have started somewhere else...like 5 miles down the street.

Overall, great experience. Nice people. Tiring but fun!

-Flip