Ride Report - Spotted Cow in a Barrel 600k Brevet

Going for a new personal-best longest single ride (by quite a lot!) and trying to pick up several season goals along the way.

It feels strange to compare myself this year to a couple years ago. In 2023, I dove into structured training for the first time. I got faster on my bike. I rode consistently.

My season culminated in a plan for a 536km (333mi) gravel ultra race. It’s what I planned for, targeted for months…and ultimately fell short of.

Now a caveat: riding (and hiking) through dirt roads and singletrack in the upper peninsula of Michigan is a lot different that riding on asphalt. That’s why the 426km I actually completed of that race took me over 21 hours.

And now the point: I spent months focused on that race in 2023. I spent very little time, almost none, planning for, agonizing over, or otherwise stressing about the details of the Spotted Cow in a Barrel 600k brevet I just completed over the weekend.

WEIRD.

Why didn’t this ride, which was my longest single ride by distance by 167km (103mi) and the longest such ride by time by five hours, demand more of my…attention? Concern? Preparation?

I don’t know that I have a good answer to that other than I just knew that I could do it.

The notion that long distance cycling is “just a mental game” is absurd to me. Getting your body ready to ride multiple hundreds of kilometers takes a lot of physical preparation and practice. I know that I’ve done that preparation, not just this year but over several years consecutively. I felt good at the end of the Aurora City of Lights 400k. Even though this ride was far longer than any single ride that I’ve done before, I felt confident that my body could handle it.

But see, there we’ve come full circle. I’m talking about “confidence.” I’m talking about the mentality that I brought to this ride. Because there is a significant mental component to long distance cycling, both in the preparation and in the execution.

And yet it still feels so strange to look back and wonder, “How did I go from a ride like this being the culmination of my season to just something I’m doing on a random weekend?

Don’t Go Alone

Of course, it helps when you’re setting out on course not with competitors, but with compatriots. We had 14 Chicago Randonneurs (well, 13 plus a guest from Detroit Randos) set out early Saturday morning on either the 400km or 600km ride. (The routes are the same through 400km, returning to the start/finish checkpoint before the 600km route heads back out on a final 200km loop.)

Ten of us rolled off together and more or less stayed together through about the first 230km. That included a couple more stops than I’d originally planned, but between going solo from 60km in and taking a few extra minutes to stay with the group, I definitely preferred staying with the group. I wasn’t trying to race this route, and no one else was, either. Randonneuring often encourages going as quickly as you can because of the long distances covered, but we didn’t have to rush through stops or push hard on the road, either.

Which isn’t to say we were going slow. It was a comfortable pace for me, but by the time the group started splintering I was still holding a 28kph moving average.

Familiar Territory

The early part of the route was eerily familiar. In fact, it was nearly 1:1 with the Faux 1000 route from just a few weeks ago, splitting off only after kilometer 150 or so. That meant that while we weren’t getting into any of the taller Wisconsin hills, we did have plenty delightful low rollers to push up, over, and down the backsides of.

Passing through some of these was what, eventually, started to splinter our group a little. The quick pace we’d set through the first part of the course was more sustainable for some than others, and eventually I found myself off the front with two others, Henry Liang and Peter Monko. We rode together for most of the next 100km, occasionally trading pulls, occasionally just riding in company.

Peter, who was riding the 400k route, rode off from myself and Henry as we started to approach our next resupply stop, in Darien, Wisconsin. Henry and I, of course, had to conserve a bit more energy.

Henry was also trying to diagnose a knocking sound coming from somewhere on his bike. We checked on his rear rack, his hrough axles, and his derailleur, but couldn’t confidently diagnose the issue, so Henry was forced to ride on with a growing noise. (The source became clear in the night, after we’d parted ways, when Henry’s entire left crank arm apparently fell off.)

At the Darien resupply, 320km into the route, I said a final “hi” to nearly everyone. Peter was already there, and stayed for about five minutes into my own break before heading out in an attempt to beat the sunset. I took a longer stop to cool down from the heat of the day and make sure I was prepared for the back half (!!) of the ride, sitting and eating for a while. That meant that Sarah Rice, Kim Carlson, Phil Fox, and others arrived before I was finally ready to head out again. All in all, it was probably about a 40 minute stop, much longer than I’d normally take but also well measured for the task ahead.

Well measured also because of the humidity. This ride wasn’t oppressively hot, but the air was absolutely sodden. Through much of the day, I had sweat beaded all over my arms, but unable to evaporate. Bumps in the road would send a little shower shaking off of me. This invisible wet-ness persisted through the entire ride, even through the night.

“It’s Only 200km. You Can Do 200km.”

Although Henry and I rolled out of the resupply stop together, he was dialing the pace back to conserve energy for the night and I elected to roll ahead at my own pace.

Just over halfway into the ride, I was alone for the remainder

Even though it may not be true that 90% of riding long is mental, having a strong mental game is essential. And I do mean “game.” I have an entire shelf of mental games that I play with (and against) myself as I go through these rides.

As I neared the end of the first 400km of the route, I was feeling tired. I was also focused on making that milestone.

It’s silly, sometimes, the context we leap to for a new experience. When I was in college, a six mile run was pretty typical for me. It always seemed to me that once you made it through four miles, it became easy to run for the end. That fifth mile, when you’re still removed from the absolutely final stretch, might be tough, but it’s still close enough to turn your eyes towards that finale.

The template of the six mile run split into thirds maps all too neatly on a 600km ride with a definite split at the 400km mark. So I told myself, just make it to 400km. Then you’ll be on your way to the finish. Can’t think about the finish before that; but from there, it’s in hand.

Now, 200km is still a long way to go, and fixating on the finish from the start of that distance will drive you a little mad, so I had to couple this with another mental game. “It’s only 200km. You can do 200km. You’ve done 200km all the time. It’s only a 200km ride.” Down having to load the separate route onto my bike computer for the last 200km, I did everything I could to make a mental wall between the first 400km and the last 200. The first 400km didn’t exist. I was just going for a 200km ride, and I knew I could do that.

And it worked pretty well! My planned resupply stops were such that I was only stopping about every 100km, so with 200km to go, that meant I was just aiming for my resupply, then aiming definitively for the finish. Easy!

Mechanicals In The Night

A couple things that made it less easy: mechanicals.

First, my headlight. I knew since the start of the ride that this was going to be a minor annoyance, as the ride from my car to the start line had induced it to droop in its adustable mount from facing forward like I wanted to facing 45 degrees down towards the ground. I apparently did not tighten the mounting screw enough, and the way that my light mount is nestled up under my aero bars meant that I could not reach the screw head with my multitool. I needed my small L-shape hex wrench - which was at home - to reach it.

The plan was simply to use a voile strap to hold it into position, since I had one with me and almost never go on a long ride or bikepacking trip without one or two. (They’re great.)

That worked ok, but the shape of my light and its relative position to my aero bars meant I couldn’t strap it down tightly. Instead, I had to make a loose loop that cradled the light. This worked, but it also meant that the strap was prone to falling off, as it did numerous timess throughout the night. Sometimes I’d be able to fix it while continuing to pedal; many other times I had to stop to re-strap it.

It’s good to know that this can happen and just how tightly I need to wrench down on that screw. I think I’ll be able to avoid this in the future.

The bigger issue was my rear derailleur. At about 430km into the ride, I was alone and night had fallen. I was riding along a relatively flat section when I realized something felt weird. Shifting into my smaller cogs felt mushy and poorly defined. Soon, shifting into the larger cogs was grinding and jumpy. And at about 450km in, the rear derailleur nearly stopped working altogether, reducing me to a two-speed bike actioned by the front derailleur.

Miraculously, this improved further into the night, and from about the 500km mark to the end I was able to haltingly get up and down most of my cassette, albeit with a lot of noise and complaining from the chain.

I suspected at the time I knew the issue, and the bike shop has confirmed it since: the gear cable had become chewed up within the shifter and burrs on the cable were inhibiting the mechanism. This is, apparently, a thing that sometimes will happen with Shimano GRX levers, but was not helped by the fact that I (STILL) had sand up in them. I blame Michigan, and in particular last year’s bike-destroying Coast to Coast race.

Home Stretch

At any rate, some semblance of shifting stayed with me through the night and into the morning sun. By this point my legs still felt ok, but the mechanical issues had worn on me psychologically a bit and for the last hour or two of the night I was feeling pretty tired. Not helping was the fact that food stopped sounding very good at all. I forced down some gels and some caffeinated chews to make sure I didn’t bonk.

I wouldn’t say that the sunrise revitalized me, but it was certainly welcome all the same. Also a welcome surprise: seeing the 200k ride on Sunday morning ride out, as the first and last 25km of that route/that portion of my route overlapped. I had thought about this possibility earlier in the night, but written it off on the assumption that the 200k ride was starting at 5am and I certainly wasn’t on that final stretch between 5 and 6.

I assumed that because my tired brain didn’t think deeper than the fact that my own ride had started at 5am the day before. But of course, a 200km ride doesn’t need as much daylight as a 400 or 600km ride. So their actual 7am start meant I did get to wave at the departing Chi Randos. Fun!

I rolled into the finish for a 26 hour, 27 minute time, nearly spot-on to my 26 hour, plus or minus 2 hours, prediction before the ride started.

Preparation Complete, And Some Goals Achieved

The Spotted Cow in a Barrel 600k was my final strenuous ride before the start of the Mishigami Challenge on July 12. I’ll of course be doing some riding between now and then to keep the legs fresh and ready, but the cake is baked at this point. It takes about two weeks for your body to integrate training adaptations, so this ride was absolutely the penultimate moment of my season.

And I felt pretty good! It really is wild how much hitting the 400km mark flipped a mental switch for me. In my head, it was almost like I’d already finished, and I just had to physically catch up to that. My legs, of course, have been pretty sore in the couple days since, but nothing outside of “normal riding soreness,” really.

This ride also capped off several secondary goals I’ve had for 2025. Complete a Super Randonneur series (200k, 300k, 400k and 600k rides)? Check. Do a one-shot 600k? Also check. This ride also extended my R-12 streak for June. The start of the Mishigami Challenge includes a randonneur perm that will also extend that streak in July; though as discussed previously, the goal of finishing an R-12 for the year, at least officially (and probably actually) will be stopped by my impending move.

That means this is kind of the end of my season as a randonneur. What a bittersweet thing! I hit as much of the randonneuring goals I had that I was able to, but the idea that riding in that way might be done for a while is sad.

But there’s still the big non-randonneuring goal for the year left: the Mishigami Challenge. There’s going to be a lot - as in extra posts - coming in the next couple weeks on that subject leading up to and through the race start. So make sure you're subscribed!