Tor Hovland
Well-Known Member
Last week I spent 3 days to do the longest solo ride of my life, the 1000 km brevet starting and ending in Stavanger, Norway, and encircling the entire south of the country.
The major event of the year was going to be the 1001 Miglia in Italy, a ride that literally translates to 1001 miles, or 1611 kilometers. That event has of course been postponed until next year, due to the pandemic, and I was eager to find an alternative. One event that stands out on the Norwegian randonneuring calendar is the 1000 km in Stavanger. As I've never done a 1000 before (except for PBP), that sounded like a proper challenge. And speaking of challenges, this one is also particularly riddled with steep climbs. Going uphill is definitely my major weakness.
Logistically, it would work out nicely, because we would be going on vacation to my parents's house in the south anyway, and because my brother lives near Stavanger with his wife. And amazingly, the route passes through the village where my parents live at exactly the 2/3 mark, making that an obvious sleep stop. The 1/3 mark lands in Seljord, which have cabins for rent with 24 hour reception.
Five years ago, Oscar Hellström achieved the unbelievable feat of completing this ride solo in 44,5 hours, with just 35 minutes of sleep! Let me be absolutely clear that under no circumstance did I fall into the illusion that I could do something similar. After all, Oscar went on to set the record across the length of Sweden the following year, along with two others, covering 2165 km in 105 hours!
So I definitely wasn't planning to break any records. But I wasn't keen on simply touring the route either. Because my family would be waiting for me in Stavanger, I wanted to see how efficiently I could complete the brevet. Within a modicum of reason, however. I wanted to get 3-4 hours of sleep for two nights, and I wanted to take time for a longer meal break per day, etc.
I used Plotaroute.com to make a time schedule, based on my usual speed and adjustments for going uphill and downhill, and out came a forecast of 43 hours moving time. Then I added 7 hours of sleep, an extra hour for various tasks before and after sleep, as well as additional breaks ranging from 5 to 45 minutes. The total schedule came out at 61 hours.
The day before the start, we drove the 270 km from my parents's house to my brother near Stavanger. The 6:00 start was a 20 minute drive away, and my brother volunteered to give me an early morning lift.
After getting the bike set up, I took off through Stavanger and Sandnes, and on to Ålgård, where I stopped for an extra breakfast toast before heading into the sparsely populated Sirdal.
Ahead was 74 km of gentle uphill reaching 700 meters above sea level before the first control at Sinnes. I had a quick sandwich break at Byrkjedal, and just minutes later I got to a road works section where all traffic had to wait for a convoy lead car. I think if I hadn't stopped at Byrkjedal, I would have been able to go with the convoy that just left. Now we had to hang around for 20 minutes. Oh well. When the lead car came back, I was told to go directly behind it, with the long line of cars behind me. Luckily, there was no problem keeping the pace, otherwise it could have been awkward.
According to the Plotaroute schedule, the first section to Ålgård should take 1 hour and 11 minutes. It actually took... 1 hour and 11 minutes. The next section to Sinnes should take 3 hours and 23 minutes. Guess what? It took 3 hours and 23 minutes (despite the road works)! If only the rest of the ride could proceed like this. Then again, if it was that predictable, it wouldn't be any fun. For the rest of the day, I was always a little bit behind. The nice thing about that is that it motivated me to not hang around and waste too much time at the stops.
I was actually slightly hoping to go a little faster than the schedule, but I felt a little sluggish on the bike. To some extent that may have been due to some headwind, but mostly it was probably due to the few kilos of luggage and the slight incline. Sometimes I thought I could feel the drag of the dynamo, and a couple of times I stopped to check the wheels, but they always rolled nicely.
Now it was time to tackle the biggest climb of the ride, Suleskarvegen, reaching 1050 meters above sea level. This is a narrow, winding road, where caravans get in trouble when they meet oncoming traffic. In Oscar's ride report this was described as not as steep as the climbs toward the end, because he didn't use his lowest gears. This worried me, because I definitely used my lowest gear, and would have used even lower if I had.
I met a cyclist near the bottom. He later overtook me on the climb, and seemed to go quite hard. At the top of the steepest bit he talked to a friend in a car before he headed back down again. It looked as if he was Everesting or something.
The Suleskard road is closed for most of the year, and only a month earlier there would have been 10 meter high snow banks on each side of the road. Now, however, there was hardly any snow at all.
The major event of the year was going to be the 1001 Miglia in Italy, a ride that literally translates to 1001 miles, or 1611 kilometers. That event has of course been postponed until next year, due to the pandemic, and I was eager to find an alternative. One event that stands out on the Norwegian randonneuring calendar is the 1000 km in Stavanger. As I've never done a 1000 before (except for PBP), that sounded like a proper challenge. And speaking of challenges, this one is also particularly riddled with steep climbs. Going uphill is definitely my major weakness.
Logistically, it would work out nicely, because we would be going on vacation to my parents's house in the south anyway, and because my brother lives near Stavanger with his wife. And amazingly, the route passes through the village where my parents live at exactly the 2/3 mark, making that an obvious sleep stop. The 1/3 mark lands in Seljord, which have cabins for rent with 24 hour reception.
Five years ago, Oscar Hellström achieved the unbelievable feat of completing this ride solo in 44,5 hours, with just 35 minutes of sleep! Let me be absolutely clear that under no circumstance did I fall into the illusion that I could do something similar. After all, Oscar went on to set the record across the length of Sweden the following year, along with two others, covering 2165 km in 105 hours!
So I definitely wasn't planning to break any records. But I wasn't keen on simply touring the route either. Because my family would be waiting for me in Stavanger, I wanted to see how efficiently I could complete the brevet. Within a modicum of reason, however. I wanted to get 3-4 hours of sleep for two nights, and I wanted to take time for a longer meal break per day, etc.
I used Plotaroute.com to make a time schedule, based on my usual speed and adjustments for going uphill and downhill, and out came a forecast of 43 hours moving time. Then I added 7 hours of sleep, an extra hour for various tasks before and after sleep, as well as additional breaks ranging from 5 to 45 minutes. The total schedule came out at 61 hours.
The day before the start, we drove the 270 km from my parents's house to my brother near Stavanger. The 6:00 start was a 20 minute drive away, and my brother volunteered to give me an early morning lift.
After getting the bike set up, I took off through Stavanger and Sandnes, and on to Ålgård, where I stopped for an extra breakfast toast before heading into the sparsely populated Sirdal.
Ahead was 74 km of gentle uphill reaching 700 meters above sea level before the first control at Sinnes. I had a quick sandwich break at Byrkjedal, and just minutes later I got to a road works section where all traffic had to wait for a convoy lead car. I think if I hadn't stopped at Byrkjedal, I would have been able to go with the convoy that just left. Now we had to hang around for 20 minutes. Oh well. When the lead car came back, I was told to go directly behind it, with the long line of cars behind me. Luckily, there was no problem keeping the pace, otherwise it could have been awkward.
According to the Plotaroute schedule, the first section to Ålgård should take 1 hour and 11 minutes. It actually took... 1 hour and 11 minutes. The next section to Sinnes should take 3 hours and 23 minutes. Guess what? It took 3 hours and 23 minutes (despite the road works)! If only the rest of the ride could proceed like this. Then again, if it was that predictable, it wouldn't be any fun. For the rest of the day, I was always a little bit behind. The nice thing about that is that it motivated me to not hang around and waste too much time at the stops.
I was actually slightly hoping to go a little faster than the schedule, but I felt a little sluggish on the bike. To some extent that may have been due to some headwind, but mostly it was probably due to the few kilos of luggage and the slight incline. Sometimes I thought I could feel the drag of the dynamo, and a couple of times I stopped to check the wheels, but they always rolled nicely.
Now it was time to tackle the biggest climb of the ride, Suleskarvegen, reaching 1050 meters above sea level. This is a narrow, winding road, where caravans get in trouble when they meet oncoming traffic. In Oscar's ride report this was described as not as steep as the climbs toward the end, because he didn't use his lowest gears. This worried me, because I definitely used my lowest gear, and would have used even lower if I had.
I met a cyclist near the bottom. He later overtook me on the climb, and seemed to go quite hard. At the top of the steepest bit he talked to a friend in a car before he headed back down again. It looked as if he was Everesting or something.
The Suleskard road is closed for most of the year, and only a month earlier there would have been 10 meter high snow banks on each side of the road. Now, however, there was hardly any snow at all.
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