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Lotoja - Double Century Ride
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Any ladies done this ride in Utah>Idaho>Wyoming? My friend and I are both doing it this year - first time for each of us. I've read some race reports while trying to get a feel for it, but they're all from men! I'm looking for a woman's perspective. Thanks in advance!
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Re: Lotoja - Double Century Ride [ninagski] [ In reply to ]
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I did it last year. I haven't read any race reports so don't know what's out there. But here are my overall thoughts:

-It's freaking long. I like to ride and all, but it's a lot of miles. I was probably undertrained, so that didn't help, but wow it was a lot of hours in the saddle.
-It's not that technical nor are the climbs too bad
-You should find a group and try and ride with them as much as you can. Being alone out there is not to your advantage.
-That having been said, other riders weren't super friendly or super welcoming and no one seemed to want to pull...maybe it's a roadie thing?
-Keep your stop as short as possible--I'm talking under 5 minutes/stop, shorter if you are not eating or changing clothes
-The time cutoff seemed totally reasonable to me until I was out there, and then it seemed hard. Someone told me that like 60-70% of the women don't make it? I didn't check but in the end I didn't have more than 30 or 40 min to spare, I think. So if I'd had a few flats or mechanical of any sort, I wouldn't have made it.

Do you have any specific questions?
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Re: Lotoja - Double Century Ride [140.6chick] [ In reply to ]
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I'm most worried about the time limit. I do have a few specific questions, if you don't mind...

What kind of training did you do? And for how long did you "train"?
What was your longest ride leading up to it?
What category did you ride in?
What background did you have before?
How old were you when you did it?
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Re: Lotoja - Double Century Ride [ninagski] [ In reply to ]
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Let's see....

What kind of training did you do? And for how long did you "train"?
I did a bunch of long rides of up to 100 miles. I did 2 week-long bike tours that summer, so each of those weeks had 500+ miles. Other than that, I didn't do a ton of training.

What was your longest ride leading up to it?
The summer before I did it, my longest ride was 100 miles. Which is why I was undertrained for 205 miles (duh). Oh well, live & learn.

What category did you ride in?
Men's 35-39 or something? I did it with a group, so someone else choose the category. There were a few of us women in there though. We didn't start super early, maybe 645 AM or so? If I were to do it again, I would start as early as possible. Since the cutoff is basically whenever it gets dark, the earlier you start the more time you have... really, not sure how I didn't figure that out before the race.

What background did you have before?
Ton of ultracycling experience, lots of Ironmans, yadda yadda. Doesn't really matter though, I was undertrained in the moment which is why it was hard.

How old were you when you did it?
Yikes, 41? How did that happen?

My other random advice would be:
-There is nothing to eat at the finish and I was way too tired to go out. Wound up eating cold pizza in my hotel. Not awesome.
- Really really really pay attention to how long you are stopping for. That just wastes time. You are better off riding slowly while eating than stopping to eat.
-Coke / Red Bull / whatever can be your friend. I stopped 2x to buy a Coke in the afternoon, it saved me.


That's all I can think of right now.


It was fun, but definitely a once & done event for me.


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Re: Lotoja - Double Century Ride [140.6chick] [ In reply to ]
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Great, thank you for the insight! I'm also most worried about the time constraints. They put us in a start wave at 7:12am - one of the last waves. The earliest wave, and presumably the fastest (Pro Men) goes off at 6am. I get it...and I don't...especially since the pros and those racing take a different, parallel route for the first 30 miles.
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