The RM sent out an email yesterday to confirm participation and food requirements. Thursday night is a "free" (meaning included in ride fee) social with wine provided by a local vineyard and snacks. Each riders gets one additional meal included (Fri or Sat) and could purchase more meal tickets as they wanted, but she needed to verify how much food to order for each night.
The ride has long been sold out and there is a wait list apparently a mile long, so she also wanted to verify attendance in order to allow those who wanted to go have a spot.
Unfortunately, while the email contained plenty of detail about the food being served it provided none about the actual ride. I guess I know where priorities lie ;)
I shot back on email confirming my arrival Thurs and ride Fri. Originally I had bought an extra ticket for Friday's dinner for the hubby, but now I don't need it. I paid in full at time of registration and the extra ticket was $15. I asked if I could just donate my ticket to help pay for a volunteer's dinner and she was super happy to accept. I know it isn't much, but any bit helps. These rides are really expensive for RM to put on.
I also asked for more information about the ride itself explaining that I am a newbie 50 miler and nervous as all get out.
She was super nice and responded to relax and that the trails are super friendly and really well marked. There will be 3 loops with all holds back in camp. YAY!! I was super worried about an away check without any helpers and no experience with this.
The first loop is 20 miles. I am very glad that I took the time to do some 20 mile training rides lately. She should be a little more relaxed having been this far without food and a break now and I am much more confident that we can get through it.
The second is 15 miles.
The third is 17 miles.
Wait....that is 52 miles! I don't need extra miles, but I do understand the near impossibility of using trails to equal exactly 50 miles without doing some strange back tracking, weaving and circling.
And that is that. I don't know the hold times, but expect something between 40-60 minutes. I am thinking she will be pretty good for the second loop since she has done LDs and expects to go back out. The third is where it will get interesting. She will be hungry and tired and expecting to get to be done, but then boom....17 more miles!!! I am also hoping this really drives home the necessity to eat whenever possible.
The only other thing I know is that there are 20 riders in each distance each day. This means a much less stressful start unless all other 19 riders happen to be super insanely fast and leave us in their dirt.
Ready or not here we come!!!
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