So many things!
- Yes, I would go lighter next time. There were enough places to stop that I didn’t need three bottles on the bike (though the third one came in handy when hubby bonked near the end), and I didn’t eat all my food (three rice cakes and half a sweet potato left). I’d rather make fast fueling stops than carry 2kg+ of water up those climbs. Also didn’t need the rain jacket, but I’d probably still bring it because it’s Norway in summer and you just never know.
- You can remove a link from a chain and it’ll still work. (This revelation brought to me by @brenph.)
- Oncoming traffic in tunnels is incredibly loud. Like “plug your traffic-side ear or it’ll ring for an hour” loud.
- Even with a head unit, having landmarks written down with distance markers was super helpful. (Maybe there’s a head unit that has that kind of thing built in, but my Wahoo does not.)
- I really need to stop wrapping sweet potatoes in plastic wrap and then expecting it to not leak. It always leaks.
- Screwing around with throw limits immediately before a big ride is a bad idea.
- Eat every half hour, drink every half hour, or suffer.
- There’s a difference between “I’m tired” and “my legs are out of juice”. I think I’m getting better at identifying the latter, which is great because adding juice to the legs takes care of that problem.
- I should have brought a couple emergency gels. I’m a big fan of eating real food on the bike but you have to plan ahead for that to work, and if you stop planning ahead for any reason, you end up in a deficit really fast. It would have been nice to have a quick sugar hit to make up for my poor planning once or twice.
- I’d heard this advice so technically I knew this, but I should have avoided long stops. It was not pleasant getting going again after we stopped for a 45-minute “lunch” (or after the chain link excitement but that one was unavoidable
).