St. Louis 600K Ride Report - Jeff Sammons

St. Louis 600K Ride Report
June 16, 2007
By Jeff Sammons

For those of you that missed it, five Tennessee Randonneurs traveled to St. Louis this past weekend to ride in their 600K (373mile) Brevet. This was primarily a training event for us, as all of us already had completed a 600K this season. We dominated the event of only eight participants, taking the first five positions. This was the second 600K held in St. Louis this season, and most of their other riders chose to ride in the event held two weeks earlier.

Congratulations to David Bauer for finishing first with a time of just over 32 hours. David rode the event straight thru, while the rest of us chose to get some sleep at the 400K mark and finished in 38 hours.

We encountered only 7,600 feet (Polar) of elevation gain on the course, but had more difficulty with the heat and the wind. Temperatures both day reached highs of over 100 degrees. It was so hot that the tar was melting on their "chip & seal" roadways and got all over our tires. For those of you that haven't been to Illinois, it is basically flat farm land with little tree cover to hide from the sun. Most of the climbing was situated in the southern end of the course.