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Long Distance (SS1000, BBG, etc.) Discussion, Planning, Results, Etc.

65K views 328 replies 55 participants last post by  kwthom 
#1 · (Edited)
The premise of this thread is to have a place to discuss long distance rides, the planning, tools and preparation needed to be successful from your first SaddleSore 1000, up to the world famous Iron Butt Ride.

I have no issue if this thread goes off the rails of deleting it - keeping on topic is appreciated!

EDIT: A gentle reminder that the premise behind this thread is a specific discussion of Long Distance riding. This term has a specific definition for the purposes of this thread.

Now, a 2000 mile, week long trip is a long ride, no doubt, but if you go "no way, too much!" when reading this...

Iron Butt Association

...well, stick around and lurk a bit. :mrgreen:
 
#102 ·
Did the SS1000 yesterday to Grand Junction, CO. Man my butt hurt after that ride. My riding partner had an Air Hawk and I tried it. At first it seemed ok, but I did not like it as it felt like you were sitting on a ball. lean to one side and the other goes up. The ride started at 4:30 am and finished 8:15 PM.
 

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#103 ·
Did the SS1000 yesterday to Grand Junction, CO. Man my butt hurt after that ride. My riding partner had an Air Hawk and I tried it. At first it seemed ok, but I did not like it as it felt like you were sitting on a ball. lean to one side and the other goes up. The ride started at 4:30 am and finished 8:15 PM.
Congrats on the accomplishment!

Imagine keeping that same pace for another 8 hours and 500 miles...one of the reasons the BBG (1500+ in 24 hours) is such a tough ride!

Again congrats!
 
#104 ·
Did the SS1000 yesterday to Grand Junction, CO. Man my butt hurt after that ride. My riding partner had an Air Hawk and I tried it. At first it seemed ok, but I did not like it as it felt like you were sitting on a ball. lean to one side and the other goes up. The ride started at 4:30 am and finished 8:15 PM.
Good job and quick. I have never tried a different seat from stock. I'm more of a stand on pegs, move forward, sit to one side then the other, or just stop get off and sometimes pull pants out of...well you know where. :22yikes: Was asked by a trucker once "What the hell are you doing"
Hey just moving things around is all, why did you want to help?
 
#105 ·
Did the SS1000 yesterday to Grand Junction, CO. Man my butt hurt after that ride. My riding partner had an Air Hawk and I tried it. At first it seemed ok, but I did not like it as it felt like you were sitting on a ball. lean to one side and the other goes up. The ride started at 4:30 am and finished 8:15 PM.
I used to have an Air Hawk on the stock GW seat and it did not help much, even on short rides. For my SS1000, I bought two of the Walmart automotive gel seat pads plus LD shorts (with a sprinkle of Monkey Butt powder added) and did the ride with almost no butt pain. YMMV.
 
#106 ·
BBG completed

I did the BunBurner Gold from Denver, Colorado to Billings, Mont., via Omaha, Neb and Fargo, ND. 23 1/2 hrs. Ran into rain off and on and tornado alert near Omaha but didn't see any funnel clouds. Never seen a tornado alert pop up before on the Nav screen as I don't subscribe to XM weather.:22yikes: After Billings I rode US 191 south from Bozeman, Mt. through West Yellowstone(Still a great ride!!) to Idaho Falls and home, crashed on the nephews couch in Rexburg for about 3 hours. total time was 33 hours/2133 miles.
 
#109 ·
Early Winter SS1000? Sure, why not!

With a nod of approval yesterday from SWMBO, the plan is set - let's get back into this LD Riding again! Enough talk, now action - tomorrow before oh-dawn-30...with the temperature starting off right about freezing :shock:.

Would love to do a solstice ride, SWMBO has a birthday also on the winter solstice...that may be an insurmountable challenge.

The tentative route, as well as the stops planned; simple & easy. Away from home a bit over 250 miles, a 500-odd mile jaunt in the other direction, then back toward home. All roads, and most stops are known to me, so this is should be as 'easy' as they come.

https://goo.gl/maps/ZBvW3

Google is showing this as a bit over 14 hours of travel time during daylight hours (does the time traveled shift with the time of day with Google Maps? As I've planned this route, it seems to change with the time of day...weird?) lessons learned here and elsewhere will hopefully let me be well under 16 hours. My goal is to hit it right close to 15.5 hours...riding this as best I can as if it's a BBG

I'll edit this post with a Spotwalla link later on today, for those cold-bound/snow-bound riders to ride along with me. :popcorn:


EDIT: As mentioned before, the Spotwalla link for this ride:


https://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id=bfd254a196ecd1501


It goes live at 0430 MST...hoping to be moving by 0530 at the latest. Enjoy the ride!
 
#110 ·
Ken - enjoy the ride!

Clicking on your link seems to confuse my Google map. It shows a route from JNO Tucson to Las Cruces?

Ought to be a bit nipply! I did that route in January a few years ago and the shivering after sunset really kept me awake.

We'll try to keep the snow on this side of the border until you're home!
 
#112 ·
Bret. Tucson, Yuma, Las Cruces, Tucson. The wx looks okay...so far.

Time to put down the tablet and get some zzzzs

Sent from my teeny screen using my big fat fingers!
 
#116 ·
At the fuel pump at 20:02 local time - 1027 (per the GPS - thanks gramps for THAT tip!) - moving average @ 75mph, overall average @ 69 MPH. Finish may not show up, as I have a privacy zone that includes that last fuel stop, I think.

GPS claims 14:45:23 total time. Bested my one (and only...) completion by about an hour and a half. Excellent tips that I'll re-share as to how I was able to improve that much.

I'll work on and improve on this trip report in the morning - but what a way to end a riding year!
 
#118 ·
Congrats on nailing another saddlesore 1000 at a VERY good overall mph rate.

Weather map showed high wind warnings for Las Cruces and kinda chilly too. Hope that the wind helped push you to the West.

gramps
 
#120 ·
Congrats Ken!!
 
#122 ·
Working on collating my you-know-what, so the trip report will be kinda disjointed at the beginning. I’ll start with a little background...

First off, a lot of reading,a LOT of encouragement, and a lot of lessons learned from my last trip to this one. Now, it's not in the book, but I need a few minutes away from messing with that to do some data crunching, and writing here - and runninga few errands before the storm hit. Now that it has, some time to put in the effort.

The intent was to ride a SS at a BBG rate. As I had mentioned a while back in this thread, I'd only done a single SS before, andI really wanted to know what it would take to make a BBG happen. That, and with another 30,000 miles of riding on this bike since the last SS, it's as ready as it will every be.

I knew a few weeks ago that my wife wouldbe working a good part of the day yesterday, so what better way to spend the day. After careful review of the weather for the last three or four days, I knew the ride would be on.

The ride itself was quite uneventful.Temps for the first leg (Tucson -> Yuma) were in the 30's the entire way, as I knew, so the gear I had worked as expected. It warmed to a high of 70 as I made it back into Tucson. Shed the Gerbings for a few hours, andas I mentioned before, the temps dropped the further east I rode.

What a WeIrD feeling blowing by your home exits, knowing your goal is to ride another 500 miles. The secondary thought in my route planning wasin the event the weather turned sour, a ride abort would be easy to do.

I spent a few hours researching the stop locations, even though several of them I was acquainted with from past experience.

So...in no particular order, the stuff I found that really helped in one form


  • Route familiarity. Other than the stretch between Deming and Las Cruces, I’ve been on all of these roads (some of the stretches multiple times...) and am familiar withwhere the law likes to hide...


  • gramps’ comment about recording the GPS mileage - boy, was THAT a time saver!

On a tangent - I knew that my bike - and every bike - has an error. The ‘Wing has an estimated 4% error with stock shoes. Being one of these that uses [redacted] shoes,I really didn’t know what the error was, so the first 100 miles I paid attention to the GPS reading...at the 100 mile mark on the GPS, the tripmeter showed 102.5 miles - easy math is the best math for me - 2.5% high. Atthat point, I knew to document the odometer from the bike and the GPS reading.


  • I read this not long ago; boy did I like this tip - make sure the bike is on the left side of the pump. Makes it easy to access the pump, as well as the trunk. I had to fuel the bike one time on the right side; I know that took an extra couple of minutes; easy!

  • The keyless entry to the fuel door is a given, but also not turning the bike OFF; use kill switch instead, so the clock/odometer is still active. As fuel is pumping, gettingthe trunk open to access the clipoard & bag with the receipts, pencil, etc. If your notes are good on your receipts, you should be able to complete your log after the ride is done (thanks Flyguy405 for that tip...). I used only my receipts to fill out the log, making sure times were what the stops were (that I recorded with Spotwalla...) accurate; they were also in agreement with the time that the bike clock had at the time I checkedthe receipt, and wrote the odometer/GPS readings on it, using the fuel pump as my clipboard.

  • Don’t dawdle with squeezing every last drop of gas into the tank, unless you know you have a long ~200 mile gap to the next station (another Flyguy405 revelation...). Trustme, you really don’t give a whit about that extra tenth or tenth-and-a-half of gas in most cases. This *will* toss some post-ride MPG calculations for a loop - mine range from a low of 31.4 to a high of 38.2. I think Idid an overall average of 34 in my fuel estimates; 34.4 was what it was for the entire ride.
  • End the ride? Don’t fill the tank. I put in $2(1 gallon) to get that last receipt to end the ride...filling would have taken another minute.

  • The whole ‘pit stop’ sequence is one to work outin your head - and verify what it was you did good. The first two were without the benefit of a bio-break. First one 5 minutes; second one 6 minutes of stop time, which includes any dead-stop time. Three total bio-breaks for the entire ride.
  • Most guys use a dedicated GPS for all of this; great idea, but I’ve already got a really expensive bit of technology, so I’m usingmy Android phone - it only did two things the entire trip - Spotwalla tracking and monitoring the time, using an app called SpeedViewer Pro. It doesn’t matter what tool you’re using but you need to be able to monitoryour progress. early on in my ride when my overall average was as fast as 71MPH, I knew that the pace that set that would be a pace that would be BBG-achievable - recall that 67.5MPH is the minimum mark, so ending the ridewith a 69MPH overall average - even with a 30 minute stop would be a BBG with a bit of time to spare. Toward the last two legs, I could begin to feel the pace catching up with me...but plotting it, I was just as fast as Iwas earlier in the day.

I’ve put a few images of the data, etc. here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/115618...authkey=Gv1sRgCL-p4LK7_oeRsgE&feat=directlink

No photos during the ride...left the camera at home. :(
 
#123 ·
Nice write up Ken. I think that you are ready to bag a BBG. :thumbup: As long as you felt well enough to go another 500 after this ride.

Which side of pump to fill from?..........If I'm going to go into the building for any reason, I will park on the right side close to the pump, in 1st gear, kickstand down, leaning toward the pump, turn key to ACC, stay on the bike, easy reach to insert credit card, fill up, write down odometer AND GPS mileage, put receipt in wallet, put in left chest jacket pocket, start bike, then ride to the building.

Otherwise I park 5 feet from the right side of the pump, get off the bike, fill up etc., do 30 squats, then resume the ride. Gotta take steps to prevent deep vein thrombosis (blood clot in a leg).

For BBG planning:
1500/24 = 62.5 mph minimum overall average to maintain.
1525/24 = 63.5 minimum.......probably close to the most likely scenario.

But, as soon as the GPS says that I have traveled 1500 miles I start heading for the nearest gas station so as to get off the clock to bag the ride, then finish the planned route. I also call it a bail-out stop when planning my trip using Microsoft Streets and Trips.

The IBA has always shown my GPS log miles as the miles ridden on my certificates.

I also always press the Spot's OK button at gas stops so that I can send a printed Spotwalla map along with the other documents which shows all of my stops.

gramps
 
#124 ·
Nice write up Ken. I think that you are ready to bag a BBG. :thumbup: As long as you felt well enough to go another 500 after this ride.
I think I was...it took a bit to spool down when I got home. My wife had been monitoring Spotwalla for a good chunk of the ride, and was as surprised as I was on the time it took, as I had anticipated 15.5-ish hours
A fun bit of data from the ride...





Spotwalla data plotted as a line graph. Not a tremendous loss of speed at the end of the ride, with the exception of the last 30 minutes or so as I was in the metro area and really wanted to begin the slow-down mode. Each mark along the horizontal axis is 15 minutes.


Which side of pump to fill from?..........<<sequence deleted...>>
Otherwise I park 5 feet from the right side of the pump, get off the bike, fill up etc., do 30 squats, then resume the ride. Gotta take steps to prevent deep vein thrombosis (blood clot in a leg).
I’m getting off no matter what, but those few steps around the bike to the pump, then to the trunk to get the stuff is another minute, but one that I needed to stave off those very circulation problems you mention.


<...>I also always press the Spot's OK button at gas stops so that I can send a printed Spotwalla map along with the other documents which shows all of my stops.
That’s my -slight- downfall on this ride...really getting that sequence of events down rote.
I missed three (...and nearly a fourth!) button press of BubblerGPS (Android Spot equivalent) during gas stops, but that’s because I was so tied up in reviewing the trip computer from my speed montor on the phone. It takes but a few seconds to move back to Bubbler & ‘hit the button’ to mark the fuel stop, but I was intently monitoring the fuel stop times...and making sure that I had the info recorded right on the receipt that I totally forgot the button press.
The one in Toltec, I was at the bottom of the ramp when I remembered, so I stopped right there and hit it. Upon my review today of the receipts, that’s the only one that the time is off by an hour, but I do have two close proximity Spotwalla hits, so a bit of explanation can rectify that anomaly in the log, I’m sure. The fact that it’s an intermediate stop is also not a detriment to the ride overall.
I really think I can do a BBG now...but that discussion earlier on - either in this thread or another one...on an in-state SS would be a fun one to do.
Thanks to all for the tips; glad I was able to (mostly) put all of this discussion to good use. I’m sure it’ll help others as well.
 
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