I picked up my Seattle-to-Portland pack today to find that the route’s only 204 miles this year. Now I can’t round up and say “it was almost 210″…

Anyway, Saturday’s the day. I’m really worried. I’ve done it before, but I had a much, much larger milage base last year.

Interestingly, in researching nutritional stuff, that on this ride, I’m going to be burning ~800-900 calories/hour all the way down there. A Cliff Bar/Snickers/whatever you have for roadside dining is only about 200-250 calories, so to avoid bonking I need to eat like a freaking piiiiiiiiiiiigggg this time.

It’s crazy. Say I drink a water bottle full of Gatorade every hour (I’ll probably be way over this, but–) and eat a bar of something. That’s only 125+200 = 325 calories… I’m down 675 calories. A banana is only another 100.

Say I stop on my way out at McDonald’s (which will be closed) and buy two Egg McMuffins (holy mackeral, I never realized there’s 235mg of cholesterol in an Egg McMuffin… yeeeccch), OJ, some hash browns… I’m going to burn that whole meal off in just over an hour.

That’s a huge Qdoba chicken burrito every hour, for… twelve hours of on-bike time — twelve burritos. Hoooooooooooly mackeral.