Spirits of Mount Tamalpais

Ah, Saturday. A day for relaxing and getting a few things done around the house, catching up on sleep, maybe taking a trip to the beach on a nice, warm day.

If that was your day, I hope you enjoyed it! For me and my peeps, it was another day to ride, a planned 90-mile tour of Marin County, with a nice trip up to the top of Mt. Tamalpais (affectionately known as "Mt. Tam" to the locals) thrown into the mix. Maybe you've heard of Mt. Tam? I'm told it's the place they invented Mountain Biking. Fortunately for us, they've put in roads since those olden days when you had to dodge Grizzly Bears while single-tracking your fixed-gear rattletrap!

Mt. Tamalpais, viewed from the start line.

Of course, nothing is perfect. Mother Nature thought we needed a new challenge. This is nothing new for the Death Ride team, we've dealt with her moodiness before. She's the temperamental one that just a month ago was delivering heaping spoonfuls of cold, wind-driven rain to keep us entertained. For this ride, she flipped the dial to "slow bake", giving us all a day that constantly toyed with the 90 degree mark. Riding up hills in the heat, it didn't take long before we were encrusted in a shimmering layer of dried sweat, our speculations turning to whether deer liked their salt licks better if there was a chase involved.

"Watch out for the mountain," one rider joked with me. "Watch out?" I asked, heart skipping a beat, "There aren't any bears up there anymore, are there?"

"Mt. Tam requires a sacrifice," was the laughing response.

The strange joke was soon forgotten as I drank in a heavy dose of scenery soup. We climbed from Kentfield around the north side of Mt. Tam, past Alpine Dam, riding over the "Seven Sisters", a series of really big rollers on one shoulder of Mt.Tam. From those heights, the Pacific spanned the western horizon, with Stinson Beach in postcard-perfect form. Towards the top, our view changed and with the clear day we could see the San Francisco skyline, the bridges, and southern Marin laid at our feet like a quilt. We rested at the top of Mt. Tam, refilled our dry water bottles and began the collective descent towards Stinson Beach, en route to Pt. Reyes.

I could spend thousands of words waxing loquacious, but I'll just post a few photos instead. They speak for themselves, click to enlarge!

Grinding it out going up...

...and bringing it back down. Whee!

Alpine Lake

San Francisco & southern Marin view

Stinson Beach from Mt. Tam.

Of course, it couldn't all be amazing beauty. That would be too easy.

I should've known, with all the Grizzly Bears long chased off by park rangers with their iGrizzlySpray apps that a new force would take up guardianship of the peak, demanding its sacrifice of all who dared climb it. And what better sacrifice than a Mt. Tam virgin such as myself? That prickling feeling as I turned to descend, the hairs that rose on my neck, the sinking feeling in my gut..."No," I thought, pushing it out of my mind, "don't be stupid. It's just nerves."

No Grizzly Bears attacked this rider.

We sped down out of the parking lot into the first turn and began to climb a sharp rise, the pack of us furiously shifting down. I shifted with the rest, focused on the bike, the tough hill, pushing away the "nerves", the imaginary growling of some metallic beast, a roar and clank that shifted from imagination to reality like a striking claw. In a moment of gut-wrenching horror, I realized I couldn't spin. My feet were frozen helplessly in mid-cycle. The chain wasn't just off, it was locked, wedged firmly between gear and spokes, resisting all my strength. For a brief moment I hung suspended in time. One heartbeat became a second, a third. From somewhere distant I heard an explosive expletive that shattered the sacred silence, my own voice calling out as the clock started running again with no time for thought, down, down, rolling into the ditch, bike still tethered to my feet.

This picture belongs in a cycling magazine.

From behind, another rider coming up hard on my tail dodged only to crash as well. Two riders down. I was helped to my feet as we counted the cost. For my part, I had rolled well with the fall. A lifetime of semi-unskilled skiing has prepared me for rolling falls, even with heavy equipment attached to my feet. The other rider had landed hard, bleeding freely from one knee, but claimed to be okay. My bike, however, did not escape as easily. Most of the impact was taken on the derailleur, the fancy bit that hangs out in back and allows one to shift gears. It took two teammates to violently pry the wedged chain free of where it was stuck. With some healthy teamwork my bike was returned to "operational" shape, giving me about four gears left I could use. It would have to be enough to get me to Pt. Reyes, to the bike shop there, where hopefully a talented mechanical surgeon awaited.

Blood had been spilt. A bike wounded. Would it be enough to appease the mountain?

"Mike" works here. Stop by and say "Hi!".
Be careful, he doesn't like talking about his TV career.

The descent down Tam was fun, but I was running very cautiously, as I still feared another attack and knew I couldn't really trust my gears. Every shift was a calculated risk. We gingerly cruised to the bottom and then made our way in a paceline up the coast to Pt. Reyes Station, a scenic little town known for its bakery and as the last tourist watering hole before the northern Marin beaches. I discovered one other hidden secret that day, "Black Mountain Cycles".

The real secret lay within. I had hoped for a talented mechanical surgeon. Instead, I got a miracle worker! When MacGyver retired from a long career of thwarting crime, he looked about for something less stressful to occupy his time. Little did I know, he had changed his name to "Mike" and went to work in Pt. Reyes Station, repairing bikes for Black Mountain Cycles.

I snuck this picture of "Mike" in mid-surgery.
Don't ask him to sign your bike. Trust me on this one.

"Mike" was amazing. He took my bike and forged a new screw for the derailleur hanger, took the derailleur apart and replaced this little circle piece with another part he salvaged off a '96 mountain bike, banged that piece into shape like some latter-day blacksmith, then replaced the terminally bent chain. By the time he was done, the bike was running better than when I'd started the day! His parting, taciturn words to me were, "You might wanna find real parts somewhere."

I don't know, "Mike". Even in hiding, you haven't lost your TV touch!

Surprise SAG! Tasty Brain Freeze Pops! Mmmm Ow Mmmm.

While the bike was being repaired, two of my teammates had stayed behind so I wouldn't have to ride the rest of the route alone. That was a huge help to me - their support kept me going. Together we rode out into the sizzling heat, riding our way up the coast to Marshall, where we climbed the Marshall Wall. That's a locally famous little climb, known for its difficulty. Strangely, I didn't find it to be all that onerous, except for the heat. Maybe all this riding has been having a strengthening effect after all. Or maybe it was just that I was overjoyed to have gears again, gears in which I actually *could* climb a hill!

Top of the Marshall Wall.

Regardless of reason, at the top we all got a surprise, an unexpected SAG visit! This, on our unsupported ride. Our SAG was a divine angel, handing out frozen treats and giving us a reason to stop, stretch, and take in the beauty of the moment. All of the day's travails were gone in an instant, in the cold rush of sugar and brain freeze that hurt so very good.

Look, Ma! I'm not dead yet!

We had crossed the halfway mark and all the day's significant challenges. The SAG had stopped us, reuniting many of the riders. The rest of the day was spent in good spirits, riding through rolling hills we'd seen just a week ago. We passed bucolic fields of cows, the cheese factory and other familiar sights until we rolled at last, tired, and quite firmly ahead of the trailing pack of salt-crazed deer to end where we began, staring up to the towering summit of Mt. Tam.

I'm proud to be a small part of this amazing group of people. It was a ride I will never forget, both for its sacrifice and for those who helped me, riding side by side until we crossed the finish. We survived the heat, the hills, and the tribulations.  Another ride down, one week closer to the Death Ride.

I'm beginning to think we might just pull it off.



Sonoma County Backroads

Somebody once told me that endurance riding of this sort is really about pain management. This weekend I discovered there's more truth than fiction in that statement.

We started off from the Cheese Factory in Novato. That's a rural landmark I've driven by repeatedly in past years when I used to live up in Marin, but I had never actually stopped there. It was fun to see the place first hand, check out the picnic grounds, meet up with the team and get psyched up for a ride out to the Pacific and back!

Unlike the last weekends that have been so rainy and windy, this ride promised to be nice: temperate and bucolic. That's a great word: "bucolic". I'm pretty sure it derives from the Greek for "Lots of Cows". It was a ride that certainly delivered maximum bucolicocity. Mooooooooo.

See? Bucolic! The cows in this field were ninja stealth cows.

When I first looked at the ride profile maps, I wasn't intimidated. That was odd. I really thought we were being softballed by the coaches, which kind of pissed me off. Here I just drove 90 minutes to get to the ride, only to have an easy day? Come on, what kind of team is this, anyway? Looking at the profile, the ride itself was a matter of many "little" hills. How different than our past rides, with their handful of major hills to bring the hurt. By now I've begun to understand how on climbs like Mt. Diablo you just put it in low gear, get your mind right, and grind it out for hour after hour. It's difficult, but constant. Doable. I get it.

The north end of Tomales Bay

Not this time. This ride was very different. Physically, I've had tougher rides. Mentally, however, this one was right up there.

We rode all the way from Novato out to Bodega Bay, got to spend a few miles riding along the beach, then turned back inland. Interestingly, the longer we went on, the more my conversations turned to discussing the relative merits of Percoset vs. Demerol. After awhile, I began to calculate how much money I could make if I first quit my job as a cyclist and instead started selling those drugs at SAG stops on rural routes every Saturday. But I was still thinking too small. So I started discussing franchising the operation out with the other members of my team to cover a whole swath of northern California. After determining the odds of whether I'd have enough money to retire in Costa Rica before the Feds got me, I finally put it all together and realized that this wasn't an easy day.

I saw signs like this more than once!

 We'd been suckered by the coaches.

That's me in yellow. Thinking "Ow" and
"God bless you, SAG"

With lots of big rollers and a few 1000' climbs, there really wasn't much of a chance to ever relax. I found the psychological demand to be significantly more wearying than just dealing with a few big hills. When you're facing real pain a few times an hour, with no end point clearly in sight - it takes a whole different level of mental fortitude to keep your head in the game. That, more than anything, made me realize why we train. We have to hone not just our strength and endurance, but our spirit. And there's no way to reach that except by pushing the boundaries of what you know you can do to discover what you are capable of achieving.

Americana

Fortunately, the wind was at our backs riding home. It was great to make it back through the legions of cows, past the rolling green hills, to return to the Cheese Factory. I do feel blessed to live in a place like this, where so much fantastic scenery can be experienced in a single, temperate day. We passed the cool green hills, cows and sheep, small towns, rode through eucalyptus and redwood groves, rolled down the beach to the crashing waves, took in fields of wildflowers, burbling creeks and so much more. For all the transitory suffering, rides like this leave beautiful memories that can never be forgotten.

Pacelining

One of the huge helps on this ride was that we could paceline for long periods! Pacelining is a great advantage to group endurance rides. What is Pacelining? If you see a group of riders riding nose-to-tail on the road, wheels too close together, they're Pacelining.

A small but effective Paceline

Why do they engage in such risky behavior? Because it cuts down significantly on wind resistance. You'd be surprised by what a difference that makes, but it really works. And it works better the closer you ride to the person in front of you. It doesn't work so well climbing significant hills (because of the slow speeds), but it is a tremendously efficient way to make distance for minimal effort at any real speed.

In previous seasons with TNT they taught us everything we needed to know about Pacelining. This came in quite handy with the Death Ride team, in that everyone is an experienced rider. We all know what to do on a Paceline. Everybody has a job. When you're in front, it's your job to pull hard. You have to work hard physically, set a constant pace, avoid obstacles and call them out (or point them out) so people behind know what is coming. You use hand signals to direct the group and to call out hazards as well.

A longer Paceline

After a few minutes at most, you rotate back to the end of the line. In this way, everybody pulls the group for just a few minutes, then gets to rest in the line and regain their strength for the next turn in front. When you're in back, you can eat and drink while you ride, because nobody is depending on you to be constant. You simply need to call out when cars come roaring up from behind, and make sure you don't fall too far behind the group, as you might not catch up again in time for the next rotation!

When you're in the middle of the line, you're passing information forward or back as signals and calls are made, so that everybody in the line stays aware of what's going on. There's a rhythm to it all, some great teamwork to be had. And when a line gets going really fast it takes a lot of mental energy to hold constant, keep your place and trust everyone else to do their job. Fun!

At the ride wrapup I received a TNT hoodie for my
successful fundraising efforts!
Huge thanks to all of my supporters!

Pacelining is one of the main things that keeps me coming back to riding with groups. Sure, I could do big rides, do Centuries even, by myself. But I don't want to. It's much more work to go it alone on long rides than to be on the line, doing your job and cruising at speed. Being alone is boring, too. There's nobody to help push you, nobody to help if you're falling behind, and nobody to talk to about all the cows. If you've never tried it, get yourself on a team and learn to Paceline! It just might change your whole perspective on the art of cycling.

La Montaña del Diablo

The Team gears up for the ascent.

I learned something important today. It's really hard to do a "biggest ever" personal record if you aren't rested up. Did I rest up yesterday? No, I rode the Cinderella. So what did I have to go and do today?

Mt. Diablo.

Mt. Diablo is one of those peaks you can see from nearly all over the San Francisco Bay Area on a clear day. Because it's big. How big? About 4,000 feet of big.

I've never tried climbing this hill before. I've never even been up it in a car. But today was a Team day, so the whole Death Ride team was out, practicing our climbing skills. Our route included Mt. Diablo along with Morgan Territory. Our total ride on the day was about 70 miles, and about 7000' of climbing overall.

And I started it tired.

Mt. Diablo, center rear. It's the big one.

I never could catch the ghost rider.

What a difference a day makes, though! Just yesterday was Cinderella, all rain, all wind. Not today! It was  gorgeous blue skies all the way!

One thing that surprised me - the climb up Diablo isn't too terrible. I stopped to help a guy with a blown tire, then slowly ground my way up, taking nifty pictures as I went.

The higher I got, the colder it became. It was fun to see trees covered in ice, shedding it in sheets as they warmed in the morning Sun. The American radio tower dropped a big sheet just as I was riding by, nearly spooking me right off the bike!

That's ICE!

Right at the top of the whole climb, somebody decided it'd be fun to add an insult-to-injury pitch to the final parking lot. I can just see the engineers chuckling to themselves, "let's put the visitor center on TOP of the HIGHEST rock and then we'll carve steps for them to climb!" "Nah, that'd be cruel. Let's pave the steps and let cars go up." "Aw, okay, but let's make sure it feels like they're going up a roller coaster!" "Yeah, people LOVE roller coasters! Especially the first hill! Let's do THAT!"

So I got to climb this roller-coaster grade from Hell, which I suppose is appropriate given that it's Mt. Diablo and all. To my credit, I actually made it as far as seeing the sign that said "summit" before jamming my bike sideways into the rock-face (no cliff for me, tyvm), clipping out, staggering over and then NOT puking. Oh yeah, breakfast wanted out. But I kept it down! Yay! Max heart rate for the win...

Lots of ice on the tree. Not so much puke.

The last hundred feet was a nice little walk and I was there! Okay, Mt. Diablo, maybe you win this round. But I'll getcha next time.

It was some consolation that all the other riders in my group gasped like flopping fish at the top of the hill, too. Some bailed, some finished before collapsing. Misery loves company.

Of course, one of the things about Team rides is nobody gets left behind, and we do the miles. So we gathered at the top before starting a screaming descent. I love descents. The whole point of climbing hills like this is to come down as fast as you possibly can!

And so I did! Down the mountain, out to the north and onward to the rest of the loop around the base of the whole thing. The team had to get in a full set of climbing miles, after all. We strive to climb 100 feet for every horizontal mile travelled.

So next up came a fun little climb up into the Morgan Territory Preserve. The path up to the Preserve is a sheep-track of a road, last paved in the 1960's as an experiment to see what happens when you give hallucinogenic drugs to construction workers with heavy equipment. It's the reason you see those "do not operate heavy machinery while taking this" warnings on pharmacy bottles. 

Look, ma! I'm on top of a mountain!

By this point, I was pretty done in. The climb felt like it would never end. I passed from tired to exhausted to woozy, then passed through to the undiscovered country beyond. My legs burned then entered into some other dimension where pain is just something beautiful, like water burbling down a hill. At one point I think I was passed by a few dozen chittering monkeys on mopeds, fez-caps held high. One of them waved at me and said something, might've been a warning, but sadly I only know a few words in Macaque.

I barely remember any of that climb. I had held up pretty well through Mt. Diablo, but the after-effects of riding the Cinderella were catching up to me. Parts of my body that had been threatening to secede had simply given up complaining, energy just couldn't be mustered.

The descent down the Preserve was beautiful: fast, brilliant and wide-open. I was conducting the choral of Beethoven's 9th, the multitude of angelic voices pouring across me from the heavens, cascading down the valley floor. How easy it would've been to simply steer into the light of that descent...but somehow my bike kept to the road, not the sky, all the way to the long rollout at the bottom.

My bike needed a rest.

At last, the home stretch. A bracing headwind. A narrow tunnel of "just finish", no room for any other thoughts. I found another Team member, grabbed their wheel, and just kept them in focus.

To their credit, they never let me fall behind.

In the end, we rolled back to the cars, many hours later. I couldn't quite figure out where the hysterical laughter was coming from amidst all the cheers and screams of relief from my companions...then I realized it was me. What the heck was I thinking? I can't believe I did this all to myself in one weekend. Smart? Not even close. But amazing all the same.

So today's lesson: Rest before you ride.

And my takeaway? I need to get a lot stronger.

I'm looking forward to doing this again.