Three Rides and a Bite to Eat

As I write this, the Death Ride is only 6 weeks away. Six weeks! I've been busy getting ready, have no fear. "Too busy to blog?" you ask? Well, maybe. It's a good excuse anyway, yeah, that's it...I've been too busy riding to blog, plus there was the dog that chased me, plus I saw a squirrel...

Whatever. What I’ll provide instead of more excuses are three brief updates; one for each of three significant rides I did since the last blog entry. Also, to make up for my tardiness I'll throw down some notes to answer the most common question I get asked "wtf do you eat all day?" Maybe I can even answer the second most common question at the same time!

On to the rides!

Ride One: "Hardest. Ride. Ever."   (May 12th, Page Mill/Tunitas, ~95miles, ~8k ft.)

Go Team Go!

I didn't expect a hard ride when this one started. A few weeks ago the Team ride was a loop on the Penninsula. We went out to the coast via Page Mill road, a climb which a couple of months before had taught me two things: 

• I can stay vertical on my bike at 3.5 mph
• Normally latent Tourette’s Syndrome can manifest itself under extreme duress. 

It was amazing to discover that this time the climb was significantly easier! I was actually really excited, because I was switching up the food I was eating during the ride, experimenting with new cycling "performance enhancers", and so far the ride had gone well.

 

Biggest Motorcycle Gang Ever.
We had to wait 10 minutes to cross their traffic.

The complication arose around the time I hit the 40-ish mile mark, near Pescadero. As we rolled to the coast and intersected a motorcycle convention that had drawn every gang member on two wheels within a six-county radius, the ride became much more challenging. I was at a loss to figure out why. We rode down the coast for about 10 miles in a paceline, the entire time I felt like I was climbing hard just to keep in the line! How could it be so easy for everyone else? I kept questioning myself – was it my new diet? Was it poor sleep the night before? Too much salt? Too little fluid? Had the singing motorcyclists stolen my vitality? Hard to say. All I knew was that this "easy" stretch of road really sucked. 

When we reached the next stopping point, I hopped off the bike and pushed it towards a fence…or tried to. The back wheel wouldn’t rotate. In fact, it had taco’d – bent itself into a taco shape – because a spoke had broken and it was rubbing the rear brakes on every rotation. Aha! That explained it. With my typical full head of stubbornness I had simply pushed through the difficulty, thinking it had to me, rather than something mechanical. 



Broken spoke meets electrical tape

Once again, my team helped me out. We were as far away from the start as we could’ve been and there was no support to call – but one person donated some tape, another helped me open the back brakes completely, and between the two it was rideable. Oy, but I was tired by that point. And the Tunitas Creek climb to get back over the hill and home still was ahead! There were those who suggested I just wait until somebody finished, then they could come and get me…nothing doing. I was going to push this one through.

Tunitas Creek was a climb I’d always wanted to try, the only major climb close to home that I hadn’t yet attempted. Three times before I'd bailed on it because of mechanical issues. I’ve now done it once, on a mangled wheel and sore legs. Between the tiredness and the wheel it was the hardest climb I’d ever done. I made it to the top, shedding tears of agony along the way. I was so glad to have my great teammates there to cheer me on! 

Ride Two: "And the Moon ate the Sun" (May 20th, Page Mill, et.al, ~60 miles, ~6.5k ft)

I didn't take this picture, but this was the eclipse!

On May 20^th I created my own little make-up ride, to try to compensate to some degree for missing the grueling team ride the day before up Sierra Road and Mt. Hamilton. More excuses - Family in town, the Maker’s Faire was happening, blah blah - bottom line, I skipped the Team ride. So to try to make up even a franction of the punishment in the time I had, I rushed out for a quick run up and down the hills, once again tackling Page Mill, then Old La Honda. Finally, I figured to cap it all off by climbing the CrestView wall on my way home. This is a local hill near my house and the only place I’ve ever broken 50mph. Point downwards, of course. Climbing up it’s a ridiculous, vertical ascent, mitigated only by the fact that it’s short-ish. For those familiar with an east-bay climb known as “South Park” I’ll simply say that I’d rather have “South Park” than CrestView any day of the week.

Testing my climbing ability by going up Crestview had seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, partway up I had to stop and rest. Then I had to stop again. And again. Each time, the same tired chat with my old friend "Max Heart Rate" and his ever sociable date, "Dry Heaves". When I finally lurched to the top just after 6pm, completely spent, my legs decided it would be a good time to let me know they were going on strike by completely cramping up. It was all I could do not to fall over and cry on the spot. Fortunately there was a small crowd watching my arrival and some residual sense of decorum kept me biting my lower lip and grimacing instead of screaming.

Much to my surprise, I’d arrived just in time to watch the solar eclipse from the top of the ridge. All the amateur astronomers were overjoyed to have a hobbling cyclist admire their telescopes and lenses. Thanks to my timing (and no doubt my bedraggled state) I garnered enough sympathy to peer through some nice equipment and watch the moon very nearly eclipse the whole Sun. It was a great show! By the time it was over my legs worked well enough to get me home. I couldn’t have timed the day any better!

Ride Three: "South Park Meets Devil Mountain" (May 26th, Mt. Diablo, et.al., ~100 miles, ~10.5k ft)

It's Bone Domo! Our Team Spirit Award!
I Love You, Domo!

And this brings us up to ride three of the set, made last Saturday, the 26^th  of May. For those keeping track, this one was another near-miss on the Century list, clocking in at 99 miles. Sigh.

However, there was one immediately wonderful thing about this entire ride - I got to carry Domo on my bike! Domo is the Team Spirit Award, and every week one rider who best demonstrates the indominatable spirit required of Death Riders everywhere gets to take this totem on their bike. It was my turn, due to the events described in the first Ride on this blog - in which I pushed through to completion despite a bent wheel and hard times!

Pushing Max HR, at the very summit of Mt. Diablo!

Domo is a huge pick-me-up. He really kept me going. All through the hard parts of this ride I found myself talking to him, gaining his encouragement, telling him in turn to "Scream Louder" as the wind ripped across my ears on death-defying descents...good times, good times!

The ride of the day was a big East Bay tour, covering some well-known territory, including another summit of Mt. Diablo and transecting the Vampiric-Butterfly infested fields of the Grizzly Peak Century. Not so long ago such a ride should have struck fear into my bones!

Summiting the Pig Farm

Yet Mt. Diablo, with the hellish grade at the top, held no fear. I made it up that ghoulish last pitch without pause, Domo screaming his encouragement the whole way! 

There then followed the meandering hills of the three bears, with nary a blood-sucking butterfly to worry me. Finally, the day gone, sun setting and 90+ miles reached, we tackled the final climb: "South Park Lane". That's one nasty climb, short and brutal. Especially in the cold and dark, at the end of a long day of riding. To be fair, I had to pause twice to make it to the top, but once again, my teammates never left me behind. Love it!

My DR Roomie!

So somehow…though everything was difficult, it was all achievable. I think the hardest part was that it took all day! We were on the bikes at 8am, only making it back to the cars around 7pm. That's been hard to adapt to - as these rides grow longer and the climbing more intense, I simply have to be prepared for entire days spent in the Sun, pushing my pedals.

And yet...week by week, my body becomes ever more hardened, carved in wood. The seat still tries to destroy my butt, but it takes longer every time. This type of riding isn't easy, it’s never been easy. As the wise man said, “It never gets easier. You just get faster.” I would add to that - you get tougher. A lot tougher. Six more weeks! Will I be tough enough?!? OMG O_o

Ride Nutrition: "Do you eat while you ride?"

So I thought I'd throw in some quick thoughts on things not really nutrition related. Basically I get asked a lot, “Do you eat while you ride?” The answer is an emphatic “yes!”

There are some really fun challenges in doing endurance events like this. Not just the physical challenges, either. The body is a machine, and it has been fascinating for me to discover how that machine can be run. There are a couple of critical things that need to be watched during these events. The first one is heart rate (HR). How fast your heart is beating while you exercise is telling you how hard you’re working. How hard you’re working dictates what type of energy you’re burning, whether it’s energy from the muscles (anaerobic) or from fat (aerobic). There’s only so much anaerobic energy available. It has to be conserved and portioned out at critical intervals to climb hills or sprint ahead. The rest of the time you have to be smart, watch the HR, and insure you’re burning easily renewable energy. That’s where eating while you ride really comes into play.


About a Century's worth of calories and supplements.
Okay, I only eat a fraction of the big powder
bins in one go, but you get the idea.

Check out the photo with the various food-stuffs in it. That’s typical ride-prep for me. There are supplements to restore electrolytes and maintain glycogen levels. There’s a pre-ride FRS drink and a post-ride FRS drink. There are bottles of gel, which is like a sugary syrup, for times when a rapid hit of energy is required. There are the longer-burning elements, like peanut butter sandwiches, fig newtons, energy bars and the like. And of course, the real secret? Painkillers. My personal choice is Aleve. I’m amazed at what a difference those little pills can make over the long haul!

All told, I’ll end up carrying somewhere between 2,000-3,000 calories with me. In many ways, long-distance endurance cycling is a numbers game. When operating in aerobic zones, the body uses glycogen as a catalyst for all its energy conversion. You can’t burn fat if you don’t have glycogen, and if you’re not burning fat you’re burning the energy in the muscles directly, which is a quick path to bonking out and ending the ride.

The way we ride, with all the climbing, 30 miles is a bit less than three hours of effort, and something like 1500 calories. That’s about all the body is really good for in terms of glycogen reserves. If you want to maintain performance levels after that, you have to be eating along the way.


A demonstration of my patented quick-activation technique
to maximize the efficacy of cycling "performance enhancers".
Don't try this at home. I'm what you call "a professional".

Our Team rides have been getting up to 10+ hours in duration. The Death Ride itself might take 15 hours. At a minimum, I have to be taking in about 300 calories an hour to keep the engine running, perhaps more. So on a 10-hour ride, I try to pack about 3,000 calories and eat it all. That 3,000 plus the initial 1,500 in reserve gives me approximately a nine-hour range at good performance levels. Simple math, right? Hopefully now you have some insight into why so many bikers go around with big lumps of junk on their backs. We’re like camels on wheels, eating our own humps as we go!


A Final Word

Thanks for reading this far and thanks to all of you for your friendship and support! For those unaware, I've hit my fundraising milestone. You've been a huge inspiration to me and one of the biggest reasons I keep on going. To all of you who've helped me and by extension helped in the fight against cancer, I extend my heartfelt love and gratitude!

Of course, as I write this, it's time to face the next challenge. Tomorrow is the biggest ride yet for the season. I'm told it's 110 miles and 11k of vertical feet, and I have to drive about 2.5 hours just to get to the start line. I have to leave the house before Starbucks opens, for crying out loud! Does the world even exist at that hour?!? Stay tuned...if I make it back, you'll hear all about it here!

The Grizzly Peak Century



I love this route profile graph so much I bought the shirt!

Whelp, sorry for the delay on this blog entry! I have a pledge to myself - I have to document the events of the last ride before embarking on the next one. And guess what? Tomorrow morning, bright and early is my next ride, so I'm cutting this entry about as close as I reasonably can. :)

That said, let me tell you what I did on Sunday, May 6th! I participated with the Team in the Grizzly Peak Century (GPC). The GPC is an annual event, a Century ride conducted in the east bay hills.

It's the perfect length and has just about the right amount of climbing for us at this point in the season, so the Team likes to participate in it as a training ride. Of course, there were also plenty of scenic views from those exalted heights.

Grizzly Peak has lots of tree-shrouded roads.
Perfect for surprise attacks.

This event was to be momentous for another, more personal reason. You see, it's time for me to come clean about a dirty little secret. I've done "Century" rides before. A Century ride is defined as either a "Metric Century", meaning 100km in length or a regular "Century", which is 100 miles in length. My first Century was two years ago. Last year, I did Tahoe again and the Seattle-to-Portland (STP), which is a total of 207 miles, over two days.

The secret isn't that I've done Century rides before. Rather, it's that many times, those "Century" rides don't actually make it to the full 100 miles. Tahoe is only 98. Only one day of the STP exceeded 100. So in reality, I've cheated, or been cheated out of breaking the official mark by these supposedly official rides! So how many times have I actually broken 100? Only that once, on STP.

The view from the Oakland Hills. UC Berkeley is in the foreground,
San Francisco in the background.

So now comes Grizzly Peak, an honest Century at last! I was psyched and ready. I can tell I've been getting stronger. Even knowing the looming mileage, the involved climbing, I was raring to go at the start line. A bit worried about real Grizzly Bears, perhaps. Silly me. All too soon we'd all discover that something much worse was biding its time on those forested, tree-shrouded slopes.

The ride itself was a large loop, which led us first up and to the top of the Oakland Hills. I'd never been up there before. Back in the late 80's the whole place was devastated by fires. It has since been rebuilt, the trees regrown. There were amazing views of the bay, you could see Mt. Tam in Marin, San Francisco, the Golden Gate bridge, Oakland and further south. At last I understood why people would want to live perched on cliffside houses at the top of this ridge, even with the known fire risk. The views are amazing.

Todd was telling us to go back, "Save yourselves!".
Nothing doing, Todd. We stick together!

It was in coming down from Grizzly Peak that we saw our first butterfly.

Cute, charming, butterflies. One, two, a dozen...more. Swarms. There were a strange number of them out that day, wings sparkling in the sunlight. A rite of spring in those hills, I imagined. A deer leapt up and among them, into the trees, disappearing and taking the butterflies along in its wake. Beautiful, really. It was a restful pause, almost as if they were following it to some quiet rendevous in a shrouded sylvan glade.

Um, guys, you realize there's a
"Butterfly Field" on this map, right?

After Grizzly Peak and the soft touch of nature, we rode towards the Carquinez Bridge. In terms of traffic and urbanity this was the sketchiest part of the ride, as it took us through industrial zones of the northeast Bay. All in all, it was quite the juxtaposition - as we quickly moved from amazing nature views with humanity spread from horizon to horizon, followed by an up-close-and-personal with the heavy industry that humanity requires.

It was in this stretch of industrial piping, heavy with chemicals and blowing fumes that one of my fellow riders first voiced his concern. "I think I saw another butterfly," he said. "So?" I replied. He turned a paler shade, voice quavering just a bit, "Just keep riding, okay?" Strangely, I couldn't get anything else out of him. At the time it really struck me as an odd thing to say, especially when it was getting so hot on the roads.

You see, as we continued riding, I naturally continued to sweat. One of the challenges of the day that I underestimated came in the form of getting enough to drink. You're supposed to drink enough so that you have to pee at every rest stop. After the first couple, I was drinking my bottles between stops and still not peeing. That's not really sustainable over a long ride. I've begun pondering the merits of a camelback, just so I can carry more water with me!

Can you find the butterfly in this picture? Of course not.
That's because vampires don't show up on cameras.

Just as my water was running low, I saw another one of the soft orange-and-black insects, winging its way towards us. Never one to shirk from scientific investigation, I took a picture of it! Strangely, it didn't show up on the camera. I tried again, turning the camera off and then on. Snapped the shot. Still nothing. It was only then that the hairs on the back of my neck started to rise.

Halfway rest stop. I still feel bad for that
guy crying in the front, I think the bugs got his buddy.

The legends...I'm sure you've heard them so many times, no need to repeat them here. Let me tell you, they're true. No wonder the strange silences of my cohorts. The hills, the sounds of nature so strangely missing. The lack of Grizzly Bears!  These weren't just any butterflies. They were vampire butterflies!

I felt bad for the deer that had fled into the woods. For the riders I had seen diving down side roads, screaming in sudden terror. How much the fool I had been, to think they were merely dehydrated and cracking under the stress of the hills and Sun!

I summoned up every bedtime story, every encylopedia entry I'd ever read from the dim corners of my mind. I remembered it right, unlike their bat cousins, these little creatures come out during the day, luring their prey with their soft, prismatic wings. Never had I seen a picture of course. This didn't stop me from desperately trying to capture them on film, as we would pass whole fields of shimmering color. Unfortunately, they cannot be so captured. They have no souls. That much of the legends is certainly true. Also, they can go in the sunlight. And they sparkle. Damn you, Twilight, for getting that right.

You could blend your own smoothie at the rest stop!

Fear is a fine motivator, with or without water to sustain you. Any thought of taking it easy was put behind when one of the pretty little bugs smacked my skin on a downhill, raising a welt that I swear bore the tracks of fangs that had tried and failed to find purchase.

Together we pushed on, swooping down hills and pacing ourselves up them. After a harrowing journey through one sun-dappled field too many, we arrived at the relative safety of a large, midway rest stop. There a large number of riders had circled the wagons, were breaking bread together, plotting strategies for the rest of the ride. I was amused to see that somebody had hooked a blender to a stationary trainer. Smoothies were available for those with the energy to make them!

Official Grizzly Peak riders. Bright yellow, like flowers.
I loved seeing these jerseys, I used them as bait.

We took the time to regroup. And strategize like the others. It didn't take me long to notice that there were an awful lot of official "Grizzly Peak" riders on the route, in their bright yellow jerseys. Very attractive jerseys, especially to insects. And as I sat there, slurping down my smoothie and stretching my legs I realized I might not have to sprint the last 40 miles back to the car! No, all we had to do was let them lead away the butterflies, like the Pied Piper or the deer into the woods!

You might call it cowardice, but it was strategy of the highest order. We could spend our energy wisely, climbing hills and sprinting only when needed to throw pursuit off the track. Together, our riders rallied with renewed hope!

I saw wings! Flee for your lives!

Of course, if you've read this far, you have probably surmised that I survived. And not just me. I'm glad to report that despite some close calls from the undead insect world, all of our team made it back at the end of a long day. I can't vouch for all the yellow jerseys, but our Team, every last straggler, made it to the finish. We took a moment of well-earned rest, eating the official bbq, nursing our leg cramps and bandaging our bites.

And the icing on the cake? My second "official" Century was complete!

Now for the next challenge - every weekend from here until the Death Ride will contain at least one ride of 100 miles in length or more. That's just the part of the season we've arrived at! A Century a week! I can hardly wait!

Also, I'm bringing bug spray.

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.