Stage 1 - Saturday, Sept. 24
89 miles of racing + 28 miles return trip to cars
M55+
Place: 1st of 17 starters
Time: 6:21:02

Stage 2 - Sunday, Sept. 25
65 miles of racing + 23 miles return trip to cars
Place: 2nd of 14 finishers, 2nd GC
Time: 5:14:27

Summary:  It became evident on the first climb that the race was between myself and two other riders in the 55's.  This was the first year I really had to race the Everest Challenge and I added preparation with 2.5 weeks of training in Bishop.   The first descent showed me descending is almost as important as climbing.   I managed to bridge back on the first day and then out paced my rivals by over 10 minutes to win the first stage.  But the pattern of losing time on the descents continued the second day giving the third place rider from day 1 a platform to gain an insurmountable lead to the finish. I had to console myself with my stage 1 win, the first of my racing career.

Prelude -  In the months before the race, I knew I would have a chance at a good result if I trained right.  I knew my contenders were the newest 55+ riders.  One Mark Hamlin had pressed the contention after his long solo ride for second at Mt. Hamilton.  And my old teammate from Webcor/AltoVelo, Kevin Keenan, had ridden significantly faster times than me at the Everest Challenge in the 45's.  So I cleared my schedule after Labor Day and took up my friend Scott Busby's offer to visit him in Bishop for some altitude training.  You have all witnessed the training that took place prior to Labor Day.  The extended stay in Bishop made me fall in love with the area.  I did some oil painting in addition to some great riding, including the annual Fall Century on 9/10 (www.fallcentury.org) - 95 miles with about 6800 feet of climbing - not exactly on par with the EC, but it had great terrain and support.  I also punished myself on consecutive days of training on the climbs of the race and, more importantly, worked on the long, fast descents.

Stage 1: The 55's started with the 60+ and 70+ riders at 6:30 am.  A small group of the mixed fields took turns pacing climb #1 to South Lake.  We whittled the lead group to 5 when the grade turned to 8% and Kevin, Mark and I dropped the two 60+ riders once we turned onto South Lake Road.  I stuck with them on the first, flatter part of the descent, but was not able to keep their draft pointing the bike down the 8% grades.  I got up to 53-54 mph but had to back off when little gusts of wind made the front end of my bike start quivering.  At the bottom I was about 30 seconds behind and chased across the flats where the gap opened to more than a minute.  At the start of climb #2 Mark and Kevin stopped to hand off clothing to Mark's wife.  With a few good surges I was able to bridge.  We kept a steady pace for the rest of the climb with Kevin doing most of the leading.  The second climb is less steep.  So I was able to hack the descent speeds. Kevin set most of the pace on the flats and first part of last climb past the little town of Paradise and up to Tom's place on Lower Rock Creek Road.  Mark Hamilin was complaining of cramping.  After negotiating crossing the 395 highway twice, I set what I thought was the same pace we had been going only to look back and find Kevin and Mark well off my wheel.  Storm clouds loomed over the Rock Creek canyon and it looked like it was snowing at the top.  I kept my fast cadence pace against a strong head wind and just a bit of drizzle.  I thought the P12's should have caught us.  As I crossed the finish line Nate English came up on my wheel.  It seemed like just a couple of minutes when Mark, then Kevin came by the food tent which was set up 250 meters below the finish line.  Recovery food included chicken soup, coca-cola, peanut butter sandwiches, spinach black bean quesadillas, cookies, recovery drink, and more coca-cola.

Stage 2:  Same early start.  When I signed in I learned I had a 10.5 minute lead over Mark Hamlin and 11.5 minutes over Kevin Keenan.  I set the pace up the first climb to Glacier Lodge.  We shed riders in the same fashion as Day 1.  I attacked near the top hoping to get a gap for the descent.  Mark and Kevin were right on me.  They bolted down the twisty road at the top and gapped me quickly.  With no wind, I had more nerve to hold my speed up the same 53-54 mph as Day 1.  It was a bit nerve wracking to blast straight toward cars coming up and going around packs of riders ascending.  Again I was about 30 seconds back at the bottom and only 39 at the start of the second climb. Then Kevin dropped Mark and when I bridged to Mark he had about 1:30. The chase was on.  Although I picked up my pace, he kept gaining time.  At the top of the second climb he had more that 2.5 minutes. I descended as fast as I could on this 5-6% grade, putting in high cadence spins to get my speed up.  I thought I could pull Kevin back when we got to steeper climbing.  Up the first part of the last climb there was a rider in sight who I was almost certain was a non-competitive rider.  I kept pushing the pace knowing that I had to save some for the really steep sections at the end.  This last climb rises from 3700 to 10,039 feet in 23 miles.  It has a flat section in the middle and then rises about 3000 feet in the last 10 kilomters - kind of like doing two Diablos back to back.  I started getting time splits first from Mark's wife who gave me a water feed: 5.5 minutes. Then 6.5 minutes.  Then 7 minutes from Steve Barnes, the race director, at the 10K mark.  All I could do was stomp on my pedals to get up the 10-12% switch backs and grind in the saddle where it was less steep.  Nate English came by me making it look too easy.  I tried to follow the wheels of some of the other P12's as they passed working much harder.  I pushed the last few steeper sections with the intention of sprinting the last kilometer, to avoid losing by a little margin like 10 seconds.  The finish snuck up on me.  So my sprint was feeble.   Same food as the day before.  Chatted with Kevin and Mark.  A long wait.   The EBVC tribe was getting restless.  Kevin and I bugged Steve Barnes for results in the 55's.  Kevin had pulled and incredible 14 minute lead over me, with a remarkable time of 5:00:30, and thus winning by 2.5 minutes.   My time for the second day was still a personal best.


Thanks for reading, Jamie

With no ado, much less any further ado, here is my race report of the 2011 Everest Challenge California-Nevada Climbing Championship.  I hope you’re not looking for a tightly edited perfectly-paced action drama, nor a feel-good bromance, nor a soap opera of who did what in the never-ending Masters 35+ dynastic saga.  As usual, and as with life, it’s all about the food.

Pre-race

On the way to Bishop—Ian and I in his sporty Euro-edition Golf, and Paul in his element in his Element with Rob—we tinkered briefly with the idea of getting take-out from the House of Beef in Oakdale.  Next door was House of Tykes.  Either you drop your kids off while getting barbecue, or it’s a cannibalistic venue. We didn’t even consider the Battered Beaver up the road (no, I didn’t make that up). 

Anyway, we’d hit Oakdale too early for lunch anyway, and instead stopped at Priest Station where Paul and Jamie had dined the year before.  We had a great table out on the deck and paid extra for Premium Burgers (grass-fed beef ).  Ian and I had mayonnaise with our fries and could tell that everybody—Paul, Rob, those at the next table, and the proprietors—were pretty impressed.  In fact, the staff must have decided to keep us around as long as possible, attracting other diners, because the service was remarkably slow.  It worked, though … by the time we left, the place was hopping.  Alas, we reached Bishop too late for the happy hour at Whiskey Creek Saloon.  It was more important to get a good spin in, to work out our legs after the long drive.

Dinner, therefore, was the free Everest Challenge pasta-feed.  Last year, you may remember, was almost a fracas as the volunteer staff unwisely tried to throttle the flow of pasta.  This time, none of the rider/diners got any flak.  But we didn’t get any sausage either.  “In this economy” etc.  There was plenty of garlic bread, at least for me.  Absolutely nothing prevented the others from taking like ten pieces on their first trip through like I did, and yet I was chided for hogging it.  Excuse me, but is this a pre-race meal, or a little snack before a fun run?  Are you going to throw elbows or throw tantrums?  Anyway, the bread it had giant chunks of garlic, and I had three huge plates of spaghetti (on a scale of one to ten, ten being the best, this was … free).  It really would have been good had I been successful in my normal bedtime evacuation ritual, but I was reminded of that old restroom graffito, “Here I sit, my hopes deflated, tried to defecate, but only micturated.”  (I’ve cleaned up the language of that ditty for this report.)

By now you’ve guessed the rest:  extreme flatulence, EC Edition.  It was bad.  I slept fine until about 4:15 a.m., and then suddenly was fully bloated with gas, like a large dead hoofed animal that has ballooned up enough to actually float on a little lake until a boy scout with a .22 shoots it and it fricking explodes.  Neither Ian nor I could sleep with flatulence of this magnitude.  (Rob, in the main room on a king size bed, probably slept like a baby.  We drew straws for the big bed and he won fair and square but that didn’t stop Ian and me from berating him all weekend for being a prima donna.)  A couple times my blasts were so loud they seemed to actually frighten Ian.  Not a good scene.

Our breakfast stuff overwhelmed the little mini-fridge.  The thing was unplugged to begin with and it took it several hours to drop below room temperature.  I suppose there’s a commentary to be made about three kinds of milk—regular dairy milk, rice milk, and soy milk—for three guys, but I won’t be making it.  We had some cheap yogurt from Smart & Final, a traditional EC destination, and though the yogurt said Grade A it seemed kind of … meh.  Who gets the Grade B stuff?  Inmates?  The military?  Rob had a big Coke in the little fridge, and then all our bottles of various energy drinks, and I spent about twenty minutes trying to get the door to close. 

So, breakfast.  In addition to the iffy yogurt, I had my Uncle Sam cereal, with 10 grams of fiber per serving, less than a gram of sugar, and the consistency of cat litter.  It’s probably the second-hardest breakfast cereal to eat (next to Grape Nuts, or “grape pits” as my brother Max calls them).  You take a bite and then chew for a couple minutes while you put on sunscreen or pump up your tires.  It tastes like cardboard.  Very high-end cardboard.  Ian, ever loyal to the Crown, ate his Weetabix with its lowly 4 grams of fiber.  In its defense, Weetabix seems exactly like the kind of cereal Wallace and Gromit would eat.  Nonetheless, you’ll be happy to know that I asserted my American pride, alerting Ian to the fact that Uncle Sam has been around since 1908, whereas Weetabix is a relative interloper, not appearing on the breakfast scene until 1932.  Of course he immediately rejoined that Weetabix was officially recognized by the Queen.  Those British are so fricking pompous.

Stage 1 – 88 miles, 14,965 feet of climbing

During stage one I consumed five large bottles of my preferred energy drink and one bottle of the race-provided drink (which is widely rumored among our ranks to cause serious stomach issues that make you look like Moomintroll or ET or something).  I also had like four gels.  Let me explain how hard it is eating gels during the EC.  Lacking any particular muscular strength, I strive to be as efficient as possible.  This means not rocking a lot on the bike.  I’d like to think my upper body isn’t rigid, but merely still.  It was so still during the extra-hot second climb that some sort of strange membrane of air or sunscreen or something was being created between my skin and my sweat.  I would only become aware of it when my arm would  shift slightly and send the sweat sliding off this membrane and suddenly I’d feel a swish of cool.  Being this still, my body sort of reshaped itself into this climbing mannequin, more like a sculpture than a puppet.  So when I tried to access my jersey pockets, my arms were so stiff I could barely reach anything.  It was like trying to get a finger to bend again after it’s been in a splint for six weeks.  The tops of my pockets seemed halfway up my back.  I got gel on my number, gel on the other stuff in my pockets, residues of gel I couldn’t get out of the package draining down into puddles in my jersey … it was a mess.  I also had a half banana someone passed up.  Oh, and I had a giant mouthful of bile that I had to re-swallow after I half-barfed.  That kind of sucked.

Atop the final climb of Stage 1 (which would have been the first climb, but they switched the first and third climbs to make the residential area last, so homeowners wouldn’t have to contend with pelotons), I had like eight Cokes.  Not eight cans, but eight cups filled by the volunteers, who are all distance runners who volunteer here just to be cool.  Now, when it comes to booze, I’m careful not to fall prey to the “bottomless cup” model, where it’s hard to modulate your intake and you might end up downing, say, a pint class of bourbon without realizing it.  Discrete units like bottles of beer are much safer.  But with soft drinks, especially after a ride like that, who cares!  Worst case scenario I get too much caffeine and can’t sleep … but then who can sleep after Stage 1 of the EC anyway?  All the same, I switched to ginger ale at some point.  My throat was so parched I couldn’t talk, but boy could I burp.  After a liter or two of carbonated fluids I could talk again, though by that point I was busy gobbling quesadillas and Reese’s peanut butter cups and potato chips.  There was chicken soup, too, with noodles.  I have figured out what’s so strange about the EC soup noodles:  they were never boiled, but rather added to non-boiling broth.  So they’re both crunchy and soggy at the same time.  You could probably pay big bucks for such a novel thing at a fancy restaurant, along with lobster foam and other overblown contrivances.

Jamie won the first stage among the Masters 55+!  We’re all very proud.  Not only that, but based on when his category started, he was actually the very first rider—out of 335 total—to finish.  Nate English was glued to his wheel at the end.

Dinner was, once again, at the little Italian place.  I have done some special research this year and can actually tell you the name:  The Upper Crust Pizza Co.  No, this isn’t the Boston chain with the award-winning TV commercial.  (Who ever heard of such a thing?  The only TV commercial that deserves an award is a really short one, like under a second, or maybe a beer commercial with really hot babes.)  We went to the one-off Upper Crust whose domain name is up for sale.  Anyway, as always, we started with a pizza as appetizer.  Kromer celebrated his EC Rookie status by choosing the ‘za:  we had the, dang it, what was it called?  Something silly like the Ranch Hand or Wrangler or something.  I tried to find the place’s menu online so I could get the name of our pizza but I only came across a two-star review from a guy name Jesse G. who complained, “they put way too much cheese on the pizza for my taste.”  What a pussy.  Hey Jesse, why don’t you go ride 117 miles over three mountains and then get some pizza.  Too much cheese?  Hell, I was salting my pizza!  Just for the salt!  I was craving salt.  I’d have eaten a whole stick of salami if it had been provided as garnish, which come to think of it is a pretty good idea.

On a pizza called the Ranch Hand you’d expect toppings like hardtack and tumbleweed, but it was a classic:  mushroom, sausage, pepperoni, something else.  (I can’t remember the fourth topping—I guess I ate too fast.)  Then we had pasta.  I heavily promoted the chicken marsala and two other s had it.  Jamie had something that looked exactly like it but wasn’t, apparently.  I will publically apologize to Rob for not warning him that it was a cream sauce.  It never occurred to me to classify this as a cream/non-cream dish.  Just that it was chicken, and pasta, and fattening, and actually this time the pasta was a bit overcooked but dang, it was good anyway.  So was the oddly spicy cream of mushroom soup.  I’m doing EC again next year just to eat at Upper Crust again.

After dinner we had to go to K-Mart, America’s Favorite Store, so Ian could buy some earplugs.  Why earplugs?  Because my flatulence had kept him awake from 4:15 a.m. on the night before.  (When he first complained about this, I thought he said his own flatulence kept him awake from 4:15 a.m. on, and I thought, wow, what a coincidence, I was gassy too at that time!  And I started to wonder if, like female roommates end up on the same monthly cycle, guys sharing a room might start to have synched-up flatulence.  But no, it was just me doing the flatching.)  Ian purchased some Hearos, despite some misgivings in that the attenuation chart and noise reduction info on the package didn’t cover flatulence.  I told him not to worry because my concussive blasts were doubtless much louder than the norm anyway.

Back at the motel, Rob studied an impressive legal textbook, and I couldn’t help but feel sheepish about the fact that, though cycling may be enough for some of us, others are actually getting somewhere in life and really making something of themselves.  It didn’t help that I was pretty much brain-dead and struggling just to transfer my race numbers to a clean jersey.  I mean, Rob is deep in thought processing complex ideas about law, and I’m somehow managing to pin my number not only to the jersey but to the bedspread.  When I was finally done, and Rob had realized he wouldn’t get any studying done with me forgetting every thirty seconds to shut the hell up, we headed out to McDonalds for some freedom fries.  We brought some back for Ian.  Look at this happy customer.

Stage 2 – 88 miles, 14,070 feet of climbing

During stage two I drank four bottles of my preferred energy drink, about a bottle (two halves, really) of the race-supplied beverage, and a bottle of water.  It’s hard to take on a bottle of water during the race because you don’t want to give up a bottle of energy drink or use up limited water bottle cage space for a non-caloric beverage.  So I rode along with the bottle of water, drinking greedily from it, like Landis in that famous Tour stage.  It didn’t work as well for me.  (Maybe it was the testosterone, blood transfusion, and Jack Daniels that worked so well for Landis.) 

Oh, and I had three gels and a half-banana.  I didn’t want the banana—the very idea of eating it made me want to hurl—but it was a little kid volunteer offering it up which was so cute.  Once I took possession of it, of course I wouldn’t waste it.  That’s just how I was raised.  So after carrying it for half a mile or so I choked it down.

I was fricking dying.  It was the last climb of the day, which gains more than 6,000 feet over 20 miles, and I’d blown up before even reaching it.  I was nauseated and weaving and fighting off despair.  My heart rate was stuck in the 130s, sometimes even the 120s.  I was afraid to look at my bike computer’s mileage reading:  to know how many miles I had left would be too demoralizing.  At one point I saw the 6,000-foot elevation marker, and was elated because somehow I’d missed the 5,000-foot marker and thought I was still below it.  But the elation didn’t last long as I realized being at 6,000 feet wasn’t actually that great of news:  I still had over 4,000 feet to climb.  During this climb I only passed one guy in my category.  That gave me a little bit of a morale boost, because at that moment I hated him even more than I hated life.  This was the kind of suffering that I wouldn’t wish on anybody except maybe the other Masters 35+ riders, all of them , damn them. 

I don’t know how I made the summit without losing my shit entirely.  When I crossed the line I thought I was going to burst out crying.  Its’ the kind of bike-induced misery that—now that it’s over—I wouldn’t trade for anything.  A real Vision Quest kind of suffering.  The kind of torment that forges you, like heat treating a frame, as long as you survive the process and don’t come out warped like a damn Cannondale.

After finishing I had a bunch more Cokes, but really couldn’t touch anything else sweet.  I did eat a whole bunch of the feta, spinach, and mushroom quesadillas.  Actually I couldn’t tell if they were mushrooms or olives because the feta was so salty.  Let me tell you something about salt:  it’s good for you.  I’ve been telling people for years that it only raises your blood pressure if you have a genetic predisposition for high blood pressure.  I’ve been contradicted on this point so often I was starting to doubt myself until Rob volunteered the very same fact.  And he’s got like a Ph.D. in some related field.  He said he used to get muscle cramps as a kid because his well-meaning mother fed him a low-sodium diet, and then when he moved into the dorms and started eating their salty food he never had another muscle cramp.  And I’ve never had one either.  I eat salt like crazy.  And my blood pressure is, well, good enough.  If I had some more of those feta quesadillas right now, I’d eat them recreationally even though my body is probably pretty much back to normal.

Check out how much lower my heart rate was on the second day of the race.

We all had a great time in the race, and then a great time descending for twenty miles back to our internal-combustion rolling saunas.  We all showered in Kromer’s room (he stayed an extra night—brilliant!) and then headed over to Erick Schat’s Bakery in Bishop—an EC tradition.  I got the last two slices of rye bread for my famously “not lean” pastrami sandwich.  They’d run out of rye bread the previous year, too.  What is it with these people?  They do make good food though.  Rob got two sandwiches:  a turkey sandwich and the Mule Kick.  Somebody always gets the Mule Kick, doubtless because of the catchy name, but I’ve never seen anybody order it a second time.  At least Rob had the balls to admit it was a terrible sandwich.  I don’t know how a place that makes such a killer pastrami sandwich can also make something lousy.  Now, I’d asked him about his sandwich purely to gather material for this report, but of course the others made it out like I was hinting around for a handout.  As much as I denied this, I couldn’t convince Rob and soon I’d inherited one of the pieces of bread from his Mule Kick, with a bunch of Dijon mustard, and some cheese.  Why does Dijon mustard exist?  Just so men can show off that they can handle a mustard that tastes like ass, if ass were spicy?  Dijon is to a sandwich like hops is to beer:  it turns a flavor into a pissing contest.  “Pardon, monsieur, mais avez-vous du Grey Poupon?”  /  “No way, dude, I’m an American!  I like French’s mustard!”

The trip home

On the way home we stopped at this little restaurant in Groveland we ate at last year.  Pizza.  Now, last year they had some weird quirk with the menu where a one-topping pizza cost like $5 more than a plain pizza, and yet the super-combo with like five ingredients was only $1.80 more than that.  I was hoping to exploit that loophole this time, but they’d closed it up.  But here was something new and just as weird:  to get a single topping on a 16-inch pizza cost like $5.  But to get a single topping on an 18-inch pizza was only a buck.  How did these guys come up with their prices?  A Ouija board?  We didn’t care.  We went with the 18-inch pepperoni.

Rob announced, shockingly, that he wouldn’t be having any pizza.  He said he had heartburn.  I’m pretty sure that almost any female would have said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”  Since I’m a guy, this didn’t occur to me (at least not until later); instead, I tried to convince Rob that pepperoni was really good for heartburn.  When this failed I asked the waitress if we could get Tums as a pizza topping.  She said, politely, that they couldn’t.  Rob had split pea soup with ham and I could smell it from here.  He said it was pretty good but oddly not that salty.  Easily fixed.

I got home just before midnight and when I put the dodgy Smart & Final yogurt in the fridge, the crappy wire shelf flexed too much and dumped the yogurt container on the floor where it burst.  The cat, ominously, gave it a sniff but declined to lap it up.  My motor skills were shot and I was barely functioning and it seemed to take forever to clean up the mess.  I got the towels too wet and was just smearing it around and my god, the Everest Challenge is so hard.  Be sure to join us next year!

- Dana

When I was in Colorado late last month, of course I worked in some altitude training for the Everest Challenge.   Everyone agrees that being at altitude is good preparation, but I’ve heard differing things about what to do there.  Some say training at altitude is a great idea; others say you shouldn’t train at altitude but rather just hang around there.  Well, I did both.  I even drank beer and ate big pasta there.  I covered all my bases.

Dinner the night before the big ride was at a fancy place where I had a nice pork chop but, alas, only a small handful of fingerling potatoes.  Breakfast was a worn-out banana.  My friend Peter, always a better rider than I, had worked out a really difficult route and here you can see I’m scared:

I was also nervous about the bike I’d be riding.  I had planned to rent a $6,000 full Dura-Ace Serotta from University Bikes, the über-cool bike shop in Boulder.  Alas, someone else, a portly stockbroker no doubt, got the last Serotta.  He probably used it for a 30-mile muffin ride.  So I had to settle for a “standard road rental,” which meant a cheap Cannondale, with mismatched wheels, a triple crankset, and a front reflector.

For me to use such a bike on the epic ride seemed like a punishment of some kind.  Front reflectors are for people who ride on the wrong side of the road at night without a light, and you all know I’d be embarrassed to ride a triple crankset.  As for Cannondales, they’re perfectly fine bikes, but I’ve just never liked them much.

The other issue was the saddle, which was one of these giant sofa-like things with the big ravine down the middle.  How much padding could a guy need?  There’s room in that foam for Magic Fingers.  I call this the “prostate intimidation” saddle, because it’s designed to capitalize on vague fears men have about their prostates, much in the way that, back in the ‘70s, that one laundry detergent fear-mongered about the nonexistent bane of “ring around the collar,” or that one shampoo made dandruff seem like a love-life-threatening global epidemic.  On principal alone I couldn’t ride the prostate-friendly saddle, so I borrowed my brother Max’s tiny, rock-hard saddle, a Selle Italia SLR or some such.  There’s probably a whole range of SLRs, and this is the smallest, lightest, and hardest (the “SLR Nano,” perhaps).  It’s also pretty old, and by far the hardest saddle I’ve ever sat on, including those all-plastic BMX saddles.  It was like sitting on a 2x4.

After just a couple miles of warm-up we went straight uphill, up Flagstaff, a road used many times as the prologue time trial for the Red Zinger and Coors Classic, which finished about halfway up the main climb near the Flagstaff House restaurant (where I had my wedding reception back in ’94).

At the end of the main climb we took a trip up Summit Road to where there’s a little amphitheater, and then we went back to the main road and continued on up toward Kossler Lake, which turns the ride from “Flagstaff” to “Superflag.”  According to mapmyride, this climb is a Category 1.  I really suffered on Superflag, even on the shallower sections where I could snap photos:

I was breathing really hard on the climb, despite my heart rate being down in the 140s.  It was as though my heart were saying, “Look, I’ll beat faster if you give me some more air.  My job is to oxygenate the blood but I have very little oxygen to push here.”  Kind of like a contractor sitting around at the job site waiting for lumber to be delivered.  Altitude really does matter—coming from sea level, I find that even climbing a flight of stairs in Boulder (at 5,400 feet) is a huffing-and-puffing affair.  I don’t know how anybody could compete at the US Pro Cycling Challenge who didn’t acclimate to the altitude beforehand.  (Max, who has lived his whole life in Boulder, complains that he still hasn’t acclimated.)

It was of course hard to tell how much of the difficulty was the bike, how much was lack of sleep, and how much was trying to keep up with Pete.  My struggle to keep up continued when we turned off on a dirt road and began descending toward Gross Reservoir.  I’m no slouch at descending but riding on the dirt on that foreign bike with its too-tight brakes and cheap tires was a little scary.  It was a bit like in a job interview and knowing my fly is open and there’s nothing I can do about it.

From there we took Coal Creek Canyon Road up to Wondervu, another Category 1 climb.  Of this climb, oddly enough, I remember almost nothing.  Then we headed up a freshly tarred-and-feathered road (a Category 2 climb) to the Lake Eldora ski resort.  (No, the road wasn’t really feathered.) 

By the time we made that summit and descended to Nederland, we’d ridden about 45 miles, but with all that climbing it felt like a lot more, and I was worrying about bonking (in the American, not British, sense).  Dinner the night before had been a nice pork chop with a handful of fingerling potatoes:  tasty, but decidedly lacking in precious carbohydrates.  So when we stopped at a convenience store I went for the good stuff:

Not shown here were the Hostess fruit pies.  In terms of calorie per dollar, and calorie per unit volume, they can’t be beat.  I think Pete had cherry, which has a whopping 480 calories.  As much as I adore the fruit-flavored varieties, I had to go with chocolate:  520 calories.  These pies should be a controlled substance—there’s no reason on earth that anybody but a distance athlete should ever consume one.

After Nederland (strangely named for a town that sits at more than 8,000 feet above sea level) we headed up the Peak To Peak Highway over two more Category 2 climbs.  I must confess I used the smallest chainring quite a bit.  (Erin asked about this later, and suggested that perhaps the triple really was appropriate.  “Yeah,” I told her, “but only because it was such a crappy bike.  It’s like a really awful restaurant where they’re thoughtful enough to give you a barf bucket.”)

We were pretty low on beverages around our highest summit, at 10,400 feet. In this photo, the half-cropped mountain on the right is Mt. Audubon, elevation 13,223 feet.

I was so oxygen-deprived and tired, I completely forgot how ugly my rental bike was.  We totally should have used Pete’s bike for this photo.  Anyway, if you look closely at that picture, I’m sort of smiling but it’s really a lie.  The eyes tell it.  There’s a lot of suffering there.  At no point in the ride had I been hammering, but the miles and elevation were piling up and taking their toll.

We searched in vain for water; it was all shut off.  Fortunately, the next thirty miles of the ride were virtually all downhill.  The day got progressively hotter as we lost elevation.  We encountered about a dozen raindrops.  Eventually we arrived in Lyons, a big player in the thriving sandstone industry, where it was good and hot and we drank giant Cokes.  Then we headed south on Highway 36 toward Boulder.

It’s a long trip back to Boulder from Lyons.  Kind of a Room 101 for many a Boulder cyclist:  I know more guys—myself included—who have bonked on that stretch than any other I can think of, and on shorter rides than this one.  We’d gone 90 miles, which meant we had another 20 to go. 

I’ll just come out and say it:  my ass hurt.  Real bad.  I’d set the saddle a tad too high, and did I mention it was the iron maiden of bike saddles?  My butt never used to hurt on long rides.  I don’t know if it’s just ageing, or not enough training, or what.  The modern cycling shorts don’t seem to help.  They’re over-engineered these days, each chamois thicker than the last.  It used to be that a pair of shorts cost $30 and had a single-ply pancake-thin chamois.  Now they’re this thick puffy three-ply thing, like a short stack, and can cost upwards of $200.  By this point in the ride my legs had turned more than 30,000 pedal revolutions—they should have hurt the most—and yet my ass, which had just been sitting there most of the time, was giving me the most trouble.

Even more alarming was the realization that we weren’t even heading straight back over the gently rolling hills of Highway 36.  In the photo above, you see the purple mountains dead ahead on the horizon?  We had those yet to climb.  It was at this point in the ride that I toyed with the idea of despair, then immediately dismissed it.  What good would despair do?  Besides, I’d been on harder rides than this.  To borrow from Faulkner, it may have killed me, but it hadn’t whupped me yet.

We took a right on Lefthand Canyon Drive.  This is a pretty shallow one, but it goes along a right fur piece.  After six miles we took a left on Lee Hill Drive, which is a real sumbitch of a climb.  At least, that’s how I always thought of it when I lived in Boulder.  The two sections together comprise a Category 2. 

The last climb, Wagonwheel Gap Road, was only a Category 3, but it’s dirt.  I’m not sure mapmyride takes that into account.  Nor could it have known how tired we were.  (Or at least, how tired I was.  As usual Pete showed no sign of strain.  For him this may have been like an easy stroll.)  I could barely keep enough traction to make the bike go, so I couldn’t take any more photos.  After that it was a short descent back to the house for some nice cold sugardrink.  I forgot to take an “after” shot but here’s a picture of my salt-encrusted helmet. 

This helmet is less than two months old (purchased after my recent crash).  Note the board-stiff chin strap.  Note also the little flowers, for which I’ve taken plenty of flak from my pals.  But hey, I can handle it.  I just did a big ride on a cheap bike with a triple crank and a front reflector!

Other than what I already mentioned about food, I had some gels and mixed up more energy drink along the way.  Dinner was four plates of pasta at Café Gondolier, my favorite Boulder restaurant.  Three plates had their awesome marinara sauce, and the other was half marinara half oil-and-garlic.  There was also some kind of cheesy garlic bread and a pale ale.  Oh, and I had a free sample from Sees candy later (you know, to compensate for the altitude).

The sensible abandonment of my aspirations to Everest Challenge, and
attendant freedom from 100+ mile death march training rides, allowed
me to ride the Challenge Road Race this Saturday. It's a nice short
little course with 3000 feet of climbing and seemed a good pick for my
first go at racing in 27 years (I had signed up for some races early
in the season, but my crash and shoulder injury made it impossible to
ride them).

The 3 line summary is at the bottom for the impatient, otherwise we
start with the comedy of errors of heading out there previewing the
course.

My plan was to drive out, ride the course, then stay in a cheap motel
in Marysville so as to have a short drive to the race in the morning.
Somehow I neglected to do a realistic assessment of how long all that
would take, or take into account the fact that it was Labor Day
weekend and the roads would be jammed. Didn't get out to the course
until 6:30pm or so, drove half of it, rode part of one hill then
finished driving it in the dark. During the brief ride I discovered
I'd forgotten my glasses back home so had to buy some cheap ones at
Walgreens and didn't end up getting any dinner till 9:00.

Things were smoother in the morning and after breakfast of Kellogg's
Special K flakes, Chobani Strawberry Greek Yogurt, Udi's granola,
raisins and sliced almonds along with a nice ripe banana all washed
down with an Odwalla Mango Tango, It was off to the races.

By 8:55 the combined 45+ Cat 4/5 field of around 20 was rolling down
the neutralized section of Oregon Hill road. On my previous night's
drive of the course this section had scared the crap out of me. It was
rattling the car to pieces with all the potholes and patches, and I
was very relieved that we were neutral for the worst couple miles of
it (the folks doing more than one lap actually race this section. I
hope they put their dentures in with rim cement).

Before we hit the race proper, I wanted to give the arc of emotional
states sampled in 30 short miles. It went something like:
naive optimism -> disbelief and dejection -> resignation -> glimmer of
hope -> redemption

The naive optimism last through lineup, the neutral section, and the
first small hill. I thought "these guys don't look so tough, and some
of them don't look like climbers, I can do this." As soon as we hit
the first 7-9% sections people just started hammering. One guy "Blue
Shirt" (I guess he'd left his race kit at home and was coming from his
cabin where he only had his day ride jersey & shorts ) had taken off
right at the start and quickly got reeled in then spit out the back. I
was yo-yoing, catching folks at the top of climbs where everybody
seemed to slow down, then losing them again in the meat of the next
climb. It was pretty demoralizing because I always thought I could
climb at least a little, but my HRM was showing that I was completely
maxed out and still slipping away.

By the end of the climbing sections on Oregon Hill Rd my quads feel
like ceviche and only Blue Shirt and a tall guy with a Power Tap (TGPT
henceforth) were behind me. I was resigned to this being a solo bike
ride through the Sierra foothills and pretty bummed about how my first
try back at racing was turning out.

After the turn onto Marysville Rd it goes into some gentle rolling
terrain and TGPT catches up with me and passes. Great, now I'm DFL in
my group (Blue Shirt is a Cat 4). I catch TGPT on a small climb and
after sniffing each other out a bit, we work together and my spirits
lift a tad. Even if this is just going to be a slog through the second
half of the circuit, at least I'll have company. He's clearly stronger/
faster than me on the flats, but I know the course and he's nervous
about missing the turn, so the alliance holds.

It holds till the turn onto Frenchtown Rd. that is. Secure in his
bearings now, TGPT takes advantage of the fairly flat terrain and
pulls away from me. He's not getting far away, and I know we've only
done 1500 of the 3000 feet of climbing, so I keep hoping I'll be able
to catch back up. Soon enough the big hill on the backside comes into
view, and not only do I see TGPT not so far ahead, but also another
rider and then the straggly back end of my group. At this point
something switched in my head and what had been feeling like "bike
ride back to the start line" flipped to "BIKE RACE!".

I caught TGPT 1/3 of the way up the big climb, a guy from the 35+ cat
5's 2/3 up, and was alone at the top for a nice smooth jettison of
empty bottle and pickup of a full one. Refreshed, rehydrated, and
feeling like maybe I was in this after all, I kept hunting for more
stragglers.
The next one, a Davis guy in kit that looks surprisingly similar to
ours, was passed struggling up the final hill, then at the top there
were a bunch of guys doing what I'd noticed earlier in the race:
taking it easy at the top of the hill.

Now I had the big red "BIKE RACE!" light going on in my head and could
not fathom what all this sitting up and looking around, waiting for
your buddies etc. was about, so just powered on past 4 or 5 guys,
trading a turn or two with one them, then plunged into a downhill that
I knew was pretty much full tuck no brakes from my previous days
drive. Passed one guy on the downhill then made the sharp right onto
La Porte and knew there were only a few km left, but most of it at a
6-8% grade.

It didn't seem there was anyone behind me, but there were few folks
within sight ahead, more 35+ cat 5's, people warming down I don't know
what all, I just wanted to PASS THEM! and did. The 1km to go sign
passed, then time and distance suddenly seemed to s-t-r-e-t-c-h. I
knew I'd seen 500m and 200m signs on the drive in, but they kept not
appearing. How could a km go on for so long? Either I was too dazed to
see them, or they'd disappeared, because suddenly there was the finsh
line and it was all over.

I talked to TGPM in the finish area and he said "yeah, it seemed liked
there on the back side you were finally warmed up and just took off".
I actually think it was as much that everyone else went out too hard,
and faded when the heat and hard climbing hit, but whatever the case
it was great to actually make a decent showing in a race and feel
pretty good afterwards (I felt better at the end than in the first
climbs).

Not sure what else, if anything I'll try this season, especially with
Climate Ride coming up, but it's great to have finally broken the ice
and gotten at least one race under my belt.

Oh Yeah, Lunch:
Lunch wasn't really on my mind as much as getting home, so I just
powered the drive and ended up having spinach quiche, green salad,
Robiola cheese and a Racer 5 IPA for lunch at home.

3 line summary:
1) Breakfast of yogurt, cereal, banana and Odwalla Mango Tango
2) Clawed my way back from DFL at 2/3 mark to 4th out of 9 in the 45+
Cat 5's
3) Lunch of spinach quiche, salad, cheese, and Racer 5 IPA

- Ken Cluff

Hola Amigos,

First off, I'd like to thank Dana for being such a swell mentor.

Any time I was in a situation where I was consciously questioning what was going down in the peloton, I'd ask myself WWDD (What Would Dana Do).

Pretty much every answer that came to me was the right answer, so there you have it. Maybe I should give myself more credit for my own intuition.

Also thanks to the EBVC boys for welcoming me into the fold. I hope I did them proud, even if I wasn’t wearing EBVC kit during this adventure. Those club members that I have met were in my heart.

As for a race report, race day went something like this:

I awoke to find my friend Tim brewing coffee and cooking up a pot of oatmeal.

Tim Tillman is an old friend that currently resides in San Luis Obispo. He's a former motorcycle road racer (multi time WERA 600cc National winner), who has always enjoyed riding any form of two wheeled vehicles, either competitively or recreationally. He called me a couple months before the San Ardo road race to see if I'd like to give it a try. What the heck, I thought; it might be fun if we both go as we're pretty evenly matched. He's got a bit more power than I do, but I make up for that lack of power by being able to suffer....our combined strengths should make for a pretty formidable force.

We joked around about how the oatmeal was going to fuel us for the next few hours’ effort - an effort we would be mighty proud of by race end. Tim prefers raisins and brown sugar in his oatmeal, while I prefer chopped walnuts, banana slices and brown sugar, all dowsed in almond milk. Yes, almond milk.

We both prepped three energy drink bottles as we didn't have anyone to work the feed-zone for us. One stuffed in the flak jacket, (jersey), two in the magazines (bottle cages).

I also cut open three packs of energy gels, while Tim decided he'd like something a bit more crunchy - he chose some type of bar, but the name escapes me.

The drive from SLO found us sipping a bit more coffee and water. My wife had made us some 'good luck' chocolate chip cookies, and I had a couple of those also.

After being directed to park, standing in a 15 minute porta-potty line, checking in, suiting up, pinning numbers, and getting bikes in proper working condition (installing front wheels), we commenced a mellow warm-up.

We both decided that since the race was 63 (?) miles, we wouldn't need that much warm-up. Turns out we were right!

After warming up a bit we found that a bathroom at the local elementary school was open, so we made a quick stop there instead of standing in the porta-potty line, and did a bit more warming up by riding laps around the school basketball court, which I highly recommend if you ever get the chance. Riding around the b-ball court reminded me of being a kid riding around for no reason other than to just ride. Kind of like what racing really is when you think about it. Wind in your face, bars in your hands, legs turning circles – glorious! Just like today would be!

The start line was about 100 feet away, and after a time check with another rider (who, as chance would have it, was in our class), we decided we better mosey on over and line up.

We arrived at the line to find eight other riders. Only eight!? I wasn't sure what to think about the field count being so low. Racing with only eight other riders would be safer, but we'd probably have to work a lot harder than a much larger group would. Turns out I was right on both counts.

The official that was starting our race joked that they normally didn't like seeing fields this small as the intent of the Cat 5 class is for riders to learn something about riding in a group. He then suggested that we start with the 45+ Cat 5s, which had a whopping field size half that of ours! Four riders! So we started with a cozy group of 12. Like a dozen eggs waiting to be scrambled, fried, or for a lucky three of us, boiled then decorated like Easter eggs.

The start was fairly uneventful, which I imagine the start of most road races of this length are, even for bigger fields or more experienced categories. There was a bit of jostling around and getting settled, but nothing I was worried about. Just stay in the group, and stay cool - no worries!

First 10 or so miles roll by and Tim and I are sizing up the group. Tim and I figured we had a bit of an advantage in that we were 'two'. Turns out we were right, but more on that later. There was a group of four riders wearing the same kit (Team Cutter), so Tim and I figured we ought to keep an eye on them.

A couple other individuals looked like they knew what they were doing (not to belittle or take away anything from our other competitors), but after a seat of the shorts assessment of the field, it looked like we'd have to keep track of 1/2 the field as serious threats to finishing well, or finishing at all. Turns out we were right with that assessment! At this point I should offer a bit of side information as to what my goals for this race were.

First, I wanted to finish. Second, I didn't want to crash. Anything beyond that, and I'd be completely giddy with happiness.

Now keep in mind Tim and I were both fully aware of where we were - a 35+ Cat 5 field. We weren't kidding ourselves in any way in that we both fully realize that Cat 5 is meant for learning and development, of which both points we wanted to do in volume. We wanted this race to be fun, which so far it was, and competition-wise, we weren’t going to make a big deal out of racing in a 35+ Cat 5 race. Again, not that we were making fun of or belittling our other Cat 5 competitors, but we just didn’t want to get wrapped in the ‘win at all costs and that’s all that matters’ dark side of the bike racing force. Let’s call this attitude a realistic, adult approach to bicycle racing.

So Tim and I are both taking turns at the front, moving through the field and working around the group. We both figured morally obligated to help out everyone as best we could. Sure we were resting when we had the opportunity and taking every advantage of staying out of the wind behind the ten other riders, but once at the front it was all business. The rotations or shuffling continue just swimmingly for the next five or so miles. I was feeling pretty spirited, so I did a bit more work up at the front, with Tim right on my wheel. We pulled the group along fairly rapido, but not to the point of ending up with stragglers. After a good effort I decide to pull around and let someone else take over, and I make my way to the rear. Just about the time I’m getting settled the rider in front of me has his foot pop out of the pedal and he jams his foot into the ground, kind of sliding foot down flat tracker style, but without the same grace. I don’t know what he was thinking, and I don’t know how he or I came out unscathed. A rider from behind swerves around and onto the plowed shoulder in front of us, and I follow him coming to an upright stop on the freshly plowed soil. I wasn’t really sure how I managed to stay upright, but I did. As Dana has mentioned in one of his posts, it must have been my amygdale acting as an emergency control center and managing my actions. I thanked my amygdale and caught back on to the group. A bit of an effort to catch back on, but no big deal. Calmed down, had some fluids, ate a few more gels, and got back to the order of the day…racing!

Lap two found the group upping the pace a bit, for a couple reasons. Reason one is that the 45+ Cat 5s we were mixed in with were only racing two laps, so the four of them were jostling a bit to prepare for their final lap. Reason two is that the guys in our group were all commenting about how slow we were moving, so I think they all wanted to up the average speed a bit, which I was totally content with. Tim and I both continue our efforts at the front, as are now a couple others. At some point around mile thirty-something one of the riders from Team Cutter takes a flyer. It was a full-fledged effort, and something inside told me that we better cover the move. At least that was my initial reaction. I didn’t jump right up to match him and immediately close the gap, but I definitely upped the pace enough to keep the gap the same. I start seeing his teammates coming into my peripheral vision, so I know something is up. At this point Tim steps up and starts bridging across to close the gap, which thanks to his effort, the group finally did. Tim rolls back and I tell him “the sappers are probing the wires!!” by which I meant the Cutter boys were seeing what anyone had. I immediately had this strange feeling that Tim and I were marked. The Cutter boys continued these antics a few more times, to no avail. Whatever plan they had wasn’t going to work with this group. The group settles down and we all continue sharing work at the front. Nearing mile late thirty something, I’m telling Tim that I don’t see any of these Team Cutter guys doing time at the sharp end of the stick. I figure what the heck, so I roll up through the group to the guy that took the first flyer and I tell him, (yes, TELL him, with authority), “You’ve got four guys out here and I haven’t seen one of you working at the front all day!” to which he replied “Really? We haven’t?” in a tone similar to that which a child might use when he/she is caught with their hand in the cookie jar. On one hand, I was pissed, on the other, I was a bit flattered that these guys had (possibly?) marked Tim and me as being the strongest (or stupidest “yeah, let them do all the work they want!”). These feelings eventually gelled into a strange attitude I developed about the situation. Maybe it was hubris or something, but at that point a switch flipped inside me and I told myself I’d bury myself at the front just in spite of the Cutters lack of work! So I get to churning away at the front…

About the point I flipped my switch, the race official that was following our group on a motorcycle comes to me and says “Another Cat/group is catching you. They are about a minute back, and I’m going to neutralize the field when they are close.” Thumbs up, no worries. Cruise a bit more and sure enough, here comes our official waving to slow us down. At some point a rider in our group yells “let’s take a pee break”, which the whole group was for. So we pull off the road and let the faster Cat/group roll by. We were hearing comments of “now that’s smart!!” as the riders and officials went by, so our group felt pretty good about that decision. Almost gentlemanly, if you will. Back on the road and the official states “Continue racing”. Ramping back up the throttle, we’re rolling again, and I actually think we were closing on the group that had passed us. I did a couple quick landmark timings, and sure enough if we weren’t closing on them, slowly, but closing nonetheless. We’ve settled in and we are nearing the end of our second lap when I look ahead and see some kind of commotion in the road….it registered soon enough…there was a crash in the group that had passed us. Arriving at the scene we find bottles and riders and bikes strewn about the road and shoulder. I shuddered a bit after seeing two riders lying on the shoulder writhing in pain. Our race official was now our lead motor, and he’s slowly riding along ahead of us with lowered right boot, kicking bottles out of the road to clear our path. Carnage was everywhere! Funny thing is I didn’t flinch at all! Just kept about my business, and once our official cleared us to race, we were off again. This being lap two would be the final lap for the 45+ Cat 5s. The finish at San Ardo is a left turn off the normal course, so rather than risk having one of the 45+ 5s cut a left across our group, we all decided to slow a bit and let them fight it out at the front. I liked that everyone was thinking “safety first” as it really quelled my wrong impression that bike racing was only ‘kill or be killed’. The 45+ guys go ahead, and make their left. We continue on for our final lap.

Start of the final lap we were coming to the feed zone, and I figure what the heck, I’ll grab a bottle. First try…boom, bottle slams my hand and I drop it. Can’t these people run a bit? Another attempt, boom! Bottle being held stiff as a board, slams my hand and bounces off. I guess I need to work on my feed zone hand ups, or slow down a bit since the feed zone is neutral. No worries as I had a full bottle remaining, but it would have been nice to have another. Shortly after the feed zone there is a gradual rise in the road. Not really a full blown climb, but also not enough that you could just sit out of the wind in the group and expect to keep position. 20 or so miles left and Tim rolls by me carrying some pretty good speed, and other riders up the tempo with him. He's cranking the big ring, and I was caught out a bit by this as I was enjoying a few more gel blocks and sipping some energy drink. "Just pile on some coals and hang in there", I thought. I was starting to swear a bit about Tim’s effort “You bastard, why are you doing this when I’m eating and drinking! Noooooooooo!” I decided oh well, better get up with your comrade, so I gas it up a bit and try to get back on his wheel. The road makes a couple gradual turns, and keeps climbing the same amount. At some point when I was breathing a bit harder than I had all race, a chunk of gel block came flying out of my nose. I started cracking up and telling Tim “I had gel block coming out of my nose!” Next thing I know I hear “Guys, we’ve got a break!” Turns out it was the same guy from Team Cutter that took the first flyer, and the same one I also approached about not working at the front of the group. He introduces himself (Doug) and we commence to keeping this three man break rolling. We’re all taking hefty pulls now - no hiding! It was so much fun to work together, all of us suffering and grinding away. I did feel some cramps coming on every now and then, and in between my pulls I’d shake the legs a bit during the recovery time I had. I thought for sure I was gonna blow! I could hear Jens Voigt yelling “Shut up legs” as I kept turning the 53 tooth chainwheel. It was a three man suffer-fest of biblical proportions. As we drew nearer to the finish I kept thinking about “final deals being made” between the three of us (or if I could even continue). We were all taking our turns pulling the oars to the shores of victory. Glorious! The three of us were at least guaranteed spots on the box.

About this time I see a landmark coming in to view I had picked out on the previous laps…some railroad cars. For some reason when I passed the cars this lap they reminded me Granpa Joad from the Grapes of Wrath “Wait’ll I get near the finish! Gonna reach up and pick me a victory! Or second place! That there’s something I ain’t NEVER had enough of! Gonna get me a whole bunch of podium step and squash victory all over my face and just let the victory juice dreen down offen my chin!”

Ain’t it crazy the things you’ll think of after riding so hard for so long?

Back to reality.

I’ve got nearly nothing left. I’m gassed. Flat. Legs screaming. Heart pounding. 20 miles of three man break away ripping my legs lungs and heart apart. About that time we make the turn into town, and I couldn’t believe what I saw up the road! A Chihuahua running across the road! As soon as I saw it, Doug makes a bit of a jump, and I’m on a near collision course with this damn dog! I kept thinking about one of the old cycling videos we’d watch in the shop…black and white footage with ghost sounds in the background….cut to a dog running near the spectators that then runs in front of the sprinting peloton….CARNAGE EVERYWHERE!!! I also thought back to the one collision I did have with a dog…I’m riding side by side with my buddy, he’s on my left, dog on my right…my buddy thinks he’ll scare the dog away by barking at it. So he’s barking away, I’m laughing….the dog turns back around and runs right under my front wheel!!! Amygdale engaged, I’m on my front wheel looking at pavement…dog yelping…rear wheel slams down and I’m back rolling…we wonder whether or not we should stop and help the dog that has now run away…we get rolling and my buddy apologizes…I’m shaking….I just ran completely over that dog...look down at my big chainwheel and see a tuft of hair 13 teeth long spinning around….poor dog took a hit from a 53 tooth chainwheel!!!

…and thinking all this while that damned Chihuahua is cutting across my path. Fortunately I pulled a sweet juke-jive move and swerved around the dog. Not really, but I made it by without incident. I look up and see Doug a bit further down the road. Remember, time compresses in these situations. Just then, this damn SUV comes in the road too! WTF! Doug makes it around the SUV (after crossing the center line!!!!) and pulls away. The SUV driver must have finally realized, oh yeah, I’m on the course, and decided to move over so I can try to do something. Now mind you, I honestly don’t think I had enough left in me to try and catch Doug, but I sure had enough opportunities to whine about not being able to catch him what with all the dang obstacles I had to negotiate in the last mile or so. The finish is slightly uphill, followed by a left turn, then about another 100 m. I make the left and look back for my comrade Tim; he’s coming up the hill, giving it all he’s got. I get to the finish, and that was that. Glorious! I was stoked to get second! I roll over to Doug and he’s got a group of his friends around him, congratulate him, and say “I kept waiting for your teammates to try and catch us”, to which he replies “I did too!” I make my way to Tim for high fives. Cool down. Load up the bikes, start changing, post-race stories, etc. Chocolate chip cookies!!!

We had to pick up Tim’s daughter right after the race, so I only had time for a quick shower and some cold chicken mixed with parmesan and a healthy serving of pasta. A bit later Tim dropped off his daughter at his ex-wife’s house, and we were able to commence with a proper post ride meal. Tim had a jumbo burger with avocado/bacon/swiss and fries, and I had a burrito and fish tacos, washed down with a celebratory beer (some sort of IPA).

So that pretty much sums up the whole day.

- Dave Richardson

ANGUIN , CA .  Aug 7.  I came to cycling through mountain biking, and right now, I'm more interested in using twistie-ties to affix a number plate to my handlebars than to pin a number to my jersey. Perhaps it is the fact mountain bike racing is the only time you’re guaranteed you won’t come across a horseback rider with knickers in a twist … or perhaps that I’m just too constrained in terms of time and fitness to do surgical assaults with Dana … but either way, I’m not sure I want to engage in the pointless noble suffering that is road racing just now.  So with a total lack of training since Downieville, I thought I’d try to do the Howell Mountain Challenge as a Pass/Fail race.

Again, keeping with the new EBVC theme, I have provided a two sentence summary at the end for those disinclined to read the gory details of my middling escapade on dirt.

The Race
The Howell Mountain Classic is held in the eastern mountains of the Napa Valley.   Set on the course of the Seventh Day Adventist College (NO SATURDAY PRE-RIDES!!), the course is a fun mix of doubletrack, jeep roads, and twisty singletrack. Although held in August, it is mostly in the trees – and the shade helps keeps the heat manageable. Usually the promise of sunshine helps motivate Alyshia to come with me to get out of the Oakland fog-bank and get some sun in her lawn chair, only to be interrupted ever 45 minutes or so to provide me a water bottle hand-up.

The expert class (now unfortunately called “Cat 1” per USA Cycling) does three 10 mile loops over the serpentine up and down course. The singletrack is fun and twisty, without being too technical, but there are two steep climbs per lap that are a bit like dirt versions of the upper half of Lomas Contadas.

I’ve raced this course and many times in (it was the site of my first mountain bike race in 1992, and in 2000 it provided my only race victory to date). The 2011 race was my fourth consecutive, and my results have been improving from year to year:

• 2008 I got heatstroke and dropped out;
• 2009 I bonked and finished DFL, and had to do a “lap of shame” due to the course design that has a pseudo paris-roubaix finish with a lap on the school’s paved running track – and the awards presentations had already started on the grass field in the middle (I was mortified to hear the Team-in-Training inspired cheers as I rolled to the line with a time over three hours);
• 2010 I was running in the top five until I suffered massive cramps on the last lap, and barely limped up the final climb, finishing 12^th out of 16 entrants (and, interestingly, with a time of 2:38, exactly the same time as when I raced for the first time in the Expert class in 2001 and finished second to last).

My pass/fail strategy was simple: enter the singletrack in the top third, and hold position as best I could for the following 29 miles. My goals were a litany of things I wanted to avoid, rather than achieve. I wanted to NOT: cramp, get heatstroke, crash, or finish DFL.mI also wanted to have fun on the course, and had the hope of finishing under 2:30.

I executed the first part better than expected, coming into the singletrack in 15^th position overall (with three expert classes mushed together, that put me in the quarter of the field). I had the legs to get further up, but I thought I’d save my energy for later. I caught a long line of riders in the singletrack. They were stronger than me, able to distance me on the uphill sections and false flats, but I’d come rolling back onto them when the singletrack got technical. I passed a few members of that group on the first time up the steep and loose climb, where many of them were forced to dismount and walk. Some of them caught me later on the flatter portion of the climb (only 8%?). This was a big achievement for me, as I became pretty slow after shattering my collarbone in 2007 … now the only spot where folks were faster than me was on the high-speed gravel fire-road, when speeds got above 35 mph.

Each time around through the feed zone, I’d ring my bicycle bell to let Alyshia know I was coming up, and I’d take two more bottles on board, and suck down another gel … hoping that by doubling the amount of water I usually consumed, I’d avoid cramps. The first time through she told me that I was running in the top 8 of my class, and not too far behind the leaders.

I rode most of the second lap alone, and had a lot of fun on the course.  The racers had cleared most of loose gravel and leaves off the line and I had more confidence. I think for the first lap I spent as much time going sideways as forward. My final time up granny-gearing up the steepest pitch I bobbled on a small rock, and in trying to correct, got a hamstring cramp, which pitched me off the bike, which created a cascade of cramping. My only solution was to hop on the bike and hope that I could pedal through them.

Anyways … blah blah blah (you still reading this shit?) … I finished 6^th out of 10, with my magic time of 2:38. Alyshia, who had been giving me my position and splits each time around said that I made up between six and three minutes on the people ahead of me on the last lap -- the 3^rd through 6^th places were separated by a scant three and a half minutes.

Final Grade
Pass.

For road racing, its easy to evaluate if you finished pass or fail. Finish with the bunch? Pass. Get dropped? Fail. Get dropped after being in a breakaway? That’s like doing the extra credit assignments in an upper-division physics course only to cover your final exam with crayon scribbles. Fail with an extra helping of dumbass.

My passing grade was based on the following criteria: (1) I achieved to avoid all of the NOTs listed above, (2) 6^th out of 10 is about as mid-pack as you can get, and (3) although I failed in my goal of getting a time of 2:30 or better, I was within minutes of a podium placing.

The Food
Not too much to report here. On the way back home we stopped at “Big D’s” bugers in Napa. The burger took a little too long to arrive, which annoyed me because I was hungry. When we got to Big D’s it was already 2pm, and I hadn’t eaten anything other than a bowl of imitation "Life" cereal for breakfast and two bananas prior to the race, four gels during the race, and one banana after the race. I had the ¼ pound cheeseburger and a side of very crispy onion rings. Nothing fancy, but it did the trick. The burger was fried up and nice and greasy, and the bright green wavy-cut pickles provided a nice counterpoint to the “sauce” on the bun (Big D mixes the mayo and ketchup together before slathering the bun – nice touch!).

Race & Food Summary:
I cannot escape my destiny – I must finish the Howell Mtn course in 2:38, regardless of fitness or ability; this time it was good enough for 6^th place. My “Big D” burger was good but greatly enhanced by having ridden 30 dirty miles.

- Mike Campbell

As MC Tandem Captain has pointed out, my ride reports are not short, so following his model I have included a two-sentence synopsis at the very bottom of this e-mail for those with limited time, patience, or battery life.

For breakfast I had a soft taco of goober pea emulsion with boiled raspberry preserve on four-grain leavened crusty torta.  (Folded over PBJ.)  During the Diablo climb proper I drank two bottles of energy drink.

For once, food doesn’t deserve to be the focus of this report.  After a glorious climb to the sunny Diablo summit, shit got dark.

Now, a common story convention is to begin with exposition, introduce a conflict, proceed to rising action culminating in a climax, then have a bit of falling action and resolution at the end.  But that can get rather dull and already I’m losing you.  Luckily, we fancy English major types sometimes follow an ancient epic poem tradition and begin in medias res, meaning in the middle of all the action, with other info being leaked out later when the reader’s heart is racing and he could use a break.  Meanwhile, employing more than one narrative voice can enhance a narrative, as shown by James Joyce and also that one “Magnum, PI” episode about the bank robbery.  I’ll start by quoting (as best I can from memory) Dave Richardson, our newest EBVC member, when he later described the action to Erin and the girls, from his perspective:

“I come around the bend, and there’s this pickup truck in the road—a big one, a working man’s truck, with a welding rig in the back—and the driver and passenger are out on the road talking to Dana and the guys.  And I’m thinking, uh oh, these pickup truck guys must not have taken too kindly to being passed by cyclists, and now they’re mixing it up with our boys.  So I’m figuring I’m about to join in on a big fistfight.  And by the time I get to Dana, he’s just sitting there trying to scream with his face ripped off.”

Okay, that was really irresponsible.  That last sentence is completely untrue and Dave said nothing of the kind (though it would never surprise me for him to quote “Mad Max” like that). But the rest of what he said is true (to the best of my recollection).  Well, okay, not true exactly, but it’s true that Dave said it.  His initial assessment of the situation was pretty far off.

What actually happened was this.  We were descending Mount Diablo via South Gate.  We were going jolly fast, carving just right through the curves, and it was glorious.  Lucas was lighting it up at the front, Kromer was flying along behind him, and your faithful narrator was speeding along behind Kromer.  As I saw it, Kromer was taking it a bit easier than Lucas through the curves and was accelerating out of them to get back in Lucas’ draft.  I in turn, being a responsible family man, was taking the curves a bit easier than Kromer, and hauling ass out of them to get back into his draft.  I was out of the saddle quite a bit.

On the lower third of South Gate, past the little ranger’s kiosk, we take this left-hand curve and I’m sprinting out of it when suddenly Platino, my trusty bike, starts whipping around like a cobra being attacked by a mongoose.  Time, of course, seems to slow down.  I have all the time in the world to get this bike under control.  I even have time to think, “What the hell is going on?”  The bike has lurched to the right, and I’ve managed to change its trajectory but it seems I’ve overcorrected—now I’m heading into the left lane, toward an oncoming car.  The car is pretty far down the road, though, and not going very fast, so my immediate concern is getting the bike back upright and in the right lane.  The sensations I’m having are unlike any other crash scenario of my life.  Cycling is a pretty orderly affair the way we do it, and even the crashes generally fall into one or another fairly predictable category.  The action you need to take is generally pretty obvious, whether or not you can manage it.  But not at this moment.  Something is just not right.  The center cannot hold.  The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

For one thing, Platino refuses to respond.  My normally compliant show horse, a star in the dressage event, has become a bucking bronco.  And another thing:  I’m no longer over the bike—my body is basically next to it, like I’m a motorcycle road racer or something.  And weirdest of all, the top tube is resting under my right thigh, near the back of the knee.  And the bike’s wheels are no longer pointing down the hill, though that’s the direction I’m going.  So I’m sliding—but I’m somehow not down yet.  I’m keeping tabs on the approaching car but it’s not approaching very fast.  I’m managing to shed some speed—but why can’t I right the bike?

Experienced riders, in a clutch situation, don’t panic because we have a library of past engagements to consult:  how did I save this kind of situation before?  My mind flashes on the closest match it can find:  a stunt I like to pull with Lindsay when I pick her up from school.  Bike riding isn’t allowed on school grounds, but on principle I have to race her down the long wheelchair ramp out front.  So while she runs, I sit sideways on my top tube, legs stretched out for comic Pee Wee Herman effect, and coast down after her.  So now I’m kind of working with that motif, still trying to get the bike upright, thinking, “I think can save this!”  I even have time to contemplate that if I pull this out, it’ll be one of the greatest saves in cycling history.

But fate cannot be stalled forever.  Abruptly, the bike seems to high-side:  the kind of crash where the tires are sliding, the bike at an acute angle to the ground, and then suddenly the tires catch and the bike flips over the other way like a pancake, driving the rider into the ground.

WHAP!  I am one with the asphalt.  Time is still crawling along so I have time to think, “Wow—that’s gotta hurt.”  That and “God damnit!”  Platino is no longer with me.  I’ve still not come to a stop.  I let out a yell—sort of an incoherent and/or profane version of “OOF!”  It’s not like I’m sliding for long, of course—I have totally augered in.  The crash is officially over and it’s time to get up and out of the road.  But first I take a long millisecond or two to think, “Erin is going to kill me.”  Then I move on to, “What the hell just happened?”  Why did I crash?  I took that curve exactly right.  Is my proficiency in this sport an illusion?  Have I just been insanely lucky for the last thirty years?”

Then it hits me:  it’s probably that damn 22C front tire I put on yesterday.  Maybe I flatted before the curve and the volume of air was so low I didn’t get the normal, spacious two- or three-second window before all traction is lost.  (A few months back I punctured going into a sharp curve descending Claremont, and had time to right the bike long enough to regain traction, lean back over to avoid hitting the embankment, right the bike again, and then brake to a stop.)  But even before I check the tire I know this theory is no good—what just went down was far more complicated than a front tire washout.  By this point (as much as a second later, perhaps) I’ve located the front wheel and I squeeze the tire.  Fully inflated.

Now I’m up and on my feet and the car that had been oozing its way toward me has stopped.  It’s two old people and the driver looks pissed.  He’s giving me serious stink-eye.  As I collect my bike I thank the guy for being alert and not running me over.  He just stares.  As I haul Platino off onto the shoulder, Lucas and Kromer have made their way back up to me.  Then—oops, almost forgot my pedal.  I snatch it out of the road and get over to the shoulder.

Wait.  WTF?  What’s my pedal doing off my bike?  Oh:  the right crankarm has sheared off, a couple inches from the pedal.  Bing!  Mystery solved:  crash caused by catastrophic component failure during a full sprint on a descent.  Basically a no-win scenario.  I’m relieved, actually.  To finally know what happened, after such a long few seconds of complete bafflement, is a great relief.  I won’t have to wonder, from now on, what obscure physical law I’d unknowingly broken that resulted in this crash.  On future descents, I won’t have to second-guess my ability … just my equipment.

A pickup truck rolls up.  It’s a big one, a working man’s truck, with a welding rig in the back.  We’d passed it a bit earlier (the driver had pulled over to the side to let us by).  The driver and passenger get out (blue-collar types; ball caps, sunglasses).  They offer to give me a ride.  I hesitate:  could they be serious?  They are.  Craig, Ian, and Dave arrive (alas, none of them was close enough behind me to watch the mêlée), and the normal fuss is made (are you okay? is your bike okay? what happened?).  I rotate my arm all around.  My wrist, elbow, and shoulder are wanged real good.  Do they hurt?  Of course.  But is it that particular type of pain that makes you want to cradle the joint, shelter it, put it to bed, swaddle it?  No.  I think I’m good.  Platino is loaded into the back of the truck.

There are of course further logistics to sort out.  I realize that Dave, having driven to my place from Napa, may not remember how to get back to my house.  But I figure somebody can show him the way—this little spill doesn’t have to ruin his ride.  And is there even room for him in the truck?  Yeah, this pickup is sporting a Crew Cab!  My brain enjoys the phrase “Crew Cab” for a few moments and then it dawns on me how silly it would be for Dave to finish the ride.  If he showed up at my house for his car before I made it home, or I showed up before him, we’d probably spook Erin and the kids something fierce:  two men left, only one came back.  It also occurs to me, but only comically, “What if the guys in the truck have a box of Ziploc freezer bags with my name  on it?”

The guys in the truck aren’t psychos, of course—they’re really nice.  The driver is from Kentucky or something.  The passenger is from Germany by way of San Diego.  They’re here building a pipeline of some kind in Modesto.  It’s a day off, they just finished running up Mount Diablo, and they’re happy to help a guy out.  They drive Dave and me to Bart.

Post-ride meal

Acme olive bread.  See, we’d made it to North Berkeley Bart a bit earlier than forecast, and I didn’t want to get to my house earlier than expected.  So we killed some time picking up the bread from the corner grocery, and Dave called his wife to tell her the good news (“It wasn’t me!”).  (Okay, I’m sure that’s not how he put it.)  I rode one-legged the rest of the way.  We breezed into the house, chatting merrily, thrilling the kids with the bread, and it was a good couple minutes before Lindsay said, “What’s that scrape on your knee?”  By this point it was too late for anybody to get spooked, and I said airily, “Oh, I took a little spill on my bike.”

The bread was excellent.  We dipped slices in De Cecco extra-virgin olive oil, spread Clover organic butter on it, and melted it in the jukebox with Precious mozzarella and some wacky cheddar/Swiss hybrid from Trader Joe’s.  With five people powering it down, the loaf was gone in minutes.  Then some chips and salsa.  Dave, satisfied that I was lucid, headed home. 

Dinner was whole wheat pasta (not my choice but surprisingly okay) with some tomato vodka sauce (from a jar) that seemed delicious because I was starving—like, unusually famished, even for me.  Another PBJ.  A real soft taco.  A Heineken.  Some lox.  Glass of milk.  Whatever the fridge would easily disgorge.  It wasn’t enough.  All last night I dreamed about food, or the lack of it.  One vignette:  I’m trying to get into Chez Panisse, upstairs.  My table comes up but I haven’t parked the car; by the time I do, I’m off the waiting list and have no table.  Another vignette:  I go to a small-plates place.  The plates are saucer-like, with tiny bites on them, and they keep vanishing before I can even eat anything.  There are tiny bowls of soup, but no spoons.  And so on.

Aftermath

I have little faith that Shimano will warranty this obviously defective crank.  So, if anybody has a 175mm 9-speed-era (Octalink) Dura-Ace crank in good condition, I will pay HOT CASH MONEY for it.  The rest of the bike is completely fine (other than the STI levers being scuffed).  I ruined one sock but my other clothing amazingly came out pretty much okay.  My helmet has a tiny hairline crack, just enough to require replacement but not enough to suggest I hit my head hard at all, which as far as I know I didn’t.  I’m quite lucid—at least as lucid as I ever get, being blond.  (Gentle reader, you be the judge.)

Alexa and Lindsay cleaned up my token road rash.  This was their idea.  They begged me to let them do it, intrigued mainly by the clear bandages I’d bought.  They argued over who got what wound.  They did a great job scrubbing out my scrapes because they did exactly as I instructed, not worrying about how much it must hurt.  Of course they were aware that it hurt; in fact, it turns out that an adult’s pain threshold is fascinating to a child.

I’ve got a scuffed wrist, a dime-sized spot of road rash on my right knee, a pea-sized spot on my right ankle, another little dollop of road rash on my right elbow, and the elbow has some swelling.  My right shoulder has a bit of a scrape.  My shoulder, elbow, spine, and especially my neck are sore but not even enough to require an Advil.  I can still access my jersey pockets (something I couldn’t do for many months after my last wreck).  I even shaved, just to make sure I could.  There’s a strange pain and tenderness above my left buttock, but it’s not structural, it’s a muscular, soft-tissue thing.

Reconstruction of the crash event

Steve Ansel/Grizzly Adams Kromer took some photos along the way, and after the crash (like the truck photo above).  Check out this next one.  A black squiggle would make sense—I was laying down a rubber road straight to freedom!  But a light squiggle?  Huh? 

After much pondering, I think I’ve figured it out.  The right crank was surely under pressure when it broke, so it was between the 1 and 5 o’clock position.  Since the right pedal was no longer pushing back against my foot, all my weight went to the right.  This pitched the bike way over to the right, making it slide leftward (into the oncoming lane). I tried to right the bike by throwing my weight back over to the left, but without the right pedal to help anchor me to the  bike, my body just went past it instead of bringing it upright. I distinctly remember that my right thigh was hooked over  the top tube just past the back of my knee. The broken right crank must have been pointing  straight down and dragging on the ground, making that squiggle on the road surface.  Sure enough, the end of the crank stub is blackened—check out this photo:

Though the bike had to have been leaning way over,  the crank stub was basically holding it up (kind of a tripod effect). Meanwhile, I was on the other side of the frame, basically surfing the bike along the ground.

I figure that what I had originally taken for a high-side scenario (it really felt like a high side) was actually the crank  digging in enough to stop sliding.  When it ground to a halt the bike still had forward momentum, so it was instantly popped the rest of the way over.  I guess I kind of kept going, which is  how I managed to hit my helmet and shoulder on the ground.  The bike must have gotten flipped up at some point, since  both brake levers were folded in by the end.

It’s kind of amazing how long the bike dragged along on that crank stub (based on the length of that squiggle).  I’ll bet that’s how we (Platino and I) came to shed so much speed.  I’ve been rather perplexed at the low amount of damage we sustained given how fast we came out of that curve.  Look at the attached graph.  For the 4½ miles before the crash, I’d averaged 30 mph, and before the precipitous drop-off  in speed you see there, my speed was 29. The graph smoothes things out a bit because it only samples  data every 20 seconds, so I was probably going a bit less than 29 after the curve.  The minimal damage suggests I was going a lot less fast than this by the time I smacked down.  Man did I luck out.

I asked the rest of the Diablo Six if this explanation makes sense, and Kromer e-mailed back, “I’m having a hard time visualizing what you describe. What do you say we go out and recreate the event to test your theory.”  Sounds like an episode of “ChiPs!”  Too bad that show isn’t still on the air—we could write the screenplay!  We’d begin in medias res and everything!

Summary

I crashed my bike descending Mt. Diablo, because of catastrophic component failure.  I am fine.

- Dana

Well Domicile of Hurt it wasn't.  Not that I've ever been on a Domicile of Hurt or is Pain ride but 3 of us set out on a spirited ride tonight.  And this isn't going to be some lengthy race report where I consumed 14 burritos and 2 gallons of full sugar soda post ride.  Nope, that didn't happen.

Instead, I rolled up to Cole Coffee fully expecting no one to be there.  I looked to my right and saw no one.  Looked to my left and saw Ken and a bearded sherpa in an EBVC kit on a vaguely familiar Specialized Tarmac SL2 instead of a llama or is it a yak or whatever they ride in Nepal.  Damn I thought, Krovember is here and in perfect time to start getting in shape for short easy spins like Everest Challenge and Levi L's Grand Fondo.  I knew I was in trouble but decided to push my luck and see if Kromer has been on his bike much in the 2 or 3 weeks he's been back from eating Clenbutirol laced curry in New Delhi.  He said a bit but i was still determined.

The ride:

Nice warm up and some talking up Claremont.  Right turn on Alvarado and Ken says "man this hurts" as he rode up ahead of me.  Left on Amito and it pitches up again, Right on Drury and I'm feeling pretty good but see Kromer noodling in front of me.  Right on Strathmoor and up a wall and I'm hurting but staying in contact.  Left on Marlborough Terrace and it hurts but I know we are almost to Grizzly Peak.  We hit Grizzly and I am very thankful b/c that short steep pitch from Alvarado up averages 9% and above according to my Walk Oakland Map.  I'm thinking we'll recover on Grizzly but Kromer turned it up just fast enough to keep Ken and me on his back wheel unable to come around.

We stayed together after the left turn on to Skyline and I could tell Kromer was holding back a bit, I was sucking wind and just looking for something that would never come. Regrouped a bit on the slight descent down to Redwood (Ken turned right at Jaoquin Miller - having done Pinehurst in the morning)...so there were two of us.  Shot down Redwood.  I took the first pull, then Kromer came around then before the left up South Pinehurst I got back on the front....then the climb up South Pinehurst.  When Kromer came around me at the base in the big chain ring, it was the last I saw of him until the top.  I gamely gave it my all but man was Kromer flying.  We regrouped at the top then I threw the descent of my life down South Pinehurst....I gotta admit, I was pretty proud of myself.

The ride back on Pinehurst was medium paced then we hit the base of the Pinehurst climb and Kromer was gone again.  I stayed just close enough going into the hard switchback to hear him say he was pulling off for a "natural break".  I thought here it is my chance to go...NOPE.  He caught me, said i should get the Tarmac S Works then blew by me.

Rode a mellow pace back across and down tunnel and home....a GREAT ride tonight and here's the kicker.  

We are doing it again on Thursday night.  6 pm Cole Coffee be there or be, um, not there.

I did get home in time for a green salad with avocado and sunflower seeds and roast chicken with a bourbon/apricot relish.  Washed down with some water and a South African Sauvignon Blanc (Simonsig was the Producer).

- Tony

 

 

- Mike Campbell

I thought I would see if I could have more fun on one of my favorite courses than the past two years when I was bonked from working for AV.  Alas, I was not as fresh as for Mt. Hamilton.  So there is not much to say about the race which was uneventful except for two crashes.  The pack, which included 4's, broke apart on the climbs but then regrouped on descents and flats.  So it came down to who could go faster up Haskins Hill the last time.  I eked out a 9th, with Chris Cerruti and Brian Fesenden behind me.  Steve Archer won, with AV's George Smith 2nd.  Mark Caldwell got some pay-back on me, getting 5th.  The crashes in a group that should be settling down unnerved me.  In the worst one a rider slammed into a guard rail with his face.  My daughter described a horrific scene a the High School, but admitted it may have looked worse than it actually was.

It was sunny and cool out at Pesky - a gloriously idyllic setting for race recovery turkey sandwich on rye and apple washed down with PowerBar Recovery Drink.

- Jamie

So the original plan this year was to head to Italy for a week or so of touring so I was thinking of doing longer rides and concentrating on distance.  But, plans changed, so I decided to pin the numbers on again and do some racing.

Breakfast: 2 packets Trader Joe's Apples and Cinnamon Instant Oatmeal.  1 packet Regular instant oatmeal.  French pressed Sumatra coffee.

I headed to Benicia where there was a new course this year.  The course is set up like the number "8" with six right turns and two left turns.  The course itself has aspects of several area classics.  The first right past the start/finish line was a right turn leading to a shallow climb with a left to right crosswind taking a right into a slight downhill with a tail wind. It was like a miniature Albany.  here was a fast downhill section with a bumpy right turn, much like Cat's Hill or Vacaville. It's a long drag of an uphill to the finish, much like Lafayette. Overall there's probably 60-70 feet of elevation gain each lap.

Warming up I felt fairly tired and a bit weak - a byproduct of doing Crockett-Martinez yesterday. It was a fantastic ride, but definitely too long with a race the next day!

I lined up for the 35+ 3/4 race, which was probably the largest field of the day with about 50 people. The first lap was fast and starting shedding people immediately. I stayed as close to the front as I could though periodically found myself drifting back to about 20th or so. Luckily the hill started taking a bit out of people so it was always possible to move up on it. Being tired it started taking a bit out of me as well, and I basically sat in as best as I could while trying to stay near the front. The pace picked up in the last few laps and on the last lap I had to really limit my effort so I wouldn't blow up. We came around the final turn and I was in about 12th to 15th place. I was able to sprint fairly well and passed several people right before the line, finishing tenth. It was a little disappointing as it's the kind of course I traditionally do well on, but I was happy as it was a safe and successful race.

I warmed down for a lap - more properly I panted for a lap while trying not to fall off my bike. I made it back to the car and went and sat in the shade for 10 minutes trying to cool off. While I had planned to race the Elite 3 race and hour later I was totally spent, so that idea was trashed.

Instead, Rhonda and I went to the First Street Cafe. I started off with a chocolate milk while Rhonda had a mildly peachy Iced Tea. I celebrated cycling's roots by having a Belgian waffle (with real maple syrup!) and two eggs scrambled. The waffle was crispy with a hint of sweetness and sat like a bomb in my gut.  Rhonda had the breakfast burrito with, fittingly enough, canadian bacon and a home-made pico de gallo that was excellent! The red potatoes with onions were also great. Overall the food was very good and I would certainly recommend a trip there if one finds themselves in downtown Benicia.

Not sure what the next race will be, but might not be until Albany. We'll see how that goes!

- Matt

Katherine, Paul, Steve and I met at the Walnut Creek Bart station at 7 AM the Saturday before last, and headed towards Mt. Diablo.  We meandered slowly up Diablo, froze on the descent, and enjoyed a stiff tail wind through Livermore.  Along the way, there was a brief, unexpected sprinkle.  From Livermore, we slowly climbed up to the San Antonio valley via Mines, and stopped at the Junction Bar and Grill for our second stop.  Since it was right at noon, the place was packed and it took nearly 20 minutes just to buy some drinks and energy bars.  From there, we slowly made our way up and over Hamilton, again encountering some sprinkles as we descended into San Jose.  On the way up Hamilton, the low cadence irritated my left knee, so I decided to skip Sierra Rd and instead road with Katherine directly to Calaveras.  Meanwhile, Paul and Steve suffered through the “gut wrenching pitches.” We regrouped in Sunol, but unfortunately the light sprinkles we dodged all day turned into a steady cool rain.  Since I have a nice insulating layer of body fat, I didn’t mind the rain, but poor Paul, with 3% body fat and only vest, was chilled to the bone.

Steve had a fancy Gramin bike computer and logged the entire ride.  Here it is in all its glory:

http://www.strava.com/rides/mt-diablo-mines-638957?sref=1MT1yaWRlX3NoYXJlOzI9ZmFjZWJvb2s7ND0xNDMz#

All in all, it was indeed an epic ride with great companions. That said, I didn’t intend to write a ride report for two reasons.

First, I realize with this club, rides are always secondary to food, and on this front I failed miserably.  For breakfast I had two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and during the ride I had some gels, drink mix and power bars.  Sadly, I wasn't that hungry after the ride, perhaps because our endurance pace was so perfectly steady, and only had some left over BBQ chicken, asparagus and rice.

Second, as an endurance event, the Partial Kromer was completely surpassed by my wife just four days later. On Tuesday night at 1 AM, her water broke, two weeks early! Because she was group B strep positive, the clock was ticking so we tried to get labor started by walking up and down stairs for several hours on Wednesday. The doctors induced her just before midnight on Wednesday, and 32 hours later Lucas Robert Latimer was born at 7:40 Friday morning.  Mom and baby are now at home doing great. (Sorry to everyone not named Lucas or Bob that we didn't use your names, and I couldn't convince Susanne on Edgar Benjamin Vincent Christopher Latimer.) 

- Craig

Despite my determination not to race this year, I went out to do this classic road race as a new Master's 55+.  I felt I had brought myself up to a reasonable degree of fitness, had the time and the start time worked out with that of my daughter who raced in the Women's 1,2,3's. I dusted off the race wheels and cleaned up my bike.  The field included aging notables I had race with in the 45's.

I always appreciate the race as one of attrition, a challenge in how to not burn too many matches on the big climb and set a good pace across the San Antonio Valley, on the last climbs and down Mines Road.  With two dominant riders who departed our company early in the race, I was left with four other riders after dropping a long trail of riders on the last part of the climb.  We got time gaps of the two riders ahead from the motorcycle referee and were able to bring a 4 minute gap down to about 2 from the rider ahead of us.

Steve Archer of Morgan Stanley made an attack on the last part of the climb out of the San Antonio Valley.  I followed with another rider from Taleo.  The not so funny part was that Steve was coaxing me the whole way because I was a lot more fatigued than I thought.  He wanted the able bodies to chase down the rider in front.  But I cramped up after only a kilometer or so working in rotation.  I was able to spin out the legs, down a couple of gels and gulps of water, and recover. I was not able to chase back on.  I hunkered down to my best time-trialing mode for the last 12 miles or so of the race, pushing my pace as hard as could without cramping again, and prayed I wouldn't be caught.  With no one in sight behind, a last fast descent (before the bridge) and final 1K push, I got 5th.

Josie (my daughter) did well in her first time at Mt. Hamilton, placing mid pack.  The race organizers scrambled the 55's results. And since it took some time before I could pick up my modest prize and t-shirt, she rode back to San Jose with a group.  I stopped at Mr. Pickles in Livermore with the Taleo rider (Craig Biter) who placed 4th in our race, for a turkey sandwiches on a sweet roll, with cheese and their special garlic sauce and drinks.  It was a fine day to ride back to San Jose via Hwy. 84 and Calaveras Road.

Sorry to miss the partial Kromer ride.

- Jamie

Since I didn’t even ride Mt. San Bruno this year, much less any other race, I’ll have to make do with a ride report. Three of us (Craig, his boss, and I) did a pretty epic ride near Lake Tahoe the day before what would have been Stage 1 of the Tour of California.

The tale begins, of course, with dinner the night before. On the way up to Tahoe our family dined at a rather good taqueria called Talavera.  It’s on Solano Ave. Yes, you read that correctly:  this was the little taqueria less than half a mile from our place. We got such a late start, we ended up setting a new record for how soon into a road trip we stopped for food.  .  I had a carnitas burrito with cheese and guac.  It was big and, well, tasty enough. (The quality control isn’t the greatest at Talavera. If you’re there when the cook is on, or the right cook is there, it’s SF-Mission-worthy.) Alexa had the mushroom quesadilla which was really the star of the show. Happily, the mandatory Parental Tariff policy stood me in good stead.

The morning of the ride, at 6 a.m., I had a PBJ (Alvarado bread with Adams organic peanut butter, the salted kind of course—not like the heinous Deaf Smith unsalted brand I grew up with, which came in like a 5-gallon drum and was so runny we called it Quicksand because you’d lose knives in it, every time you got to the bottom of the drum there would be like six of them and it was practically inedible due to no salt—and my mom’s homemade apricot jam, which is nirvana).

It was pretty chilly when we started at seven, and the spray from riding through several large puddles got my leg warmers wet. We tooled clockwise around the lake and then headed into Nevada and took a left on Highway 431 at Incline Village. This highway took us up over Mount Rose, the summit of which—at almost 9,000 feet—is the highest pass in the Sierras (and higher than the Col du Galibier in France, though you shouldn’t for a moment think that Mount Rose even deserves to lick the Galibier’s foothills). My form was, as we in the suffering industry say, “El Crappo Grande.” We spent just long enough at the top for Ed—who had arrived before us and thus had been waiting around in the cold wind for awhile—to take our photo. (Album link to follow below.) It was 41 degrees up there but not raining, and got progressively warmer as we descended.

Toward the bottom of the descent, following Craig’s detailed directions, we turned right on Joy Lake Drive, which was supposed to connect us to … well, I never actually got to find out how it was supposed to connect up, because at the gate to a, well, gated community we encountered a stubborn security guard who wouldn’t let us through. He had a walrus moustache and a walrus physique and immediately made me think of the Pink Floyd line, “It’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around.” He gave an impassioned speech about the filthy rich people living in the McMansion compound, and how they were so tired of the thousands of cyclists streaming through their community, burning their homes to the ground, enslaving their wives and children, and littering, that they closed the gates and won’t let any more through. He gave us directions to a trail that showed him to be either dyslexic, stupid, right/left colorblind, or maliciously unhelpful. I am confident that his body will never be found.

So we had to backtrack, up the No Joy road we’d come down, and then continue on to Highway 395, where we headed south into a brutal headwind (surpassed only by what Craig dragged a few of you through the week before). My strength by this point had decayed from hopeless to lugubrious and it was all I could do to suck Craig’s wheel, shamelessly and parasitically. It was inhumane how little work I did, but that’s okay because Craig has been training a lot and seemed to be punching through the wind just fine.  We got into Carson City and Craig had a general idea there was some really cool bike route to take, but we couldn’t find it, and then we saw this cyclist. “Which way do we go?” Craig asked him. The guy responded, “Where are you going?” If there’s a such thing as the polar opposite of a tautology, this was it—a notion I pondered for the next hour or so.

So we ended up riding right through the main drag in Carson City, and a drag it was. The wind was ripping the flesh off our faces. As we passed a used car dealership with all its balloons, straining against their strings in the wind, I wondered if there were a convenient way to end my own life. Falling off Craig’s wheel would have probably done the job, but not swiftly nor mercifully. I’d have died hating doing something I loved, which just seemed wrong, so I chose life. Life without parole, it seemed like.  We stopped at a mini mart for water and some guy said, “You guys heading over 50? You got a long haul there.” We acknowledged that indeed we were totally screwed (though we used a more polite term). As he headed through the door he said, “Have fun in the race tomorrow.” As if.

So we headed west on Highway 50 over Spooner Pass, which those familiar with Spoonerisms might call Pooner Spass, thinking they’re funny or clever or something. It started off pretty badly because the wind still seemed to be in our faces, but then it shifted and we had a tailwind. Wow, what a relief. It didn’t help so much, but it left me free to drop off both Ed’s and Craig’s wheels without dire consequences. I’d have liked the company, of course, but at least I didn’t have to hear this squeaky chain that one of the bikes had, which was almost loud enough to drown out my wheezing. At one point I had to turn around because I accidently littered. Eventually I reached the top. Don’t we all?

There’s not much else to say except the ride went on and on. I started to feel okay by the end, probably only because I know I was almost done. I was barely coherent.  When I tried to talk, often I would say the same word twice, like a strange form of stuttering. Craig pointed out that on this bike path were painted instructions saying “Ride on this side, walk on this side” which he felt was a very poor idea as it would lead to head-on collisions if heeded. At first I didn’t even know what he was talking about—I thought he’d said something about slime in the puddles—but when I finally heard him right I thought his point was that it was backwards, that you should ride left and walk right, and only after several minutes did I finally grasp the lunacy of the instructions—that one lane was dedicated to cyclists, in both directions. Insanity! Dang. Anyhow, at 117 miles, with 8,400 feet of climbing, this was my hardest ride of the year.

During the ride I consumed four large bottles of energy drink, two energy bars, and four doughnut holes. The doughnut holes I bought on a whim at 7-Eleven at our last stop.  By definition doughnut holes have zero calories but I bought them anyway because they looked kind of tasty in a grotesque guilty-pleasure—nay, shameful-pleasure—kind of way. Ed looked hungry and also sick so I can’t tell if it was in the spirit of helpfulness or schadenfreude that I offered him some of the doughnut holes. He declined. I saved a couple for my daughters. Oh, and I had a 20-ounce Coke. Dinner was the gastronomic equivalent of a ten-minute hip-hop mash-up where every single rapper on the planet jumps in to freestyle on the mic. While the men were out riding, the womenfolk had spent the day cooking. (This probably sounds sexist, and it’s an exaggeration, but after the beating I took on the road I need to take steps to rebuild my masculine dignity.) There was spinach lasagne, two kinds of enchiladas, salad (though I didn’t eat any), fruit salad (ibid.), a big ham, and some other stuff I think.  Then there were individual pumpkin pies with whipped cream, two kinds of ice cream, those cookies with big chocolate disks pressed into them, and the mandatory parental tariffs I took of my kids Hostess fruit pies from earlier. I just sat there for like two hours straight eating plate after plate. (Erin has pointed out that if I weren’t so thin this kind of eating would be a truly disgusting spectacle.) As if Craig hadn’t done enough work on the ride, he did the dishes while I just sat there. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for organizing the weekend and doing all the work.

Here’s a little photo album of the trip.

- Dana

Permit me to regale you with the tale of the 2010 Everest Challenge.  I realize I already galed you with such a story last year, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Hollywood movies, it’s the value of cheap retreads.  This story is my perspective only; I shan’t steal any thunder from Paul, Ian, or Jamie who I expect will share their stories as well.

The attrition this year started before the race even began.  Mark couldn’t come because he had to go to a wedding of some fairly close relative; our hopes that the engagement would fall through did not come to fruition.  Craig couldn’t come because his wife had an important overseas business function; he was trying to get her to quit her job but ultimately she didn’t.  Tim had a bad crash and wasn’t able to train; I have no witty rejoinder for this, of course, it being simply very sad.  Nor can I explain, actually, why Lucas and Steve didn’t end up registering.  So I went to Bishop as the sole East Bay rider in orange.

Paul and Jamie drove up together in Paul’s stealth vehicle, a Honda Element color-coded to match their dark stealth bikes.  They’re able to put the bikes on a rack inside the car to keep those heavy, non-aerodynamic dead bugs off the bikes.  Ian and I drove in his VW Golf, which is all tricked out with a metric dashboard, an ominous engine light, a broken fuel gauge, and—new for 2010!—working air conditioning.  Our bikes, by the way, were among the only metal ones at the race.  Ian’s steel frame weighs about the same as a modern bike.

We left early—too early, in fact, to hit that killer taqueria in Escalon.  I was navigating, so we missed the turn for Tioga Pass and had to backtrack, so I’m glad we padded our drive time.  We had gringo burritos at a gas-station-snack-bar in June Lake, an hour north of Bishop, because a) we were starved, and b) there was a sign out front saying “You must eat here!”  The burritos, for being gringo and lacking both rice and beans, were actually pretty good.  From a satiety perspective, though, they were roughly equivalent to a big puff of air from a bellows.  We proceeded to Bishop, where we missed the turn for our motel due to my absurd tendency to confuse north with its sneaky doppelganger, south.  My poor navigation skills would end up being a recurring theme on this trip.

Paul and Jamie arrived at the Bishop Village Motel just after us, and right away began gloating because their room had a full kitchen and ours only a mini-fridge and microwave.  I nursed a grudge throughout our 40-minute leg-shakedown ride.  It was an easy spin, though we did one “effort,” just so we could talk about it later and feel really sophisticated using the term “effort.”  In my case this was a mistake because I hadn’t used my inhaler and was wheezing as soon as my heart rate hit 150 bpm.

Dinner, like last year, was at the county fairgrounds where we checked in.  It was free, and it was pasta.  Alas, my first serving was like what you’d give a small child who had been eating Nerds, Tangy Taffy, and Tootsie Rolls all afternoon.  I was ten minutes in line and about thirty seconds in eating my first plate, which at least included half a dozen hunks of cheesy bread.  I went through the other line for my second helping, hoping for a more generous server.  Just as I reached the front of the line, I had an impulse and grabbed a fresh paper plate to put over my old plate, hiding the sauce stain.  I don’t know why I did it—instinct, I guess.  You can’t teach this. 

I asked the server to fill the whole plate, and she said—speaking down to me like a child—“Start out with this much”—she put a hatefully small pile of pasta on my plate—“and if you’re still hungry later, just wait until everybody’s been served and there should be enough for you to have seconds.”  Yeah, right.  I got back to my seat, and minutes later Jamie returned from the line, having been turned down for seconds!  He looked stunned, like he’d just been told he had to race without shoes.  How is anybody supposed to race 120+ miles with no fuel?

My second plate, like my first, simply didn’t register in my stomach.  It’s like when you put a penny in a parking meter.  I had to go back again.  Paul doubted aloud that I’d prevail again against the pasta Nazis.  I turned my baseball cap backward to fashion a basic disguise, and went back through the first line to try my luck.  To my horror the guy ahead of me got totally hassled!  I stared straight ahead, past the server, and tried to act natural.  Amazingly, it worked and I got thirds, no questions asked.  By this time they were out of bread, but when it was time for a fourth plate of pasta everybody had been fed and I encountered no resistance.  I doubt the sideways ball cap was even necessary.  My expert tactics in the food line had me feeling victorious already, though the race was still more than twelve hours away. 

Now, I know you’re getting impatient for the real story:  how was the pasta, anyway?  Well, there was no sausage in the sauce this time, but it was still pretty tasty, in a cafeteria-grade, guilty-pleasure sort of way.  Ian was drinking some beverage the color of antifreeze, which he complained was warm.  But hey, free food!

After dinner we headed to Smart & Final for breakfast stuff.  I’d brought a Tupperware of Cheerios—or, more specifically, the Trader Joe’s house brand.  (Erin persists in calling them by their branded name, “Joes Os.”  I refuse to do this.  In fact, I told her if she didn’t desist, I would start calling non-Kleenex-brand tissues “snot rags” in front of the kids.)  We got milk and Ian picked out some bright green bananas.  They were actually the ripest ones there, but way too green for me.  He replied, “I like a firm buh-NAH-nah.”  Perhaps it’s the English accent; my rejoinder—“That’s what she said!”—was just a formality as we were all laughing already.  I realize now that this story is not that funny; I guess we were nervous about the race.  Or maybe you just had to be there.

I spent a really long time pinning my numbers before bed.  Ian taught me to crumple them up so they lie flatter and don’t flap in the wind.  It’s so satisfying to continue progressing in this sport after thirty years.  I was so pleased with my pinning job, finally, that I thought about not even wearing the jersey, but rather putting it on a mannequin that I’d display at home in a nice glass case.  I suppose you could construe this as cold feet.  I was anxious, for sure.  I wasn’t anxious about the race per se; I was anxious about being anxious, lest it disturb my sleep.  I ended up sleeping pretty well, though I had anxiety dreams.  I dreamt I left my laptop on Bart.  In another dream I waited too long to ship out a modem line tap and had to rush all around for a FedEx office, eventually finding a Mailboxes Etc. that was also a taqueria.  That’s how you know I didn’t get enough dinner.

Stage 1 – 122 miles, 15,465 feet of climbing

During the first stage I consumed four and a half bottles of my preferred brand of energy drink and two bottles of Heed provided by the race, along with three Powerbar gels.  (As I did last year, I stashed a cooler with bottles at the car to grab before the last climb.)  My stomach was actually pretty bad on the first climb, but I can’t blame Heed for that—I’d not yet blown through my first bottles.  Impressively, Jamie caught Ian and me on the first climb.  (The 45s were split into a separate group, starting five minutes later, because there was such a huge turnout.  The Masters 35+ group was twice the size of last year’s, and the 45+ field grew even more.)  Unbeknownst to me, Ian stopped to take on nutrition at the top, and thus didn’t get to suck my wheel on the descent.

Toward the bottom of the first descent, I took a wrong turn, and Jamie followed me through it.  (I haven’t taken a wrong turn in a road race since collegiate nationals in 1989.  On that occasion, my coach famously said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk to you about it.  I won’t humiliate you any more than you already are.”)  Jamie and I lost 3½ minutes as a result of this error, the silver lining being that Ian was able to rejoin us for the rest of the descent and the flat section following it.  There are three explanations for how I could have taken the wrong turn:

1. I did it on purpose, as the best way to join back up with Ian.  Slowing down inexplicably could have been dangerous, and it would have been impossible to explain myself to Jamie with all the wind in our ears.  I timed the move to perfection so Ian didn’t even break stride getting back in our slipstream.
2. I only thought it was a wrong turn and route correction; Jamie and I were actually abducted by space aliens and taken to their beautiful ship where they did horrible, invasive investigations of our Senator Packwoods before erasing our memories and setting us back down on our bikes, minus a third of our hemoglobin.
3. The road cones wrapping around the corner were left there by a construction crew and were unrelated to the race, and the course marshal had abandoned his post for a little while—at the very moment we came through—before putting the cones in his car and taking them away so as not to confuse other cyclists.

Though all three explanations doubtless strike you as far-fetched, I assure you that one of them is absolutely true.  Needless to say my morale was damaged.  I ultimately reacted by going really hard on the last climb, far harder than I felt was even wise.  Though many people had told me I should have a compact crank for this race, chalking my 39x27 up to pure foolishness, as it turned out I did most of the climb in my 24-tooth cog.  I mentioned this to Jamie afterward (it was the closest I could really come to bragging), and still he insisted I should have used a compact.  Gearing is like religion.

I don’t remember eating very much of the free meal at the top of the final climb.  Certainly I had some cokes, and I slammed enough ginger ale for some really righteous belches (though I kept my mouth closed so as not to scare anybody).  I had a few bean-and-cheese quesadillas and some Oreos.  I was either too blown to eat a lot, or too blown to register what I was eating, or too blown to shunt the fact of my eating into long-term memory.  I shudder to think, looking back, how little I ate with the second stage of the race still looming.

Dinner was at the same Italian place as last year, though we could have sworn the name had changed.  (It hadn’t; the waitress confirmed:  it’s had the same name for sixteen years.)  We had some combo pizza as an appetizer, and it was excellent.  It included green peppers, the consumption of which made me feel subversive as Erin is allergic.  I had the same mushroom soup as last year—oddly spicy but very good.  Oddly, I got about four bay leaves in mine, and Ian didn’t get any.  It’s who you know.

The waitress couldn’t remember what I’d ordered last time, and I guess I can’t blame her since she may not have been my waitress last time.  I knew it was either the chicken parmigiana or the chicken marsala, and whichever it was, it had been delicious.  I should have re-read my own blog post about Everest ’09 and I’d have known it was the marsala; instead I guessed wrong this time and got the parmigiana.  It was overly breaded and a tad greasy.  I mean, it was fine and all, but I’ll never forget that marsala from last year.  When I’m on my deathbed looking back at my life, trying to pinpoint where I went wrong and at what point things started to unravel, I’ll doubtless conclude it was this particular dinner choice.  Meanwhile, my more meticulous competitors had probably done their homework and enjoyed the marsala, using my own blog against me!

Stage 2 – 86 miles, 13,570 feet of climbing

I approached this stage with utter dread.  I’d slept very poorly; my ears were ringing as I lay in bed, as though I’d been to a loud nightclub or something.  I finally managed to fall into a fitful sleep.  At around 3 a.m. the dirtbag in the next room over, just across the thin motel wall, started yakking on his cell phone.  I figured it must be an emergency call from somebody in Europe, and the guy would soon be on his way to the airport, but instead he just chattered away ad infinitum.  I was wearing earplugs so I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but his tone was that of a happy homemaker discussing wallpaper samples.  Finally Ian yelled through the wall for the guy to ring off or have his cell phone shoved so far down his throat it’d tickle his duodenum.  Wait, come to think of it, Ian said something much more diplomatic; that must have been the comment I had been formulating.  Anyhow, the guy shut right up, but neither of us really got back to sleep after that.

During stage two I drank four bottles of my preferred energy drink, two bottles of Heed, and a couple bottles of water.  (It’s a lot shorter race than Stage 1, but it was hotter than blazes with no shade at all.)  I also swallowed some electrolyte capsules they were giving out at a rest stop, and ate a couple fistfuls of grapes passed up by a Samaritan spectator who appeared a couple times along the road on the final climb.  Somebody gave me a banana at one point as well, provoking Paul to quote Ian’s firm buhnahnah statement.  I timed my consumption to perfection, running out of energy drink less than 500 meters from the finish line.

At the top, after a bunch of water and some cokes, I started macking on these so-called Greek quesadillas they were grilling up.  They had fresh spinach leaves, feta, and I think olives.  The spinach was perfectly wilted, the tortilla perfectly crispy yet soft, the cheese gooey and salty … fricking amazing.  I kept expecting them to run out, but the ‘dillas just kept coming.  I was just shoving them in my face as fast as my hands could move. 

I cannot estimate how many quesadilla triangles I consumed other than to say I surprised even myself.  After a volley of eating I’d go sit down for awhile, the basic camp chair feeling like a throne of some kind, until the hunger would gnaw at me and I’d give up the seat for more food.  This led to an interesting social question:  is it fair to take over a fellow racer’s chair when she is called up for the awards ceremony?  I ultimately decided it was, so long as I gave her the chair back later.

Dinner was at Erick Schat’s Bakkery in Bishop—again, the same place as last time.  I talked up the pastrami sandwich a whole bunch to Ian before realizing I was setting him up for disappointment.  What do I know about pastrami?  What makes me an expert?  So I backpedaled and said, “Look, you probably should order something else.  You’re bound to be disappointed.  I shouldn’t have shot off my mouth.”  He ended up ordering it, and as far as I can tell he liked it.  I got the pastrami myself and it was nirvana.  The only trouble was, they were out of their rye bread and the sourdough wasn’t as robust, and got a bit soggy from the sauerkraut I stuffed in there.  I wished aloud that they’d grilled the bread, and Ian disagreed, pointing out that the soft bread conforms better to the stuff inside.  Though I found this observation perfectly consistent with his race-number-crumpling technique, I couldn’t resist taking the bait, and soon we were fistfighting in the parking lot.  No, of course we weren’t—far from feeling pugilistic, we were happy to be done with the suffering and to be stuffing ourselves with pastrami that a placard noted “is not lean.”  Jamie had the “Mule Kick” sandwich.  I was tempted to say, “You just like saying ‘Mule Kick.’”  It really is a catchy name.  I suppose it’s trademarked.  If I start a sandwich shop maybe I’ll offer a “Jackass Spaz” sandwich.  Paul had a platter of some kind; the vegetable side looked a bit limp and he wasn’t thrilled with it.

The trip home

No way were we going to settle for Taco Bell, like we did last year.  We stopped in Groveland at a little restaurant that had pizza.  I remembered the place from a Yosemite trip many years ago, and I remember thinking how awful it was, but here we were and I was determined to go with the flow and keep a stiff (if sunburned and chapped) upper lip.  Pizza was indicated.  Jamie and Paul said they only wanted a slice.  This made no sense.  Why would they lie?  To be safe, I talked them into ordering a large.  Oddly, a one-topping cost like $5 more than a plain pizza, and yet the super-combo with like five ingredients was like $1.80 more than that.  Normally, on general principle I’d have insisted on a combo, but we were tired and a debate about topping choices might have been dangerous.  So we went with pepperoni.  It was glorious.  The crust, though thin and crispy, wasn’t overly cracker-like:  it still had some nice chewiness.  The cheese was plentiful and the pepperoni was fattening.  We should have ordered two or three of them.

After getting home around midnight and finally making it into bed, I dreamed of food all night.  One dream involved dinner with some new friends, and they were serving carnitas.  The problem was, instead of using forks or tortillas we were expected to lift the carnitas into our mouths with chips, and I couldn’t keep the meat from falling off the chip.  I was getting hungrier and hungrier and progressively more embarrassed.  When I woke up I had the relief that it was only a dream, but no relief from the hunger.  In fact, I’m still hungry.  I have to go.

- Dana

All,

Here is my ride report for the Mt. Hamilton Sufferfest today.  (Since I don’t race, this is the closest I can come to a race report.)

For breakfast I had a PBJ and a banana.  The peanut butter was, due to a freak shopping accident, sodium-free.  Lack of salt makes peanut butter inedible, of course, so I salted it.  It was early and the No-Doz (one tablet, 200 mg) hadn’t kicked in yet, and I accidentally oversalted it.  The jelly was actually the dregs of a jar of cherry preserves, and was basically syrup.  The effect was an oversalty cough-syrupy sandwich which I enjoyed not at all.

During the ride I drank six 20-ounce bottles of energy drink and ate one Powerbar, two gels (one 1x-caffeine, one 2x), and approximately one Hostess crème-filled cupcake (I offered a couple of guys bites which amounted to most of the second cupcake in the two-pack).  I had another half of a No-Doz in Livermore; Kromerica took the other half and immediately felt so good he decided to ride home via Morgan Territory.  (We may need to do an intervention, tying him to a La-Z-Boy armchair and equipping him with an X-Box and a case of Doritos.)  Riding back without Steve was like having an engine car removed from our train.

The signature moment of the ride was on the shallow descent following the Hamilton summit, when the pace was unconscionably high and I was clinging to the back of the group for dear life.  It was windy, so I knew if I got dropped I would suddenly be in a different postal zone from the others, and they’d have to wait, and it would take forever to fish my ego out of the ditch and get my sorry ass dragged home.  That descent was like being put in the ring with a prizefighter and being told, “If you don’t last all twelve rounds, you will be shot in the head upon leaving the ring.”  I was miserable:  everything hurt.  My legs hurt, my ass hurt, my hands hurt, my feet hurt, and my back hurt.  I felt significantly better after our 7-Eleven stop in Livermore.

When I got home I had a very large and dense piece of Erin’s homemade refrigerator cake, which is either the lasagna of cakes or the Pabst Blue Ribbon of cakes, or both.  It’s layers of graham crackers, chocolate pudding, and sliced bananas, left overnight in the fridge so the graham crackers dissolve.  Highly tasty, notwithstanding the amount of sweet crap I’d already ingested during the ride.  Then I had a leftover pork cutlet expertly prepared in the French style with cream, lamb stock, and vermouth, followed by two pan-fried tortilla pizzas (spaghetti sauce, mountain-of-melted-mozzarella, Portobello mushrooms, scallions, sliced salami).  I regret that I am stuck home with the kids and cannot face Joey Chestnut in a taco battle (per Andres’ e-mail from earlier).  I’m sure I could take Joey, whether it’s a speed or quantity competition.  Unless he’s some sort of freak.  I am still hungry and may partake of a carnitas burrito from Talavera later, pending spousal approval, or might try Celia’s Mexican restaurant, which I’ve eyeballed a few times but never tried.  Anybody have any input on that?

As a sad footnote to my ride, I was hammering home (thirty minutes past my furlough!) and coming down Posen, about thirty seconds from home, when I passed some MAMIL on a fancy-pants cawbun fibuh Trek.  Astonishingly, as I approached him, he started veering quite suddenly to the left, across my path.  I yelled and he just kept coming.  I yelled twice more before he heard me and corrected his line (we were way in the left lane at this point) just before he’d have crashed me.  The complete imbecile was wearing an iPod, and made his bizarre left sweep without bothering to look over his shoulder.  If he had actually crashed me, I’d have beaten him to death in the street.  As it was, I seriously considered beating him to death anyway on principle, but as I said, I was already late getting home.  The brainless shítweasel probably has no idea how close he came to losing his life today.  I take some solace in the fact that, riding as cluelessly as he does, it’s only a matter of time before he will be run over.  I hope his death doesn’t trouble the conscience of whatever driver ends up taking him out.

In summary, Mount Hamilton was a truly glorious ride.  Many thanks to MC Roadmaster for setting it up.

Here is a link to a little photo album of the big ride.

- Dana

My friend Dan came down from Bend, OR to watch a couple Tour of California stages. He and I did some climbs along the Stage 2 route. For the third stage, Craig and Mark joined us as we rode most of the route ahead of the racers.

View Album

- Dana

Mike Ceely and I raced the Mt. San Bruno Hill Climb on Friday. Before I get to the main report, I have a fascinating report to make about something that happened right after the race.

I had crossed the finish line, taken a few minutes to catch my breath, and learned that we couldn’t descend back to our cars until the last rider had finished. I had suffered terribly, breathing like a malfunctioning turbine about to blow out its bearings, my tongue so far out of my mouth I feared it might drag in the spokes. The race had been so hard that one of the only things that kept me going was knowing that, within a few minutes of finishing, the pain would end (whereas most of the rest of American would still be painfully hung over).

Then I thought, hey, speaking of hangovers, where’s Ceely? He hadn’t felt too well after riding to the start (straight from a late party in the City), and had obviously made good on his intention to do this race, uh, ironically, you might say. There were gobs of angry bikers up there (as usual, most categories filled up) so finding Ceely wasn’t an easy task. I couldn’t remember what color his crazy old “Equipe la Merde” jersey was, so I had to scan the whole crowd for him. In the process, I saw this one dude who looked just awful—I mean, beyond totally knackered.

Let me try to describe this guy. He’d climbed off his bike and was sitting on a low stone guardrail, staring blankly into middle distance. To say he was frowning doesn’t cover it. Every part of him was frowning. His mouth had an exaggerated closed-lip crease of a frown, like a toad or Jabba the Hut. His eyes were frowning as though tugged downward at the outer edges. The bags under his eyes were frowning, his eyebrows were frowning, and the creases in his forehead were frowning. Moreover, as he hunched over even his shoulders were frowning. He reminded me of one of those Greek theatre tragedy masks (i.e., Janus Masks) that are usually paired with the smiling comedy mask. Such misery. At first I summed up this dire vision with the word “lugubrious” before deciding that wasn’t enough and creating a new word, “ultralugubrious.” (It’s a testament to my own compromised mental condition that I reflected with delight that ultralugubrious has all the vowels, which of course it doesn’t.)

It was an amazing sight and then, suddenly, I realized, oh my god, that’s Ceely! I’d never seen him look so bad. He looked downright unwell, and I suppose he was. Fortunately, he had filled his bottle with tonic water left over from the party, which was like nectar from the gods for both of us. (I’d not brought a bottle and had been regretting it.) Eventually his color returned a bit and we made our way down the mountain, taking a wrong turn at one point (as you know I’m a hopeless navigator and thus a hopeless follower who would practically trail a drunk driver right off into a ditch).

As we corrected our route we came upon Mark Caldwell (not surprisingly, as he hasn’t missed a bike race since he started out in 1973). Mike greeted him and then, as we rode away, told me, “Yeah, I just saw him at this party a few nights ago.” I replied, “Uh, Mike, I was there too. You and I talked. I guess you don’t remember.” He made the V-8 sign and apologized. Clearly he was still pretty messed up. Fortunately, we had some righteous hot cocoa at the car which helped him out quite a bit.

Okay, now I’ll get to the real story of the race.

On Jan 1 ‘06, famished after that year’s assault on Mt. San Bruno, we hit Denny’s on the way home. This time we figured something a bit more upscale would make a more fitting start to the year. Thus, Erin had made reservations at Skates on the Bay in the Berkeley marina. As I’d hoped, getting there right at opening time meant sitting right next to the giant windows overlooking the bay. Alexa begged me to let her have a window seat, and amazingly Lindsay, sitting at the head of the table, didn’t notice the inequity of this.

After much deliberation, I ordered the bacon cheeseburger because a) the waitress said it was larger than the king crab Benedict, b) the beef was grass-fed and local, and c) hey, bacon cheeseburger! I have to tell you, it was glorious. A half-pound patty, onions, lettuce, tomato, cheddar, lots of perfect, thick, crispy-but-not-hard-and-powdery bacon, and of course grease. My heart, and my blood cholesterol, soared like a hawk.

Ceely had the king crab Benedict, but I didn’t even really get a look at it, so absorbed was I in my burger. I did get a glimpse of his Bloody Mary because it was about a foot tall. Erin had the grilled trout, which I also didn’t take much time investigating, though when I saw something had been scooted to the edge of her plate, silvery like balled-up foil, I assumed it was something unhealthy and snaked it for myself. It was the fish skin: crispy and oily but without scales. In other words, delicious!

Skates has a good kids’ menu. Lindsay had the macaroni and cheese, Alexa the fettuccine Alfredo. They came with sides; we ordered one with asparagus, the other with mashed potatoes. Why do restaurants do this triple-starch business? My kids had already had focaccia (very tasty and buttery, by the way), and then they get pasta and it comes with potatoes. I should have asked for a side of rice and some oyster crackers. Anyway, a few minutes into her meal Lindsay said, “I have to whisper something in your ear.” She whispered that I make better mac ‘n’ cheese than Skates does. Then she whispered it to Erin. I’m so glad she didn’t bark it out loud, since we’d already tried our waitress’s patience by knocking over Lindsay’s chair (my fault) and many times almost tipping over her water glass.

Frankly, it’s true about the mac ‘n’ cheese—it was tossed with cream and spattered with cheese instead of having a proper cheese sauce made from a roux, but I nonetheless enjoyed the sizeable portion I inherited. Then, to further make my day, Alexa lifted some fettuccine onto my plate and said, “Parental tariff.” That I don’t even have to ask makes me think I’m actually raising these kids right. The fettuccine was overcooked, as though the cook assumes children don’t have teeth, but it was creamy and highly edible. The mashed potatoes were rich and famous.

To sum up, racing Mt. San Bruno is a great start to the year if you play your cards right, and even if you don’t. In another couple of years I may make another assault on its lofty summit. In the meantime, here is a link to a little photo album I put together.

- Dana