I've gotten too good at quitting over the past few years, so I decided to check my ego at the hotel and enter this race just to finish. There was no way around finishing. I had to finish this race if I wanted to do the next 2. So I closed my eyes, gulped hard, and let the fast riders take off without ever even trying to catch them.
Mt. Diablo
start: 643' finish: 3553' length: 10 mi
Mt Diablo wasn't a severe climb, and it gave you its elevation slowly. We hit the bottom of the climb in a big clump, and in a big clump we stayed all the way to the top. Despite trying to take it easy at work for a week, four 14-hour workdays had forced themselves on me. Then I made the mistake of doing 8 blocks of rubber band runs, which shot my quads so badly that they were still sore to the touch three days later on race morning. As I was climbing, I already began making excuses for myself. I began to wonder if working this much was really worth it and whether I should quit my job or quit cycling. I was never going to be able to rest again in my life, I decided. In short, I was already feeling terrible and tired.
I found myself riding with one of my SMOFos, who introduced me to another rider (female, and I tried not to care). We chatted our way up the hill, but there were three guys on Steve Rex bikes who were weaving all over the place. I was in my lowest gear pushing that sweet spot in my cadence where I couldn't slow down or speed up comfortably without braking or shifting. I kept trying to edge around these guys, and then they would swoop toward me all of a sudden with a left or right hook. "HEY! WATCH YOUR LINES!" I snapped in spite of myself. Soon, every time I found myself coming up behind these guys I would zip past them as fast as I could and get a few solitary minutes to myself before the clump swallowed me again.
Later the SMOFo said to me, "Yeah, we were commenting on how you were wasting your energy sprinting up Diablo" (he pronounced it 'Die-ab- lo') "like that." Dude, I wasn't sprinting, I just couldn't ride as slow as you guys on the stepper shit in my non-pussy gearing! What inspired this conversation? Well, once we came up the final driveway to the summet, I stood up for the last push to the top. Only 100m from the top suddenly my body rebelled. I had that Oh fuck, I can't hold this anymore! I tried to slow down, I tried to stand up, I tried just sticking it out, but there was just no way around it. Giving up any shred of dignity I had left, I stopped pedaling and stepped off my bike when it stopped rolling. Then I walked the final 50m to the top.
I have not had to walk my bike since I lived in Spain, smoked, and rode a $500 bike in the Pyranees. I've ridden up some of the most famous climbs in France with a 32x28. The only difference was that today I had a 27 in the back rather than a 28. I guess that one little tooth could make a huge difference.
At the top everyone was settling in for a fine breakfast, so once I filled my water bottles I skidaddled in a hurry so that I could take the switchbacks and unguarded drop-offs with the road to myself. Now that I'd turned around I could see that I had been in The Pack. I had seen only no women coming down the hill ahead of me, so I must have left them the rest of the chicks in the crowd at the top. I sailed down the mountain at a leisurely pace, trying to keep my back and neck loose despite the early morning cold and 25mph winds.
Off of Mt Diablo we dipped into the valley and under the tree canopy on one of those narrow back roads where two cars can't pass each other. It was a pretty and gradual 500' climb for about 20 miles, and then suddenly the road started pitching up spastically like someone retching. It was like the road had been feeling nauseous all afternoon and now was finally throwing up. Steep grades in the high teens would throw you up into the sky and then let go for a second, only to upchuck you a little further. Here I began to notice that I was passing a lot of people on the climbs. This made no sense, because I wasn't climbing hard. I just couldn't go as slow as they could. Later, more and more people would comment on how well I was climbing and I wouldn't know what to say because I was climbing as slow as my bike would go. That was how I figured out that everyone who wasn't riding a triple had a 30-tooth cog in the back except me.
By the time I reached the top of Morgan Territory, I was already unraveling a little bit, getting grouchy and upset at myself for even being out here. I dumped my bike on the ground and stomped over to the table and started shoving boiled potatoes into my mouth. There was more salt and rosemary on them than there was potato. It was disgusting. It was delicious. I would have liked to have stuck around shoving more and more food into my face, but the 25 mph winds hadn't died down yet and it was just unpleasant standing around in wind like that, so I got back on the bike to give all that elevation back.
start: 643' finish: 3553' length: 10 mi
Mt Diablo wasn't a severe climb, and it gave you its elevation slowly. We hit the bottom of the climb in a big clump, and in a big clump we stayed all the way to the top. Despite trying to take it easy at work for a week, four 14-hour workdays had forced themselves on me. Then I made the mistake of doing 8 blocks of rubber band runs, which shot my quads so badly that they were still sore to the touch three days later on race morning. As I was climbing, I already began making excuses for myself. I began to wonder if working this much was really worth it and whether I should quit my job or quit cycling. I was never going to be able to rest again in my life, I decided. In short, I was already feeling terrible and tired.I found myself riding with one of my SMOFos, who introduced me to another rider (female, and I tried not to care). We chatted our way up the hill, but there were three guys on Steve Rex bikes who were weaving all over the place. I was in my lowest gear pushing that sweet spot in my cadence where I couldn't slow down or speed up comfortably without braking or shifting. I kept trying to edge around these guys, and then they would swoop toward me all of a sudden with a left or right hook. "HEY! WATCH YOUR LINES!" I snapped in spite of myself. Soon, every time I found myself coming up behind these guys I would zip past them as fast as I could and get a few solitary minutes to myself before the clump swallowed me again.
Later the SMOFo said to me, "Yeah, we were commenting on how you were wasting your energy sprinting up Diablo" (he pronounced it 'Die-ab- lo') "like that." Dude, I wasn't sprinting, I just couldn't ride as slow as you guys on the stepper shit in my non-pussy gearing! What inspired this conversation? Well, once we came up the final driveway to the summet, I stood up for the last push to the top. Only 100m from the top suddenly my body rebelled. I had that Oh fuck, I can't hold this anymore! I tried to slow down, I tried to stand up, I tried just sticking it out, but there was just no way around it. Giving up any shred of dignity I had left, I stopped pedaling and stepped off my bike when it stopped rolling. Then I walked the final 50m to the top.
I have not had to walk my bike since I lived in Spain, smoked, and rode a $500 bike in the Pyranees. I've ridden up some of the most famous climbs in France with a 32x28. The only difference was that today I had a 27 in the back rather than a 28. I guess that one little tooth could make a huge difference.
At the top everyone was settling in for a fine breakfast, so once I filled my water bottles I skidaddled in a hurry so that I could take the switchbacks and unguarded drop-offs with the road to myself. Now that I'd turned around I could see that I had been in The Pack. I had seen only no women coming down the hill ahead of me, so I must have left them the rest of the chicks in the crowd at the top. I sailed down the mountain at a leisurely pace, trying to keep my back and neck loose despite the early morning cold and 25mph winds.
Morgan Territory
starting elevation: 948' summit: 2030' length: 8 mi
starting elevation: 948' summit: 2030' length: 8 mi
Off of Mt Diablo we dipped into the valley and under the tree canopy on one of those narrow back roads where two cars can't pass each other. It was a pretty and gradual 500' climb for about 20 miles, and then suddenly the road started pitching up spastically like someone retching. It was like the road had been feeling nauseous all afternoon and now was finally throwing up. Steep grades in the high teens would throw you up into the sky and then let go for a second, only to upchuck you a little further. Here I began to notice that I was passing a lot of people on the climbs. This made no sense, because I wasn't climbing hard. I just couldn't go as slow as they could. Later, more and more people would comment on how well I was climbing and I wouldn't know what to say because I was climbing as slow as my bike would go. That was how I figured out that everyone who wasn't riding a triple had a 30-tooth cog in the back except me.By the time I reached the top of Morgan Territory, I was already unraveling a little bit, getting grouchy and upset at myself for even being out here. I dumped my bike on the ground and stomped over to the table and started shoving boiled potatoes into my mouth. There was more salt and rosemary on them than there was potato. It was disgusting. It was delicious. I would have liked to have stuck around shoving more and more food into my face, but the 25 mph winds hadn't died down yet and it was just unpleasant standing around in wind like that, so I got back on the bike to give all that elevation back.
Patterson Pass
start: 383' finish: 1381' length: 3.5 mi
I rode through flat and downhill farm land with the wind at my back for a glorious 15 miles, then over a small bump that I don't even remember called Altemont Pass before I reached the bottom of Patterson Pass. Somewhere in this space a group rode by, and I saw one head with a ponytail turn to look at me as they rode by (this head will introduce herself at the end of this story). I knew better than to chase. Today I was not a competitor, I was in it for something else. I just didn't know what that was yet. And anyway, there was something disheartening about riding through wind farms, even if the wind was at my back for the moment.
Right at the bottom of the climb I found myself surrounded again by a clump of SMOFos. I remember that they were there because when I heard the "clang, clang" of something and said, "What the fuck was that?!" no one answered me and I remember thinking that was kind of rude. I kept riding as the hill got steeper and steeper with every step.
I don't know what made it come into my head, but I thought, What will I do if I broke a spoke? I'd never broken a spoke before. That was something that only happened to fat guys who tried to ride low-spoke wheels (yeah, like those spokes are really making a difference when you've got the frontal surface area of an aircraft carrier!). Well just call me Clyde(sdale), because when I heaved up the last 20% grade ("Oh my gawd hill" was spray painted on the pavement) into the aid station at the top and checked my bike, sure enough there was a spoke missing from my rear wheel.
"How bad is it to ride without a spoke?" I asked one of the aid station volunteers. He did that thing that I do when I don't want to admit that I don't know the answer where I pretend like I'm looking into the matter until I'm pretty sure that you're not paying attention anymore and then just go back to what I was doing. Okay, fine! I spun the wheel, and the brake was rubbing with each revolution. I loosened up the brake pads so it wasn't rubbing anymore, but if it had already gotten this out of true in a few miles, then what would happen after another 125 mi?
I didn't know what to do about the situation, so I went to pee instead. This was one of those bald California hillsides that remind me of the old Windows desktop, with absolutely no cover. "Do you have any facilities for the ladies?" I asked one of the female volunteers. She pointed to one of those electrical box things across the street. To crouch behind it, I had to climb over a rotting wooden fence and through some rusty barbed wire to pee in plain view anyway. When I got back to my bike I decided I would figure out what to do with the spoke while I was on the road. You couldn't ride for more than half an hour without seeing a sag wagon anyway.
And sure enough, not 10 minutes later as I had fallen in next to some middle-aged lady (who I didn't think should have been strong enough to ride with me if I hadn't spent so long at the rest stop), I interrupted her to wave down a truck with half a dozen wheels on the roof. He said he would pull over at the next turn-out, and I dropped the old lady (who had lower gears than I did) to roll to the top of the hill for my wheel switch.
The car had RAAM stickers on it, and the guy who popped out looked like a skinny Santa Claus, and I couldn't believe my luck. I must have flagged down the Sheldon Brown of the west! "What kind derailleur do you have?" Sheldon asked.
"I've got 105 on right now," I said, feeling poor and wishing I could say at least Ultegra.
"Great! I've got a 105 wheel right here!" he said, trying to pull my wheel off without flipping the bike over. I could tell by the way that he wasn't pulling the derailleur out of the way to get the cassette free of the chain that this guy was no Sheldon Brown. So much for my hopes of a quick switch-out.
"Look, why don't we just flip it over?" I said, pulling the wheel free. We counted the gears on the new wheel and thank goodness it was a 10-speed. He had more trouble getting the new wheel in than he had getting the old wheel out, so I asked if I could try. As the only employee of Valencia Cyclery who was asked not to build bikes, my mechanical ineptitude is hard to beat, but here he was showing me up.
The skewer was screwed all the way down, so I had to loosen it to get it into the dropouts and then Sheldon started trying to get his hands in there again. "No, it's not in yet! You can't tighten it down yet!"
"I'm loosening it," I said. It finally fell into the dropouts.
"Is it in yet?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
"I don't think it is."
I looked closer. "No, really. It's in there."
"It doesn't look like it." I sighed. This wheel was 100% seated in its dropouts, but I let him come around and put his big face next to the wheel. He was saving my ass after all. "Oh, I guess it is." Only then did he let me tighten it down.
"Do you have a pump?" I asked. The wheel felt like the tire pressure was about 60.
"Oh, right, right! A pump." The scene was more comical than anything, and I'm not so cold-hearted as to be bitter about the 5 minutes I lost when I could have had to drop out altogether. Sheldon put a piece of tape on my wheel with my number on it and handed me a business card, telling me that he would forward my wheel on to the finish.
Once I had a new wheel, something in my mind switched on. I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I had had a good reason to drop out, and fate had intervened to make me keep going. I don't know what changed, but suddenly I made the mental shift from trying to have a perfect race to being willing to push through whatever the day threw at me. Which was good, because what I hadn't discovered yet was that the wheel that Sheldon had given me only came with a 25-tooth cog in the back, and I still had about 10,000' to climb.
The warm-up was over.
After the final rest area was the first time I actually allowed myself to think about finishing this ride, as in being done with it and life going on. Now it felt like the end would never, ever come. That moment when I got to get off my bike would never happen. I'd died and gone to hell and this was it, just one long climb after another. I really couldn't imagine this ride ever stopping, no matter how I tried to get my head around it. Once again, I thought I would cry as soon as I finished this damned thing.
By the time I finally rolled into the hotel 16.5 hours after leaving it, all I wanted was a shower and to curl up in my bed and never move again. I rolled around the parking lot for awhile looking for where the finish was, then I tottered into the banquet hall, gave them my number, and tried to find my way to a seat. A volunteer swooped in, plopped me in a chair, and told me she'd bring me everything. "You want water? You want the cheese or the meat lasagna? What kind of dressing do you like?" she asked. Wow, they really do a good job taking care of the riders on this ride, I thought. I had to hand them that. I would have to include it in my statement when I called the cops, maybe The Law would be lenient. Then I looked around. The other riders were in line for the food; no one else was being waited on. Then it dawned on me, I must really look bad.
Once I'd eaten 2 helpings of lasagna, I tottered back over to my bike to pull off the borrowed wheel. I crouched down and counted the teeth on the biggest gear. ...22, 23, 24... motherfuckingsonofabitch! Yep, just as I'd told everyone but been too scared to check and make sure just in case it wasn't true. The climbing gear was only a 25. Flatlander gearing. Fuck me sideways.
I handed off the wheel and stumbled back toward the door. The ponytailed woman (one of several who had beat me to the hotel) came up to me. She introduced herself and was all smiles and salt on her face. "Hi, I'm [whatever]." Why is this woman talking to me?! I grumbled to myself as I told her where I was from, how the hills had been nothing like I'd ever seen before, and who I rode with. "Listen," she said. "I've got a hotel room here. You're welcome to stay the night so that you don't have to drive home." Oh, so that's what it is. I must look really bad. But there's nothing more humiliating than accepting something that you really need from a complete stranger who's offering it to you.
"No thank you, but I appreciate the offer. I've got things to do in the morning!" I told her.
Reading this race report you may think that I'm bitter about my bike giving out under me and ruining my race. Actually, I'm glad it happened. Sure, it took me a long time and I felt like hell, but I forced myself to push through despite things not going my way. And not only can I blame any disappointments on the gearing, I also know that I was tough enough to finish on gearing that no one else was dumb enough to try. I'm grateful for the deposit in the confidence bank. I hope there will be less quitting in my future.
Looking at the preliminary results, it looks like she may have won (although they didn't separate out men and women, so it's hard to tell). Hmmmmmmm... Can I make up an hour over the next 400 miles? Nice Lady from Santa Rosa: I've got you in my crosshairs! Just you wait till I get my bike right!
start: 383' finish: 1381' length: 3.5 mi
I rode through flat and downhill farm land with the wind at my back for a glorious 15 miles, then over a small bump that I don't even remember called Altemont Pass before I reached the bottom of Patterson Pass. Somewhere in this space a group rode by, and I saw one head with a ponytail turn to look at me as they rode by (this head will introduce herself at the end of this story). I knew better than to chase. Today I was not a competitor, I was in it for something else. I just didn't know what that was yet. And anyway, there was something disheartening about riding through wind farms, even if the wind was at my back for the moment.
Right at the bottom of the climb I found myself surrounded again by a clump of SMOFos. I remember that they were there because when I heard the "clang, clang" of something and said, "What the fuck was that?!" no one answered me and I remember thinking that was kind of rude. I kept riding as the hill got steeper and steeper with every step.
I don't know what made it come into my head, but I thought, What will I do if I broke a spoke? I'd never broken a spoke before. That was something that only happened to fat guys who tried to ride low-spoke wheels (yeah, like those spokes are really making a difference when you've got the frontal surface area of an aircraft carrier!). Well just call me Clyde(sdale), because when I heaved up the last 20% grade ("Oh my gawd hill" was spray painted on the pavement) into the aid station at the top and checked my bike, sure enough there was a spoke missing from my rear wheel."How bad is it to ride without a spoke?" I asked one of the aid station volunteers. He did that thing that I do when I don't want to admit that I don't know the answer where I pretend like I'm looking into the matter until I'm pretty sure that you're not paying attention anymore and then just go back to what I was doing. Okay, fine! I spun the wheel, and the brake was rubbing with each revolution. I loosened up the brake pads so it wasn't rubbing anymore, but if it had already gotten this out of true in a few miles, then what would happen after another 125 mi?
I didn't know what to do about the situation, so I went to pee instead. This was one of those bald California hillsides that remind me of the old Windows desktop, with absolutely no cover. "Do you have any facilities for the ladies?" I asked one of the female volunteers. She pointed to one of those electrical box things across the street. To crouch behind it, I had to climb over a rotting wooden fence and through some rusty barbed wire to pee in plain view anyway. When I got back to my bike I decided I would figure out what to do with the spoke while I was on the road. You couldn't ride for more than half an hour without seeing a sag wagon anyway.And sure enough, not 10 minutes later as I had fallen in next to some middle-aged lady (who I didn't think should have been strong enough to ride with me if I hadn't spent so long at the rest stop), I interrupted her to wave down a truck with half a dozen wheels on the roof. He said he would pull over at the next turn-out, and I dropped the old lady (who had lower gears than I did) to roll to the top of the hill for my wheel switch.
The car had RAAM stickers on it, and the guy who popped out looked like a skinny Santa Claus, and I couldn't believe my luck. I must have flagged down the Sheldon Brown of the west! "What kind derailleur do you have?" Sheldon asked.
"I've got 105 on right now," I said, feeling poor and wishing I could say at least Ultegra.
"Great! I've got a 105 wheel right here!" he said, trying to pull my wheel off without flipping the bike over. I could tell by the way that he wasn't pulling the derailleur out of the way to get the cassette free of the chain that this guy was no Sheldon Brown. So much for my hopes of a quick switch-out.
"Look, why don't we just flip it over?" I said, pulling the wheel free. We counted the gears on the new wheel and thank goodness it was a 10-speed. He had more trouble getting the new wheel in than he had getting the old wheel out, so I asked if I could try. As the only employee of Valencia Cyclery who was asked not to build bikes, my mechanical ineptitude is hard to beat, but here he was showing me up.
The skewer was screwed all the way down, so I had to loosen it to get it into the dropouts and then Sheldon started trying to get his hands in there again. "No, it's not in yet! You can't tighten it down yet!"
"I'm loosening it," I said. It finally fell into the dropouts."Is it in yet?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
"I don't think it is."
I looked closer. "No, really. It's in there."
"It doesn't look like it." I sighed. This wheel was 100% seated in its dropouts, but I let him come around and put his big face next to the wheel. He was saving my ass after all. "Oh, I guess it is." Only then did he let me tighten it down.
"Do you have a pump?" I asked. The wheel felt like the tire pressure was about 60.
"Oh, right, right! A pump." The scene was more comical than anything, and I'm not so cold-hearted as to be bitter about the 5 minutes I lost when I could have had to drop out altogether. Sheldon put a piece of tape on my wheel with my number on it and handed me a business card, telling me that he would forward my wheel on to the finish.
Once I had a new wheel, something in my mind switched on. I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I had had a good reason to drop out, and fate had intervened to make me keep going. I don't know what changed, but suddenly I made the mental shift from trying to have a perfect race to being willing to push through whatever the day threw at me. Which was good, because what I hadn't discovered yet was that the wheel that Sheldon had given me only came with a 25-tooth cog in the back, and I still had about 10,000' to climb.
The warm-up was over.
Mines Road
start: 600' finish: 2788 length: 20
Off Patterson Pass there was a long, fast climb called "the plunge" which I took with my rear brake caliper open (because half cocked and under prepared is how I roll). Before long I found myself alone at the bottom of a long, winding climb that reminded me of a climb that Shane and I had done in Provence. It was gentle and twisted civilly up the side of a hill with nothing but low trees and nature everywhere. I easily passed another chick on the climb and wondered how it was that I hadn't passed her before, since I felt like I was climbing easily in my easiest gear.
Then the grade eased off even more, and I was climbing through trees alongside a river. I kept checking the river thinking that I was riding downhill, but the river was flowing in the other direction. This is what cycling was supposed to feel like. Which is not to say that I wasn't tired, just that I was glad for the flat road (something that I hadn't seen all day). In fact I was still waiting around every corner for a downhill and some free miles, but if I was going to have to ride my bike then this was what I wanted to ride on.
On this climb I caught up with another rider; a heavy guy with an underbite that made him look like a Cretan. Once I started talking to him and he told me his story, I changed my mind about the guy. He wound up being the only other rider I would spend a significant portion of time with all day.
Here's his story: Back in the day, he'd been your typical really fat guy who never got off the couch. But the reason that he never got off the couch was because for a year he was paralyzed with MS. And he was depressed, because when you've got MS you've got a lot going against you. Once he began to recover a little bit, he still used to stay up late on the couch hating himself until one night he saw an infomercial for a motivational speaker. The unnamed speaker said that he should write down all the things he didn't like about himself on a piece of paper. He did it, identifying what he could change (being a fatass) and what he couldn't (the MS). Then he bought a bike from Toys R Us and he rode the same trail every day until the thing fell apart underneath him. Then he replaced it with a nicer bike and started riding the a different, longer trail every day. Then the bike shop guy put him on a road bike and he never looked back.
The MS still left him with some cognitive and neuromuscular problems, but he'd gone back to school to become a shrink and a nutritionist, and he'd done this race every year for the past X years. One year he crashed on the descent off Mt Hamilton (coming up) and cracked a few ribs. His legs were "all jacked up" too, so he'd had to walk up Sierra Road (still to come). And yet he'd still finished at about 2 am. "I just don't like to quit because of some of the stuff I've been through--the MS and all," he said.
I had a long while to chew on that. I had been too good at quitting when the going got tough because I wasn't challenged by "just finishing" anymore and didn't know where else to go in my head to find the motivation to push through. I hated myself for it. How much more could I have accomplished in the past few years if I hadn't quit when things weren't going my way? I could think of half a dozen bike rides just this year that would have put me in better shape to finish this very ride that I was on, had I stuck with them.
At the lunch stop, my gentle Cretan friend (let's call him) Ralph stayed to eat a sandwich. I walked around shoveling whatever I could find into my mouth for a minute. I ate the most delicious slice of Costco cheese that had been sitting in the sun all day that there ever was, and then I set off without Ralph so that my legs wouldn't freeze up waiting for him.
Mt Hamilton
start: 2066' finish: 4160' length: 6 mi
It was the hottest part of the day when I hit the final 5-mile push up Mt. Hamilton. The number of miles to the summit had been painted on the road for the past 40 miles or more, and now with 6 miles to go the road finally started climbing in earnest. Up I went, pushing my pedals over slowly and moving at about 4 mph. I couldn't remember a time that I'd ever climbed below 6 mph, and yet my bike stayed upright and I was passing other riders who were weaving all over the road in order to cut the grade. They were moving so slow, that I could see the individual spokes on their bikes from 50 yards away.
I passed yet another guy who cheered for me and told me that I was climbing really well. "I'm in the last gear that I got," I explained for the millionth time. "I've got nowhere else to go, I'm stuck with this pace for better or for worse." We were on the non-windy side of the hill and I felt like I was just straining to push more and more sweat out of my pores while my bike was going nowhere. I was moving so slowly that the flies came and buzzed around my head and I couldn't get away from them. So not only was I riding slowly, but I was twitching like a mad person. One of them bit me through my shorts and I've been scratching my right ass cheek all week. My hands were too sweaty to grip the handlebars when I was standing up (I frequently ride without gloves), so I was stuck sitting. And there I sat for about an hour as I wound my way up Hamilton.
I'd heard that the road levels off in the last mile into a few rollers, but when I reached the 1 mile to go mark the road was at the steepest yet and would stay there for another half mile. I stuck with it for a few minutes and finally got off my bike. I hate it when people lie to me about what I'm in for. I'd been pushing the pedals around at about 50 rpm for an hour and my quads just couldn't take the strain anymore. With but one (or maybe two) walking breaks, I got to the top and mounted my bike again. Then I rode down, down, down glad that I wouldn't freeze my ass off on the 10 mile descent.
Sierra Rd
start: 209' finish: 1945' distance: 3 mi
Sierra Road was the last significant climb if the day. When the 10 free miles off of Hamilton were up, I found myself back near sea level, back in the stifling, dry San Jose heat and facing a wall. Everyone had warned me that Sierra road was a bitch, but this? This was cruel. There had to be another way over this ridge that wasn't this steep! The road would pitch up to a 20% grade for a few hundred yards and then flatten out to a more manageable 5% or so for a few hundred yards before getting even steeper. The first time I walked my bike, a woman riding down in the other direction said, "It gets better after this!" It had better, I can't imagine cars getting up roads that were any steeper! But it didn't get better. Time and time again I had to get off and walk. What the hell was wrong with me? To say that I felt like a failure is an understatement. I just couldn't understand what my body was doing to me.
Finally I reached the top, and some lady came out from behind a car to snap my picture. "You did it!" she said.
"Yeah, well you're not going to get a smile out of me," I said, suppressing a smile. I felt like I deserved every inch of that descent off of Sierra Rd. I had about 40 miles to go and the world owed it to me to be downhill for the rest of the way. Now it was time to face a fact that I'd been ignoring all day because I didn't want it to be true: the course wasn't 200 miles, it was actually 205. Fuckers.
Palomares Rd
start: 252' finish: 1194' distance: 2 mi
The End
When I came down off of Palomares, I had about 7 miles and one small climb to go. When I'd first gotten on my bike this morning I'd had a nascent saddle sore that now made it hard to sit on my saddle at all. The athlete's foot that I can't seem to get rid of on my left foot made my pinkie toe feel like it was the size of my head and both my big toes felt like I was pushing on raw bone inside my shoes. My low back was alright, but my upper back was sore from the bottom of my rib cage to my shoulders from pulling on my handlebars. My lungs and intercostal muscles were even sore from pulling so much air so hard into my lungs on the steeper climbs as I rode at my maximum effort. And still, they had tacked on these last fucking 5 miles so that we could go over one more fucking hill (this one really was 400 feet) just so that we could reach a round 20,000 ft. It was cruel.
start: 600' finish: 2788 length: 20Then the grade eased off even more, and I was climbing through trees alongside a river. I kept checking the river thinking that I was riding downhill, but the river was flowing in the other direction. This is what cycling was supposed to feel like. Which is not to say that I wasn't tired, just that I was glad for the flat road (something that I hadn't seen all day). In fact I was still waiting around every corner for a downhill and some free miles, but if I was going to have to ride my bike then this was what I wanted to ride on.On this climb I caught up with another rider; a heavy guy with an underbite that made him look like a Cretan. Once I started talking to him and he told me his story, I changed my mind about the guy. He wound up being the only other rider I would spend a significant portion of time with all day.
Here's his story: Back in the day, he'd been your typical really fat guy who never got off the couch. But the reason that he never got off the couch was because for a year he was paralyzed with MS. And he was depressed, because when you've got MS you've got a lot going against you. Once he began to recover a little bit, he still used to stay up late on the couch hating himself until one night he saw an infomercial for a motivational speaker. The unnamed speaker said that he should write down all the things he didn't like about himself on a piece of paper. He did it, identifying what he could change (being a fatass) and what he couldn't (the MS). Then he bought a bike from Toys R Us and he rode the same trail every day until the thing fell apart underneath him. Then he replaced it with a nicer bike and started riding the a different, longer trail every day. Then the bike shop guy put him on a road bike and he never looked back.
The MS still left him with some cognitive and neuromuscular problems, but he'd gone back to school to become a shrink and a nutritionist, and he'd done this race every year for the past X years. One year he crashed on the descent off Mt Hamilton (coming up) and cracked a few ribs. His legs were "all jacked up" too, so he'd had to walk up Sierra Road (still to come). And yet he'd still finished at about 2 am. "I just don't like to quit because of some of the stuff I've been through--the MS and all," he said.
I had a long while to chew on that. I had been too good at quitting when the going got tough because I wasn't challenged by "just finishing" anymore and didn't know where else to go in my head to find the motivation to push through. I hated myself for it. How much more could I have accomplished in the past few years if I hadn't quit when things weren't going my way? I could think of half a dozen bike rides just this year that would have put me in better shape to finish this very ride that I was on, had I stuck with them.
At the lunch stop, my gentle Cretan friend (let's call him) Ralph stayed to eat a sandwich. I walked around shoveling whatever I could find into my mouth for a minute. I ate the most delicious slice of Costco cheese that had been sitting in the sun all day that there ever was, and then I set off without Ralph so that my legs wouldn't freeze up waiting for him.
Mt Hamilton
start: 2066' finish: 4160' length: 6 miIt was the hottest part of the day when I hit the final 5-mile push up Mt. Hamilton. The number of miles to the summit had been painted on the road for the past 40 miles or more, and now with 6 miles to go the road finally started climbing in earnest. Up I went, pushing my pedals over slowly and moving at about 4 mph. I couldn't remember a time that I'd ever climbed below 6 mph, and yet my bike stayed upright and I was passing other riders who were weaving all over the road in order to cut the grade. They were moving so slow, that I could see the individual spokes on their bikes from 50 yards away.I passed yet another guy who cheered for me and told me that I was climbing really well. "I'm in the last gear that I got," I explained for the millionth time. "I've got nowhere else to go, I'm stuck with this pace for better or for worse." We were on the non-windy side of the hill and I felt like I was just straining to push more and more sweat out of my pores while my bike was going nowhere. I was moving so slowly that the flies came and buzzed around my head and I couldn't get away from them. So not only was I riding slowly, but I was twitching like a mad person. One of them bit me through my shorts and I've been scratching my right ass cheek all week. My hands were too sweaty to grip the handlebars when I was standing up (I frequently ride without gloves), so I was stuck sitting. And there I sat for about an hour as I wound my way up Hamilton.
start: 209' finish: 1945' distance: 3 miSierra Road was the last significant climb if the day. When the 10 free miles off of Hamilton were up, I found myself back near sea level, back in the stifling, dry San Jose heat and facing a wall. Everyone had warned me that Sierra road was a bitch, but this? This was cruel. There had to be another way over this ridge that wasn't this steep! The road would pitch up to a 20% grade for a few hundred yards and then flatten out to a more manageable 5% or so for a few hundred yards before getting even steeper. The first time I walked my bike, a woman riding down in the other direction said, "It gets better after this!" It had better, I can't imagine cars getting up roads that were any steeper! But it didn't get better. Time and time again I had to get off and walk. What the hell was wrong with me? To say that I felt like a failure is an understatement. I just couldn't understand what my body was doing to me.Finally I reached the top, and some lady came out from behind a car to snap my picture. "You did it!" she said.
"Yeah, well you're not going to get a smile out of me," I said, suppressing a smile. I felt like I deserved every inch of that descent off of Sierra Rd. I had about 40 miles to go and the world owed it to me to be downhill for the rest of the way. Now it was time to face a fact that I'd been ignoring all day because I didn't want it to be true: the course wasn't 200 miles, it was actually 205. Fuckers.
Palomares Rd
start: 252' finish: 1194' distance: 2 miI got to the final aid station at mile 180 just as the sun was starting to set. "Congratulations! Only 25 miles to go and only two more climbs!" the aid station volunteer said.
"What do you mean 2 more climbs?" I said slowly in a very serious and very stern voice. I may have sounded drunk, my mouth wasn't working right at that point.
"Oh, they're nothing compared to what you've already done," he said cheerfully.
"How tall are they?"
"If you did Mt. Hamilton, you can do these."
"How tall are they?!" I asked.
"Aw, you'll get up it no problem," he chirped.
"WHY WON'T YOU FUCKING ANSWER ME?!" I screamed, hoping he would think I was kidding even though I really wasn't.
"400 feet," he said and walked away.
400 feet. Okay, I can do 400 feet, I told myself. That's just 100 feet taller than Johnson Rd at home. That's 100 feet less than Sharp Park which I do my hill reps on. That's a 10 minute climb. I can do 400 ft.
As I started climbing up Palomares Road, the sun set for real. By the time I was half way up, it was pitch black and all I could see was the lights of riders in front of me and the reflectors in the road going higher and higher and higher up ahead. I had no reference points to go on, and I felt like I was making no progress. The road just kept getting steeper, pitching up in the higher and higher teens around every corner. All I could hear were frogs and some farm animal screaming. As I was finally nearing the top another rider came up next to me. "How are you doing?" he asked.
"They lied to me!" I sobbed. I'd been crying by myself in the dark for the last few minutes and now I was sobbing so hard I could barely breathe. "They told me that this climb was 400 feet. Why would they lie to me like that?!" I was serious. I'd been thinking about one of my coworker's clients who had done a strongman competition and pushed herself so hard that she started crying and said, 'Call the police!' before collapsing into her trainer's arms. There was no way that pushing someone this hard was legal.
"What do you mean 2 more climbs?" I said slowly in a very serious and very stern voice. I may have sounded drunk, my mouth wasn't working right at that point.
"Oh, they're nothing compared to what you've already done," he said cheerfully.
"How tall are they?"
"If you did Mt. Hamilton, you can do these."
"How tall are they?!" I asked.
"Aw, you'll get up it no problem," he chirped.
"WHY WON'T YOU FUCKING ANSWER ME?!" I screamed, hoping he would think I was kidding even though I really wasn't.
"400 feet," he said and walked away.
400 feet. Okay, I can do 400 feet, I told myself. That's just 100 feet taller than Johnson Rd at home. That's 100 feet less than Sharp Park which I do my hill reps on. That's a 10 minute climb. I can do 400 ft.
As I started climbing up Palomares Road, the sun set for real. By the time I was half way up, it was pitch black and all I could see was the lights of riders in front of me and the reflectors in the road going higher and higher and higher up ahead. I had no reference points to go on, and I felt like I was making no progress. The road just kept getting steeper, pitching up in the higher and higher teens around every corner. All I could hear were frogs and some farm animal screaming. As I was finally nearing the top another rider came up next to me. "How are you doing?" he asked.
"They lied to me!" I sobbed. I'd been crying by myself in the dark for the last few minutes and now I was sobbing so hard I could barely breathe. "They told me that this climb was 400 feet. Why would they lie to me like that?!" I was serious. I'd been thinking about one of my coworker's clients who had done a strongman competition and pushed herself so hard that she started crying and said, 'Call the police!' before collapsing into her trainer's arms. There was no way that pushing someone this hard was legal.After the final rest area was the first time I actually allowed myself to think about finishing this ride, as in being done with it and life going on. Now it felt like the end would never, ever come. That moment when I got to get off my bike would never happen. I'd died and gone to hell and this was it, just one long climb after another. I really couldn't imagine this ride ever stopping, no matter how I tried to get my head around it. Once again, I thought I would cry as soon as I finished this damned thing.
By the time I finally rolled into the hotel 16.5 hours after leaving it, all I wanted was a shower and to curl up in my bed and never move again. I rolled around the parking lot for awhile looking for where the finish was, then I tottered into the banquet hall, gave them my number, and tried to find my way to a seat. A volunteer swooped in, plopped me in a chair, and told me she'd bring me everything. "You want water? You want the cheese or the meat lasagna? What kind of dressing do you like?" she asked. Wow, they really do a good job taking care of the riders on this ride, I thought. I had to hand them that. I would have to include it in my statement when I called the cops, maybe The Law would be lenient. Then I looked around. The other riders were in line for the food; no one else was being waited on. Then it dawned on me, I must really look bad.
Once I'd eaten 2 helpings of lasagna, I tottered back over to my bike to pull off the borrowed wheel. I crouched down and counted the teeth on the biggest gear. ...22, 23, 24... motherfuckingsonofabitch! Yep, just as I'd told everyone but been too scared to check and make sure just in case it wasn't true. The climbing gear was only a 25. Flatlander gearing. Fuck me sideways.
I handed off the wheel and stumbled back toward the door. The ponytailed woman (one of several who had beat me to the hotel) came up to me. She introduced herself and was all smiles and salt on her face. "Hi, I'm [whatever]." Why is this woman talking to me?! I grumbled to myself as I told her where I was from, how the hills had been nothing like I'd ever seen before, and who I rode with. "Listen," she said. "I've got a hotel room here. You're welcome to stay the night so that you don't have to drive home." Oh, so that's what it is. I must look really bad. But there's nothing more humiliating than accepting something that you really need from a complete stranger who's offering it to you.
"No thank you, but I appreciate the offer. I've got things to do in the morning!" I told her.
Reading this race report you may think that I'm bitter about my bike giving out under me and ruining my race. Actually, I'm glad it happened. Sure, it took me a long time and I felt like hell, but I forced myself to push through despite things not going my way. And not only can I blame any disappointments on the gearing, I also know that I was tough enough to finish on gearing that no one else was dumb enough to try. I'm grateful for the deposit in the confidence bank. I hope there will be less quitting in my future.
Looking at the preliminary results, it looks like she may have won (although they didn't separate out men and women, so it's hard to tell). Hmmmmmmm... Can I make up an hour over the next 400 miles? Nice Lady from Santa Rosa: I've got you in my crosshairs! Just you wait till I get my bike right!
