I Left My Light in San Rafael: Mt. Tam Double Century Ride Report

Vital statistics:
*200 miles
*18,000 vertical feet
*13,000 calories burned
*Total time: 13 hours, 30 minutes
*Interval between sight/smell of decaying roadkill throughout ride: 10 miles

3:30AM is early to wake up for anything. I tried hard to get to bed early, but still only managed about 5.5 hours before the alarm went off. Quick breakfast, out the door, breezed through registration and I was standing at the start line at 5AM for the Mt. Tam Double Century- 200 miles through some of my favorite roads anywhere.

I had heard that lights were mandatory so I had that on my handlebars. My Garmin Edge computer also runs through its battery in about 5 hours so I had a AA battery pack in my saddlebag as well with a cord running to the USB port on the computer. It marked the first time I have had a USB cable on my bike- not a milestone that thrilled me, but so be it.

We rolled out in the dark and were off. The opening miles rolled by and then we were on the Fairfax Bolinas Road. I found myself in the front group and felt comfortable, so I stayed with it. We got to the top and turned onto Ridgecrest. There is a gate at the top that opens at sunrise and I was pleasantly surprised to see it open, since we were pretty close to sunrise when we hit it.

This thought turned out prophetic, as the gate was closed at the other end of the road. When I got there one of the sag vehicles was stopped and a volunteer was on the phone with a note of urgency in his voice as he explained the situation. Meanwhile, rider after rider squeezed through a small opening in the gate and rode on.

Shortly after a quick stop at the mile 43 aid station to drop my light with the volunteers, I realized it had been several hours since my last actual meal and I was starting to feel hungry. I made it to the next aid station at mile 83 and scarfed a bunch of food. This is where my troubles started.

I got on my bike to see 2 of the others in my group riding away about 30 seconds ahead. I chased hard for about 5 miles and got close, then the two joined up with 3 more from the group I had ridden with earlier. More chasing, but the gap steadily opened and I gave up after about 10 miles. A mile later I hit the bottom of a big hill spent from the hard effort, and still with a full stomach. I never really recovered from there.

The rest of the ride was basically solo and uneventful. Coleman Valley Road was very hard. The aid stations got more and more difficult to leave. At mile 120 I was ready to be done; the last 50 miles were a death march with sore knees.

This marked my first double since 2004. I had a goal in my calendar to complete three this year, and the plan was nearly derailed when a back injury took me off the bike for two months in April and May. I have ridden once over 60 miles since March and I definitely felt the shortage of base fitness. Still, it’s one down and two to go. Next time around I’ll definitely treat it as base training and consciously keep my HR down. The next one is in late September, followed by Death Valley in October. After that, I’ll have a great base going into next season, and then I think I’ll be done with this fetish.

Oh, and after leaving my light at the aid station, I got to the finish too addled to remember to pick it up. Fortunately I put my phone number on the bag- I hope I get it back!

45 Years on a 3-Speed

A teammate recently turned me on to this amazing story of a German guy who started riding his bicycle around the world in 1962 and never got around to stopping. The article is five years old, but assuming he is still at it he will have been riding continually- as in no home- for 45 years!

Plenty of people (myself included) have thought about dropping everything and setting off around the world, but I wonder what kind of personality is required not just to do it, but to keep at it permanently. I know I would not enjoy the loneliness and lack of long-term relationships- at least in any conventional sense.

Some interesting highlights of the trip:

*He’s done the entire trip on the same three-speed coaster brake bicycle

*He’s lived on an average of $0.50 per day (I think this what the article says), supporting himself selling slides and postcard notebooks. $20,000 earned in Japan in 1971 lasted him 6 years!

‘Round the Bay in a Day Powered by Gmaps

I’ve had a lunatic idea for some time to ride around San Francisco Bay in a single day, hitting the three highest points on the Bay (Mts. Tam, Diablo and Hamilton) in the process.

It’s a 250 mile day near as I can guess, so it’s a major undertaking for sure. I don’t know exactly what about it seems fun. I guess is sounds like a really hard, but doable challenge. I know I can ride the distance, so it’s just a question of managing the logistics.

On that note, I love Google Maps’ new draggable routes- if you don’t like a certain road you can drag the route line to a different one and it’ll give you a new set of directions. I’ve wanted that feature forever to help with driving routes that avoid Highway 101, but it seems perfect for helping me figure out my exact route around the bay as well. Cool stuff.

Great Weekend Adventures

Two beautiful June days in San Francisco with no trace of fog are reason enough to celebrate. Even better were the ways I took advantage.

Saturday was a long ride with my Roaring Mouse team. It’s a fantastic group of people and putting in 60 miles with them on a nice summer day was really a pleasure. I’m slowly getting back into shape after a back injury in April and I was a little frustrated to be in the caboose on the climbs, but I’ll get back up there with a bit more time in the saddle.

Sunday was a Daddy adventure. I hooked up our Burley trailer behind the trail-a-bike, which connected to my bike. It makes for a long, wobbly train of a vehicle, but we found some quiet roads and headed out to Land’s End.

There’s a labyrinth out there hidden on a bluff above Mile Rock Beach. It’s a gorgeous location sticking right out into the Golden Gate. Best is that apart from a few apartment buildings in the Presidio, there isn’t a single residence in sight. You barely know you’re still in San Francisco.

The kids were wiped out from the 10 mile round trip bike ride, the 1-point-something mile hike from the trailhead to the labyrinth and especially the 297 railroad tie steps on the way back to the bike, but that’s good for them. I love finding new things to check out, getting off paved surfaces and making the round trip without burning any gas, so the whole enterprise was a big success.

How Two Nuns Bore Witness to the Loss of My Descending Skills, and How I Gradually Got Them Back

Generally I rate my descending skills in any kind of vehicle as piss-poor, if not worse. I attribute this mostly to one bad crash I had many years ago. I was coming down a steep road not far from my house in dry conditions when I hit a slick patch. I don’t remember anything about the crash, so I can only speculate based on what the nuns told me when I came to in the back of their car on the way to the hospital.

You may not have had the experience of waking up in the back of a car being driven by nuns, so you will have to take my word for it that it is quite disorienting. Actually, waking up in the back of any car would be disorienting under the circumstances; the fact that it was being driven by nuns made it somehow both extra-surreal and entirely fitting.

In any case, I remember sitting in the back of the car, everything slowly coming into focus both in my vision and my memory. I remember thinking “who am I and what am I doing here”, then slowly remembering who I was and gradually realizing what had happened. The nuns explained that they found me wandering in the road and helped me (and my bike) into their car. I had clearly hit my head pretty hard- I must have been conscious for several minutes, but in some kind of shock/concussion state. Freaky.

Since that day, I have been very careful about descending in any kind of vehicle- bike, car, etc. Especially if I see water in the road I slow way down. I read a story- I think it was Frankie Andreu talking about the Tour de France where he recalled being off the back and at risk of elimination on a bad day in the Alps. Fortunately Sean Yates was with him, and when they got to the top pointed to his back wheel and said to Frankie “stay there”, before using every millimeter of roadway getting to the bottom inside the time limit. I always think of myself as the guy hanging terrified onto Sean’s back wheel on the way down the mountain.

At the same time, I end up riding the same roads week after week, and living in the Bay Area most rides are more a question of “hilly or really hilly” than “hills or no”. What I have realized is that years of practice doing the same thing over and over can actually have some benefits! In particular, Camino Alto in Mill Valley is a road that I end up going over on about 50% of my rides. My completely wild guess is that I have ridden it several hundred times.

In the direction I usually go, it is a gradual, slightly winding climb up, followed by a shorter, steeper set of hairpin turns on the way down. On a good day I don’t even need to hit the brakes at all going down the hairpins. Even on a bad day I just feather a bit going into the corners, then hold a steady line through.

I really didn’t even think about trying to ride it no-brakes. One day I just realized that I was doing it. I started to pick apart the actions my body seemed to unconsciously know how to do and realized that I could scrub speed by leaning over a little harder and cutting angle a little tighter. Picking a smooth, even line keeps the speed up; cutting in slightly drops a little off. With all that practice, I have been able to work on keeping a stready line in wet conditions as well, and I have gradually brought the speed up on those days too, at least a little.

Another thing I have worked on is seeing my line through the corners. I realized that cornering toward the right is no problem for me. My vision & my brain just naturally follow the road through the corner. Toward the left is another matter. I end up staring straight at the side of the road at the apex of the corner, then end up slamming on my brakes in order not to end up in a heap at that spot. I figured this out a few years ago and ever since I have concentrated on taking left-hand corners where I force my eyes to follow the yellow line all the way around the corner. Know what? It actually works! My left-hand cornering has gotten much better.

My last trick is remembering to breathe. As much a possible, I try to focus on breathing steadily and let my body do what it seems to know how to do better than my brain. If I don’t I have a tendency to hold my breath, which doesn’t work so well.

A couple of times now I have gone riding with different people and discovered that I was the fastest descender in the group. This was a cool feeling, though Sean Yates was definitely not present.

Still, my biggest achilles heel is wind. I had another crash where I came around a downhill corner fast straight into a really strong crosswind. It almost knocked me over and I straightened up, only to ride off the side of the road and wipe out in some gravel. Now I completely chicken out if there is any wind. Even if there isn’t, I get to a certain speed and become terrified that a wind might suddenly pick me up and knock me over.

Any tips out there for dealing with this fear?

Bike Rides to Look Forward to

So I am stuck. My kids are now old enough that I can think about consistently getting exercise again. However, time is still limited and juggling work, family and personal time is hard. At the same time, riding the same roads over and over with no real goal isn’t that exciting- it is more fun having goals to work toward.
All of which is to say that I want to figure out how to actually train for things instead of just riding around. But how far should I go? The easy choice is to focus on the Death Ride next summer. I rode it once before and it would be fun to do it again and see if I could go faster. Since I am going to the effort of getting that fit, I figure I might as well do some other events as well.
There is a thing called the California Triple Crown for people who ride 3 California double centuries in one year. That might be fun, and you can get a snazzy jersey for completing it.
And of course, I have developed a longing for a Leadville belt buckle that is wholly disconnected from the fact that I don’t have a mountain bike.
So the real question is- with all these goals in mind, who can I talk into doing the events with me? Riding around all those miles (not to mention the travel time) by myself doesn’t seem nearly as exciting.