I know double century rides don’t fall into the normal purview of ApexRacing but I do know a lot of you were interested in how the eventturned out this year. Here it goes.
The event is timed start-to-finish including all stops and off thebike time. It rolls 193 miles over about 5-6k feet of climbing and thepromoters provide 5 rest stops throughout where we can refill ourbottles and get food. This year, the ride started and ended at theBuellton Marriott.
We started at 7:30 from Buellton with Alex, Kenneth Philbrick, and JimFisher (last two are friends from Oregon). After riding with thenon-timed start the previous two editions, Alex joined us for a fasttrip this year. It is a mass start of about 60 riders but the kind ofgroup riding that follows is pretty incoherent. The average groupbike handling skills on the ride are somewhere just above Cascade BikeClub and below Cat 5. It was great having Alex in the mix as anexperienced racer to smooth things out. A few tandems are mixed inthere and a whole bunch of people just hoping to suck wheel the wholeday also ride. The rest stops have the effect of breaking up thegroups into smaller chunks based on how fast you can get through them.
There is lots of great riding and scenery but I’ll stick to thehighlights with only a minor indulgence at the end. Leaving the secondrest stop (mile 87) we found ourselves with a slight gap to a coupleof other fast riders we had previously been riding with. We didn’tthink much of it and entered San Luis Obispo where we encountered thecurse of the stoplight. We hit every red light through town both ways.It was a little ridiculous. This amounted to anything from 3-5 minutesof time. It’s hard to say. Anyway, the guys off the front disappeared.In the meantime, the four of us did some nice riding. Everyone didtheir share of work with Big Ring pulling through strong, Fish makingus cry on the climbs and Philbrick hammering it anytime he was closeto the front.
At mile 110, Alex decided he’d better ease up so he could enjoy therest of his day. We were sorry to lose another engine, but Fish got tofront and took a monster pull. Alex spent the rest of the ridefreelancing from group to group and finished in 9hrs 20 minutes - asmoking time. He was also trading pulls with a tandem for a couple ofhours.
Rolling into the fourth rest stop, we caught sight of the leadersagain (three guys) just pulling out of the stop. This translates to afew minutes. The three of us restocked quickly and hit the roadlooking forward to massive tailwinds. The winds didn’t blow quite sohard this year but we still got a decent cruise in the upper 20s to30mph on the roads from Guadalupe to Santa Maria. Somewhere after thisstretch, we all got really tired. It was becoming increasingly toughto generate the power we needed to on the flats. For those of you atcamp, remember back to our Monday ride. This stretch was on Hwy 1 toHwy 135 to San Antonio Rd to Los Alamos. We didn’t have the punishingcross winds like we did for that ride but the tail winds weren’treally happening either. Good thing it was flat. On Hwy 1, bothKenneth and I offered to take a last strong pull or two for the threeof us so that the strongest guys could take off in pursuit of sologlory. That would have been fine except that we all wanted to by theguy offering up the last pull to launch the others. Hmm. Sounds likea tired bunch.
It seemed to take ages to get to the small hamlet of Los Alamos andthe last rest stop. We were all looking forward to a cold Coke to takeus over the top of Drum Canyon and back into Buellton. Coming intotown, we had our heads up the road scanning for the rest stop. Notonly did we see the stop, but we also saw the three leaders justslipping their bottles into their cages getting ready to roll.Kenneth immediately stood up on his pedals and jammed a few times onthe cranks. Instinctively, I followed. We looked at each other andhe said “It’s the only way.” Yeah. It was. There goes the Coke andthe refill of cold water I was looking forward to. Jim made a smartmove and made a quick stop.
It turns out we caught two of the guys off guard so for a littlewhile, Kenneth, myself, and Adam (a strong rider recently graduatedwith a master’s from UCSD) were rolling at the front. On the flanksof the climb I started to get him talking trying to slow him down. Itdidn’t really work. Kenneth drifted back as the climb kicked thefirst time. I stayed with the UCSD guy for a bit until he started togain ground on a few of the steep pitches. From that side, DrumCanyon is around a 3-mile, 800 foot climb averaging 6-7%. The gradegoes up at points to 10% or more. I had miniscule amounts of glycogenleft and could only do so much. I also had less than an inch of fluidin each of my bottles for the climb. It was now 80F and sunny. I wasmissing my Coke and rationing what little water was left to keep mymouth wet. Surprisingly, I also felt like I was riding in low zone 3.My heart rate monitor agreed. Adam crested the climb perhaps 20seconds or so in front of me. Looking back, I couldn’t see Kenneth oranyone else.
Now I had the descent to tackle. This is not an ordinary descent. Ifit were paved, it would be labeled as technical but as it mostly aseries of pavement patches, I’d describe it as teeth-shattering andbone-jarring. I knew I had to descend fast. Racing against yournumber one limiter is always an experience. Doing it exhausted andout of gas adds another level. While I didn’t gain any time, I lostat most a handful of seconds by the time we got off the descent. Alimited success.
It was now time for the canyon run out to the highway and the turntowards Buellton. I had noticed Adam was a bigger guy than me bymaybe 10 lbs. He also had 404 clincher wheels and some aerobars. I’dhave my work cut out for me to catch him on the 1-2% downhill run outto the highway. I kept looking over my shoulder hoping to see Kennethand Jim so we could motor in together and catch this guy. My plan,should I catch him alone, was to just sit on his wheel, make him dothe work, and allow Kenneth and Jim to come up to us. On one of myover-the-shoulder glances, I saw a guy in redish kit (not a friendly).About this time, I realized I’d probably have to finish on my own. Isaw Adam up the road gaining a little more time despite my efforts.
Reaching Hwy 246, the fan base showed up. This consisted of Jim’swife Heather and teammate Pete who had joined us for the week ofriding. Someone took a picture of me here. I’m very curious to seethe contorted look on my face. I asked for a time check to Kennethwhich I got a little later. It was upwards of 1 minute 45 seconds.It would definitely be a solo finish now. For the turn onto thehighway I was hoping for no traffic so I could roll the stop sign. Istill had to slow down some and the reacceleration that I coaxed outof my legs was accompanied by a painful yell. I think I discoveredwhat happens when you use lactic acid to contract your leg muscles(btw I know the physiology on this is all wrong).
There was one more little rise to get over and then a nice descentfollowed by about 5 miles of roll out into town. For the last fewmiles, I had nothing left. No more glycogen. No more water. I had alittle gel but no way or time to digest it. So, I focused on what Idid have (tip of the hat to indoor winter training sessions). Pedalstroke – even it out. Position – reach forward, get the back flat andrelax the hands. Tighten the core and pull the shoulders back.Breath. It worked so well that I succeeded in getting a little morepower and then seeing amorphous black blobs in my vision. I hadn’tremembered that as part of the scenery. Breath. Blink the eyes. Keeppedaling. Ok. That’s better.
In the end, I couldn’t close the gap but did hold off the other guysbehind. The organizers time to the minute, but the separation betweenme and first place was about 30 seconds. My time was 8hrs 50 minutesfor the ride which was 14 minutes faster than last year. Kenneth andJim came in together 2 minutes after me. In total, we had about 12-13minutes off the bike including all the stoplights. It definitelywould have been nice to have hit a few green ones. That could havebeen all the difference. Or it could have been the 400 miles ofriding in the previous week. Without it though, it wouldn’t betraining camp. Back for more next year.
http://www.planetultra.com/solvang/Results/2009results.htm
-Ben
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