On Sunday Beau and I rode up the Marin headlands to film a long skid from the top. Since we’re good at math, our calculations for how long the tire would actually last were, in fact, wrong. Physics was working against us and the skid blew early. Fortunately, we had enough footage to fit the tune and this is what we ended up with:
The end of Daylight Saving Time in San Francisco is an interesting event. My biological clock is still waking up at 7, but the physical clock says 6. My reaction this morning was not immediately to go back to sleep, but to get on a bike. I layered on a long-sleeved jersey, got on the Fix and took off through the fog. My companion was Blur, Digitalism and The Magnetic Fields. For every throbbing tech house beat there was a lyric like “there’s time enough for sex and drugs when we get to heaven, when our pheromones are turned up to eleven.”
The Golden Gate Bridge was miserable. After powering through Fisherman’s Wharf, Fort Mason and fighting the headwind through Crissy Field, the constant condensation of damp and cold on the joinery and my glasses were threatening to end my ride involuntarily. I was swimming through oatmeal, punctuated by raisins in Gore-Tex on skinny tires.
Then at the end of the bridge: Sunlight!
Not only did the fog just drop away, it dropped away and exposed the Marin headlands climb in the morning sun, peeking over the Oakland hills. I climbed to the top of the top of the headlands to a crunchy Digitalism track. A few minutes and grunts later, I’d reached an altitude above the cloud cover and saw this:
Stolen from Beau. Thanks Beau!
(continued from my previous post)
Confusion reigned at Rest Stop 1. We heard varying reports of a fire, running the course backwards, and other rumors. After the misstep after leaving the rest stop we took off into the road we’d spend most of the day on: Route 16.
Route 16 is a mix of good and bad. Parts of it are terrifyingly narrow, with traffic zooming buy on the way to the casino, and parts are wonderful pavement alongside a creek with whitewater rapids. The owners of the casino must’ve been fallling all over themselves to name it Cache Creek.
Around mile 60 the climbing began in earnest, and wouldn’t stop until we were back in the same place. At rest stop 3 or so we found out half the course had been closed and we’d be doing the back half twice. This turned what should have been a mildly difficult ride into a real climbing-intensive event. All the hard climbs (including the high point on Cobb Mountain) were in the back 100 miles.
By mile 80 at the lunch stop, we were tired. We’d already done some serious climbs in the heat. We asked various riders whether they were heading out or coming back, and those who were heading back told us of the treat that lay ahead: a climb with a 1-mile section with a very steep (10% or so) grade. Groan.
Heading up that hill was both extra hard and rewarding because we were being passed by riders zipping down the hill after having already completed it. Every one was smiling. By the time we descended the hill an hour later, we were smiling too. We saw the pain on the faces of the riders behind us struggling up that hill.
At mile 99.7 we hit the halfway point rest stop, just below the crest of Cobb Mountain. We did circles in the parking lot until we hit 100 miles and sat down for a well-needed break.
I looked at the route sheet’s elevation map and determined we had only 4 hard climbs ahead of us in the next 100 miles. That was true, to an extent. There was plenty of headwind, traffic, bugs, darkness and bad pavement between us and Davis.
By mile 140, we were coming down out of the hills again and back into the Cache Creek area. The sun was lower in the sky, and the temp was a reasonable mid-sixties. We’d eaten tons of food, consumed gallons of water, and done stupid amounts of leg stretching while riding.
By mile 175 we reached the first rest stop again. We were toasted. Tina swapped out her tinted lenses for clear lenses, and I geared up to be eating bugs. I have no clear riding glasses.
The last 20 miles or so were in twilight and darkness, eating gnats and alternating passing and being passed by a woman in her late forties who looked like she’d done a few of these before. Her technique was good, she was a strong rider.
By the end, I was ready to just lie down on the pavement and go to sleep. We ate a few scraps of food at the post-ride dinner and had our photo taken by a friendly rider. By the time we made it back to the hotel (by way of the grocery store), we were dead. I slept like a brick.
The Davis Double was the most enjoyable ride I’ve done this year. The Davis Bike Club and their volunteers made the experience completely worth it. One of my favorite moments was at the second to last rest stop when a kid, maybe 8 or 9 offered to valet park my bike and fill my water bottles!
We were driving back from Davis on Sunday, discussing how we could possibly characterize the stress of the previous day to non-cyclists, particularly endurance cyclists. Anecdotes were mentioned about telling coworkers and friends about the miles ridden this weekend, met with basic incomprehension.
On Saturday, Tina and I qualified for the 2007 California Triple Crown. Every one of those three days was hard. Really hard. Anyone who tells you different is soft pedaling (hah) or has a bad memory. Maybe that’s why the average age of folks who do these things is somewhere north of 50. :)
Saturday was also one of the most enjoyable rides I’ve ever done, thanks to the support of the Davis Bike Club and their volunteers. However, it was not the “fast, fun and flat” ride for beginners it was supposed to be. A fire near lake Baryessa closed half the route, turning the otherwise reasonable loop into an out-and-back with all the hard climbs, twice.
Good times.
We woke at 4am, dressed and packed our bikes & gear, then drove on one of the many nameless county roads from Woodland to Davis. Upon arrival at 5:30, cyclists were already departing. We finished gearing up and headed out. The sun rose by the time we reached the first rest stop, a ranch around mile 20. That’s where the confusion started.
We found out about the fire (and saw the smoke in the distance) and heard that the course was being altered. At this point our route sheets were essentially void, so we stowed those and took off in a pack of about 30 riders. We rode a couple miles past the rest stop into some rollers when a SAG truck blazed past and headed off the first riders. Apparently we missed a turn. We turned back and rode a half-mile or so back to an unmarked right (now left) and got back on track.
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Because it’s okay to have a carbon footprint, as long as you pay for some guy to plant a tree.
I’m participating by driving my dog Pista to Work Today.