Category: Cycling

I rode High Pass Challenge yesterday.  It’s an organized event run by Cascade Bicycle Club, which features 114 miles and 7700 feet of climbing to Windy Ridge.  On a clear day, the route provides breathtaking views of Spirit Lake, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens and the Cascades, while rolling along Windy Ridge.  Yesterday, in the middle of a cloud I could barely see the road or a cyclist in front of me. It was a great ride.

Several hundred cyclists started and finished the High Pass Challenge yesterday.  Anyone who even starts this ride in conditions like we had must be pretty hard core. Nevertheless, I saw people suffer during a chilling descent in the rain because they were not prepared for mountain conditions.  The temperature at the top, was probably in the mid 40’s – not bad at all for climbing, but a bit more taxing riding downhill. For me, this day was like one of many on PacTours. I was a bit chilly coming off the mountain, but nowhere near hypothermia, no where near the worst I have experienced.

A key factor in enjoying a challenging ride in the rain is knowing your body, how hard it can ride, how much heat it can generate by riding for seven hours, and still have some in reserve.  How much food do you need, how much water or other fluid, how do you need to dress? Each individual is different, here’s what worked for me.

I wore a light wool shirt beneath a light jersey, leg warmers, and medium thick wool socks, a heavier than average raincoat and full fingered gloves.  Expecting I would need to peel extra clothing while climbing, I wore a fanny pack – the raincoat is too heavy to stuff into a jersey pocket.

My key measure to enjoying a ride is finishing strong and not feeling trashed at the end.  This means riding my own pace, not sucking wheels of riders who start out faster than I want to go, and finding my climbing rhythm about halfway  up the mountain.

HPC features a 19 mile warm-up along route 12.  I soft-pedaled with a small group of riders, sometimes trading pulls, but not really needing to.  I generally white-line it, meaning riding just to the right of the white line separating the shoulder from the main road, especially when traffic is light and there’s a steady stream of cyclists that would be difficult for a motorist to miss.  A few miles from the start, we rolled by several riders who were repairing punctures they had acquired from the debris on the right part of the shoulder, usually much worse in wet conditions.  One of the worst causes of flat tires are pieces of tire tread containing thin wires, usually thrown off by trucks.

The climbing started with a short moderate grade just south of Randall.  I stopped to pee and peel my raincoat, then began climbing at an easy pace.  Long climbs are much different than the short steep hills around Bainbridge Island; you need to find a pace you can sustain.  I like to start all hills at an easy pace, not picking up the intensity until well into the climb. Perhaps at the halfway point I find my rhythm and push the intensity up somewhere near my lactate threshold.

This particular day required backing off a bit.  It was important to push hard enough to maintain body heat, just as important to maintain some reserve for unexpected surprises that could lead to hypothermia.  I chatted with a few riders, slowing a bit to ride with them on the way up, eventually returning to my own pace.  The easiest part for me was definitely going up hill.  The descent was chilling; I had enough gear but was just starting to shiver on some of the steeper grades.

A litmus test for an enjoyable ride is how I feel at the end.  Following the descent, there was an option of a shorter or longer route back to the start in Packwood.  Most riders, tired and cold, chose the shorter route.  I was happy to go the longer way, riding along a narrow winding road past luscious ferns typical of northwest rain forests.  At one point, I slowed down and road and chatted with a guy who knew a couple friends of mine.  About 20 miles from the finish, I picked up the pace to what felt natural, and rolled into the finish feeling tired, hungry, definitely not hammered.

 

Because rain was forecast, I rode my fixed gear to Port Gamble.  No one else showed up at Winslow Green for the start of our Saturday ride, so I enjoyed riding alone.

Unstable air created beautiful cloudy skies and blustery wind.  A few sprinkles cooled me on the way home, and a 25 knot crosswind tried to blow me into oncoming traffic crossing the bridge over Agate Passage.

Because I’ve been having some problems with Cyclist’s palsy, which started soon after putting new bars on my bike, I decided to switch back to the old bars just to see if that might alleviate the problem.  Changing bars means unwrapping the tape, removing the STI levers, removing and replacing the stem and bars, sliding the STI levers onto the exactly correct position on the replaced bars, clamping them in place, pre-loading and tightening the stem onto the stearer tube to ensure no play in the headset, doing a few test rides and re-adjusting until the levers and bars are positioned correctly, then re-taping the bars.  Also, on one of the test rides, discovering that one of the brake cables is too short on the replaced bars, necessitating finding a replacement cable in my bin of bike parts, threading the new cable into the levers and housing and brake calipers, cutting the cable and crimping a cap onto the cable end. Happily, it’s easy to find how-to articles, even videos for each of these steps.  How did anyone manage to work on a bike before Google?

Actually, part of the answer is, before Google, bikes were simpler and didn’t change as frequently.  Like car manufactures, companies like Shimano, Sram and Campagnola are creating new and improved designs every year to suck more money from naive cyclists.  Each new design has different methods for installation and removal.

Anyway, the final step in my bar replacement was a test ride around the north end of the island to verify all was good.  Bike was good, everything tight and in the right place.  A light rain was just starting to fall as I reached the top of Peterson Hill, about four miles from home.

 

Yesterday I rode 47 miles to Port Ludlow and back. Sunlight peeking through a canopy of tall trees created dappled patterns on the quiet roads. Deep in thought, I noticed the forest, not the trees.

Often my rides serve as a crucible for creation.  In my reverie on a beautiful day, a faucet opens and ideas become a steady stream of water.  Some ideas  I will later decide are good and pursue them; other ideas I will reject as ridiculous, or maybe too scary, perhaps only until the next long ride.

I have a job that is in many ways a dream job that I’ve been thinking about leaving.  I’m vacillating.  While riding yesterday, I thought of all that is good about the job, why I should stay and what I should do differently.  I thought about email I would write to the VP, composing, re-writing, editing in my mind.  Today I will recreate some version of that email and actually send it.

Often I think about what I want to say to people.  Being an introvert, I don’t talk all that much, and most of what I think about saying never gets verbalized. That’s mostly a good thing because I’m an INFJ.  The J is for judgemental.

Yesterday, I thought of all kinds of things to write in this blog, mostly stories from the old days that seem worth telling.  Titles like Dennis, Martha, Anne Marie, Leaving Philadelphia may eventually appear in this blog.

Wanting to accumulate some mileage while the weather is still pleasant, I rode about 40 miles, north off the island to Sawdust Hill and some good climbing. Strava said I climbed about 3200 feet.  Mostly it was a pleasant ride through the country.

In Travels with Charlie, Steinbeck says he did a lot of thinking while driving – planned houses, planted gardens, created turtle traps, written long detailed letters,  all in his mind.  That doesn’t work for me; I find driving a motor vehicle mind numbing.  For mental stimulation, I listen to NPR or podcasts saved especially for the trip.

Riding a bicycle is different.  On days such as yesterday, I think about all kinds of things: dream of living in farm houses that I pass, or in cabins along the coast.  I dream of sailing, raising livestock or harvesting a garden.  Often I solve problems from work, or come up with new creative approaches, some good, others terrible. Other times I just ride and forget about everything.

Bainbridge Island has little libraries like the at the right all over the island.  Each one has a unique design.  People are invited to take or leave a book as the choose.  Somewhere there is a registry of these libraries. I’ll put my copy of Travels with Charlie in one of these libraries when I finish reading it.

The farm below sits at the top of Sawdust Hill, overlooking the Olympic Mountains.  Two dogs sauntered out of the pasture to greet me shortly after I took this picture.

 

I got hacked off with work, so I decided to ride my bike.  My natural inclination was to pound out repeats on Baker Hill.  Instead I went exploring and found another park on the north end of the island along Madison Bay.

The park entrance is on the north side of Madison Bay Road off Route 305, about a mile from the Agate Bridge.  The road meanders through forest and past farms before ending at a driveway. There were no cars in the small lot at the park entrance.

I walked about 200 yards from the entrance,  along a freshly groomed trail through a forest of Western Hemlock, Douglas Fir, Sword Ferns, Red Elderberry, Oregon Grape.  The trail eventually split in two directions, presumably making a loop that wound past Madison Bay.

 

The mushroom like growth on the stump at the left is called Conch. It’s a fungus that grew inside the tree, eventually killing it. Second growth Western Hemlock erupts from an old growth Red Cedar nurse stump shown at the right. These cedars flourished on Bainbridge Island before it was logged in the mid 1800’s.  Madison Bay was one of the first logging settlements.

 

My plan was to ride from home on Bainbridge Island to Stevens Pass and back for a good long climb.  Unfortunately, the smoke from the fires in eastern Washington made the air thick and hazy.  It seemed to get worse the further east I rode. I turned around in Sultan, just a little past the halfway point.

Sultan is and old logging and gold mining town established at the confluence of the Sultan and Skykomish Rivers in the 1880’s. Today the population is a little over 4500. Most weekends, streams of slow moving traffic creep through Sultan along U.S. 2, one of the few roads leading to passes over the Cascade mountains.

I ride with a great group of people most Saturday mornings from Bainbridge Island to Port Ludlow and back.   Like most people I find on the island, everyone has a friendly attitude; most have had a lot of experience riding.  We usually start at a pretty good clip north on 305 to the Kitsap Peninsula.  The pace eases and people chat more easily once we turn off the main highway.  Most weeks we follow the same route.

I like this group because, in addition to being friendly people and good cyclists, we enjoy pushing the pace at times.  Right now I’m one of the stronger riders in the group, only because I’ve been riding more frequently.  When I was riding with them last year, I was not as strong but the rides were still fun. Most people in the group have ridden long enough they can share similar experiences of up years and down years.

Most weekdays when I’m riding alone, I ride at a much slower pace so that I’m primarily burning fat for energy.  With this group, I’m frequently tapping more glycogen stores.  Round trip for this ride is 43 miles.  Strava says I burned 1638 kCal on the ride.  That’s about equal to the total caloric capacity of the glycogen stored in my muscles and liver.  A good indicator of fitness is that I could enjoy the entire ride without eating anything and arrive home not feeling trashed.

I’m hoping to do a longer ride tomorrow, hopefully a long climb up a mountain pass.  A key check on my condition is whether I’ll be able to recover to start fresh tomorrow and enjoy back to back hard rides.

 

Short easy rides are essential.  Here’s why:

• They provide active recovery, essential respites between hard days of climbing.
• They sustain my “ride every day” plan.  Often the most difficult hurdle is just starting.  Short rides make it easy to start, because it’s always ok just to ride a few miles.  On the other hand, often what I expect to be a short ride turns into a longer ride because I’m having fun.
• They invite me to look around, pay attention to stuff.  Incredibly relaxing.

Yikes! My favorite roads on Bainbridge Island are being chip sealed, all at the same time, all during primo cycling season.  No one consulted me before doing this work.  What’s worse than riding up a hill on chip surface?  Riding downhill.  Front wheel feels like it’s on the verge of skidding with the slightest shift in weight.  Oh well, Levi’s ride promises some steep climbs on crappy roads.  Guess we can call this training.