Sender: ekr@kmac.terisa.com Newsgroups: ba.bicycles Subject: Markleeville Death Ride Report (Long) From: EKR Date: 24 Jul 1997 11:46:49 -0700 Message-ID: <3n2nc5luu.fsf@kmac.terisa.com> Lines: 439 X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.4.37/XEmacs 19.15 --text follows this line-- A SATURDAY IN HELL... Ahh, how soon we forget... Not a month after Mr. Bill's, there I was registering for the Death Ride. As usual, I left everything to the last minute, and With only a couple of weeks to prepare, any substantial variation in training was out of the question. But hey, buying new equipment will compensate for training, right? All distance, elevation, and grade numbers are off my commemorative t-shirt, so who knows how accurate they are? PRE-PRE-RIDE This time I decided I wanted to have aero bars, but I also wanted to have access to the top of the bars, so my trust Scott Clip-Ons had to go. This meant visiting nearly every shop in the South Bay and some not in the South Bay in an effort to check out everything that was available. I finally settled on the Scott RCOs. In an effort to fix the hydration problem, I invested in a Pedal Power Aero Bottle. Since this all took place the weekend before, and I was already tapering, I only had a few short rides to test everything out, but everything seemed to work ok, and I was certainly drinking a lot more than I had been with bottles, which I took to be a good sign. Did I mention that I'd left my lodging until the last minute as well? There were a few tense moments as I discovered that every hotel in Markleeville was long since booked, but I finally managed to get a room at the Carson Valley Inn, 30 minutes away in Gardnerville, which seemed like an ok plan. We got to Turtle Rock at about 9 PM, registered (this went smoothly), and headed to the hotel. Determined to get a parking space close to the start, I set the alarm for for 3:00. This worked in that we got to Turtle Rock at 4:00 and were able to park fairly close to the start. It didn't work in that the start was at 5:30 and I basically sat around trying to sleep while I waited for light, running the car heat to try to stay warm. COURSE OVERVIEW The Death Ride course is a series of out and backs laid out Daggett (7734)( | | | | | | | | <- base of Daggett / Luther (7740) / \ / \ / (Lunch) ------------------- / (Woodsfords) / \ / \ / \ Carson (8573) \ \ (Markleeville) \ \ ------------------------------ ^ Monitor (8314) PREAMBLE Around 5:00, it was still really cold, so I ended up wearing a short sleeve jersey, armwarmers, long sleeve jersey, legwarmers (oh yeah, shorts too), and a windbreaker. Since my ride wasn't waiting around for me, I was worried I'd have to carry all that crap all day long, but the guy parked next to me offered to let me put it in his car when I got back. (Matt Brady, if you're reading this, thanks...). Anyway, after waiting for 15 minutes or so at the bathroom, I finally got going at about 5:50. There is a small descent (3 miles/500 ft) right after you leave Turtle Rock, and I found myself wishing I'd worn even more clothes. I found that by getting on the aero bars and staying real low, things improved a bit, though I was still shivering, and I was starting to worry. If things were this cold at low (5000 ft) altitude, what was descending Monitor from 8000 ft going to be like? I'd say I was about in the middle as far as clothes went. Amazingly, I saw people there wearing just short sleeve jersey's and shorts. On the other hand, one guy had put thick wool socks over his shoes and cut a hole in them for the cleats. After the initial descent and rollers, there's a gentle incline before the real climbing of Monitor starts. I'd never done the Death Ride before and I didn't have hill profiles, so I kept thinking that this was the actual climb, but was assured by people around me that it wasn't. At least by this time I'd started to warm up. I wouldn't say I was warm, but I wasn't shivering on the bike either. MONITOR I: 10 miles/2800 ft Finally we reached the beginning of the front of Monitor, which really, is fairly gentle, about 8% as I remember. Since it was the first hill of the day, I was feeling fresh, but I tried to keep it easy. My general goal for the day was to keep my heart rate below 150 before Daggett and 156 afterwards. I managed to execute this pretty successfully on Monitor. In fact, I had to exert effort to stay above 140, which was a good sign, since I was passing people at this pace. On the way up, I met Julie Colwell, up-and-coming racer and wife of LowKey sensation Tracy Colwell, and rode with her for a while before picking it up a bit and heading for the top. What was most noticeable about Monitor I was not how steep or how tiring it was but merely how long. With the exception of Mount Hamilton, which I've never done, the popular South Bay climbs are fairly short, typically 2000 feet or so, between 3 and 7 miles. Monitor I, at about 10 miles and 2800 feet, is (and feels) a lot longer. Still, the (relatively) shallow grade had me feeling pretty confident by the time I hit the rest stop at the top. I got my first unpleasant surprise at the top of Monitor: The only drinks available were water and Cytomax. I train on diluted Gatorade and I'd never even had Cytomax before. I'd been keeping well hydrated, so I'd totally emptied my Aero Bottle, with a little Gatorade in one of my bottles. I didn't want to just have water, so despite _knowing_ that you shouldn't try new nutrition during an event, I took a bottle of Cytomax and filled the rest of my bottles with water, had a banana, some Gu and headed for the bottom. The descent down the back face of Monitor was beautiful, fast and straight with a great view. I spent most of it on the aero bars, but most of the way down had to slow down for an accident. I didn't see it myself, but I've been told by a number of people that it was a bike v. cow, which isn't too surprising, because I saw cow warning signs and cows at the side of the road. The most detailed story I heard was that there was a bull on the road and that one of the bikers tried to go around it, it charged him, and threw him onto another oncoming biker, with a third biker running into them. Can't vouch for the truth of this, but the guy lying on the ground with a space blanket over him didn't look happy. I didn't hear about the cow until later, so I figured that he downed rider had just lost control so I tried to take it easy from then on. MONITOR II: 13 miles/3310 ft Riding up the back face of Monitor was pretty uneventful. It's just a steady 8% grade, gaining 3310' over about 13 miles. I was still feeling strong and (I thought) pacing myself well, so I allowed myself to go with a couple people who were riding faster than I ordinarily would, but I still felt strong when I reached the top. It was still pretty cold, which is the way I like things when I'm working, but not so cold as to be uncomfortable. I do want to single out one particular support team here. About half way up Monitor II, there were a bunch of guys in what I'd make to be their late teens and early twenties strung out in a line. And the way this worked was that you'd give your water bottle to the first guy, who would run a bit and hand it to the second ... and eventually they'd get a lead on you, refill it, and hand it back to you. I thought this was about the coolest piece of support work I'd ever seen. If anyone on that team is reading this, thanks. I only stopped for a minute at the top to refill my bottles, and choke down a half a banana and some Gu, figuring I'd rest on the way down. The descent was, if possible, even better than the back face. I managed to get up to 45 and another rider who was less chicken than me said that he managed to get up to 55. It was beautiful surface, fast, fairly straight, with a great view. The only downside was the occasional cattle guard, which you just had to gonzo over. INTERLUDE I After the little microclimb back to Turtle Rock, the weather was progressing to full-scale warm, so I stripped down to shorts and my jersey and bummed some sunscreen off a nice official and headed back out again. I kept my arm and leg warmers and a vest, but I never needed them again. The 20 miles or so to the base of Daggett are actually downhill but they feel fairly flat and they're unshaded. I hooked up with Matt Brady and we rode together for a while until this pace line passed us and we got on the back. Here's where my inexperience biking in packs started to show as I just couldn't keep in the draft of the guy in front of me, so I eventually had to bail out. As a second best measure, I dropped onto the aero bars and managed to keep them more or less in view, losing them right before the next rest stop. From the rest stop to Daggett was more of the same, unshaded mild downhill, just a nice cruise. DAGGETT: 15 miles/2600 ft Overview: A hot slog up a mountain. This was by far the worst pass for me. Daggett is completely unshaded and I had to really force myself up it, sweating like a pig. I let my heart rate climb to 156 or so, and held it pretty much there. Neither I nor anyone around me had any idea how much more of it there was, and I was seriously glad to finally reach the top. The rest stop was serving the usual bananas and watermelon as well as stoker bars and bagels. Sensing that I seemed to be running out of salt, I opted for a stoker bar and a PB&J bagel, thinking (in my weakened state) that since peanut butter makes you thirsty, it must be kinda salty, right? And lest we forget, more Cytomax, which, at this point, I'm really starting to hate the taste of. The descent was fast, as you can imagine from the ascent. INTERLUDE II: We start to have problems After the rest stop at the bottom, there's that same 20 miles back to lunch. Now, on the way down, I'd attributed the ease of that same stretch to just feeling strong, not knowing that it was downhill. On the way back, I certainly didn't feel strong. In fact, all my speed was gone, and I was just trying to survive until lunch. In retrospect, I attribute part of this to it being uphill, but not most of it. Mainly, though, i figured I was hungry and needed to sit down and rest, etc. LUNCH: We've definitely got problems I racked my bike at lunch and got off and promptly became so dizzy I almost fell down. Now, I'm used to having my legs be a little weak after a long ride, but I'm not usually this dizzy. This is not good. So, I go stand in the lunch line and after a few minutes waiting I'm standing in front of the cold cuts and _nothing_ looks appetizing. Message to Death Ride organizers: next time something hot would be nice, especially if it didn't have meat in it. I'm no vegetarian but at that moment there was no way I was going to shovel down cold protein. Anyway, I picked up a little fruit and sat down in a corner of the gym, tried to take a bite of watermelon and started to feel _really_ ill, as opposed to just the somewhat ill I was feeling before. Lying down suddenly seemed like a really good idea, so that's what I did. This led to an even nastier surprise, the worst case of bed spins I've had since that drunken night after Finals. At this point, I was motivated to take stock of the situation. Good news: I'm 100 miles in and I'm 90 minutes ahead of the cutoffs. Bad news: I may vomit and pass out right here. Anyway, after lying there for about 15 minutes, I decided what I really wanted was some salt, so I managed to choke down a few of the tortilla chips that were being left as dessert, which seemed to help a little bit. Over the course of the next 20 minutes, I ate maybe 20 tortilla chips, and seemed to be restored to the point where I could at least walk without feeling dizzy. Rampant speculation alert: I think what happened here is mainly due to two things (1) The drinking system let me put down a lot more water than usual, but I didn't compensate with salt. (2) The Cytomax was just a lot more sugary than I was expecting and I got massively hyperglycemic. Anyway, I decided to deal with the situation by sticking completely to water and carrying some more tortilla chips with me to eat at the rest stops and get some salt. I still wasn't sure I could finish, until I heard some people around me saying that it was only 18 more miles of climbing and only 12 to the final cutoff. (Gee, that sounds easy, doesn't it?) Armed with this knowledge, I remounted and slowly pedaled out of the Lunch Stop. Only 18 miles and roughly 4000 feet to go. PICKETT's JUNCTION: 8 miles/1400 ft Both the Luther and Carson climbs start from Pickett's Junction, but you have climb 1400 ft to get there. This was not easy. My primary goal at this point was just to make it up at all, with all thoughts of time forgotten, except to worry that I wouldn't make cutoffs. This was good because just a light spin brought my heart rate up to 155, which was where I was planning to max out. If I didn't already know that something was wrong, I would have known it now, because under normal conditions that would have my heart rate at like 135. This was probably the worst I felt during the entire ride, because I wasn't working or going fast, but I was still incredibly weak and close to my limits. Still, I managed to contain my uh... enthusiasm, hook onto the back of some other riders keeping the same pace and crawl up the 7% grade at about 7 miles an hour. LUTHER PASS: 2 miles/700 ft By the time we got to the Pickett's Junction rest stop, it was about 3:45, and we had to be back at Pickett's Junction to start Carson by 5:15. Since Luther is only 700 feet from there and I was starting to feel a lot stronger, things were looking up. This rest stop was unstaffed, but they'd left plenty of bottled water. Unfortunately, they hadn't punctured any of the bottles. This entirely justified lugging my credit card tool up 12000 feet, because this meant I had a knife in it and could get water sooner rather than later. Had a few more tortilla chips and set up Luther. Even 700 feet was starting to feel pretty long at this point, and just as things were starting to seem hopeless, I saw at the side of the road a sign that said "Do not bonk or hit a wall", and in a minute or so another that said "The Luther rest stop is here" (There were a couple more there and it seemed fairly clever at the time.) and I knew we'd made it to the top. Message to Death Ride coordinators: "X miles to the top" signs placed at strategic places in the course would be a real moral booster, at least for me. The Luther rest stop was staffed by this wacky guy with a pitcher of water, who poured it into my water bottle and told me that it contained a "secret ingredient that would get me to the top of Carson: confidence". And he was right, because I did feel stronger and more confident. It was at this point that I realized that this was the coolest man I had ever seen. I mean, here I was, at the top of this hill, hot, sweaty, dehydrated, and this guy was GIVING ME WATER. Seriously, what could be cooler than that? Oh yeah, he also poured it over my head, which felt incredibly good. The descent down Luther isn't memorable. It's short. It brought me back down to Pickett's Junction, but I was on a mission to finish now, and since it was 4:10 and the Pickett's Junction cutoff was at 5:15, I was pretty sure I would. CARSON: 8 miles/1600 ft Heading out of Pickett's Junction, I noticed that I seemed to be going down hill. This was not pleasing. I'm one of those people who likes to get all the unpleasant stuff out of the way as soon as possible, and the idea of having to climb more after finishing Carson did not please me at all. Anyway, after a mile or so of this, we got to the Carson climb. I was fairly recovered by this time, my heart rate was back under control and and was starting to pass a lot of people again. Carson is fairly gentle, with a 6.2% section at the end, but, like, 8 miles is a long way, you know? At least, that's what I thought after the previous 120 or so. This seemed pretty unending until I noticed someone parked on the descending side of the road and yelled at them to ask how long it was and she said a mile and a half. That didn't seem like too much, so I turned it up another notch and after 10 minutes or so of slogging, made it to the top. Now, I've got to say, the Carson rest stop was pretty nice. They were serving hot chocolate and ice cream and popsicles and since it was more or less downhill from here, people were pretty much celebrating. I really wanted some ice cream, but my stomach still didn't feel ready for it, so I limited myself to some tortilla chips and a hot chocolate, chatted with some people, and we all congratulated ourselves on having more or less finished. After a little bit of this, I decided to head home before my legs stiffened up. The descent down Carson is truly beautiful, but long, and especially rewarding because there wasn't going to be another real hill afterwards. I was really struck by how many people there were still coming up as I was coming down. For the first mile or so, I tried to shout encouraging words along the lines of "you're almost there", but after that I figured I'd be giving them false hope so I stopped. I spent most of it on the aero bars, again, and was just able to coast through the slight uphill to Pickett's Junction, and it's all downhill from there. On the way down, I saw some poor guy pumping up his tire. Imagine finishing all those climbs and then flatting on the way down... MICROCLIMB: 300 feet, 4 miles Well, mostly. The last couple miles to Turtle Rock State Park are actually a slight uphill, which wouldn't be troublesome under normal circumstances, but really felt fairly steep at this point. While it wasn't that bad, I was really glad to make it to the end. SECOND THOUGHTS In retrospect, I think I could have had a much more enjoyable day if I'd followed a few simple rules, which I should have known anyway. 1. Don't change foods on event day. I train on Gatorade, PowerBars, and Gu. I should have stuck with that. Next time I'll bring powdered Gatorade and mix it myself. 2. Make sure you consume enough salt. Both after Mr. Bill's and the Death Ride, I really needed to get more salt. Next time I'll bring saltines or something to keep my salt balance right. 3. Stop when you're tired. I was so focused on making a good time that I ignored signs I was overheating and desalinated at the top of Daggett and pressed on. If I'd taken my time there, I think I would have felt a lot better at lunch. Equipment wise, things went pretty well. I went with a 39/53x13/30, but I never had to get into the 30. Even when I was really nuked, I never felt like I needed a really low gear. On the other hand, I think I would have liked a bit more gears in the flats. Next year, I may go with a 13x26 on the back. I changed out out my battered Contis for Performance GT2/Ks and this is the first century length ride I've ever done that I didn't flat. I'm really glad I brought the aero bars, though. All that climbing is hard on my back and being able to stretch out on the flats helped a lot. Overall, I was really pleased with the quality of the support and the professionalism with which the ride was run, but a few things could have been done better. 1. Give out hill profiles as part of the brochure or on the web so that people know what the course looks like. It was on the t-shirt but I would have liked in advance. (Mr. Bills did this right). 2. Have Gatorade as well as Cytomax. I know Cytomax is one of the sponsors, but a lot of people seem to have trouble with it (I heard of several at the Death Ride alone) and Gatorade is well known to a lot of people. 3. Have more energy bars as well as fruit. A lot of people train just on energy bars, and it's nice to get what you expect. 4. Announce what kind of food there will be beforehand so that people can make other arrangements if necessary or at least check out the stuff you have for tolerance. 5. Have markers on the side of the road that say how far you have to go to the top. 6. Have somewhere where people can stash stuff at Turtle Rock so that people can change after Monitor without leaving their cars there. But all these are nits. Overall, I was very pleased with how things were done and especially with how friendly the staff was. Now if I can just figure out what to do with my 5 pass pin....