How to Avoid Being Bike-Jacked

Introduction

About a month ago, an email went around my cycling team about a bike-jacking on Wildcat Canyon Road up in the Berkeley hills: two men ran a guy off the road with their car, then stole his bike at knifepoint. (The Nextdoor report is here.) A week later, another report came in, this one from Strava and also reported in Berkeleyside, about two more cyclists being robbed of their bike, this time at gunpoint. Also mentioned were two other tales of cyclists escaping apparent robbery attempts. And just last week I came across yet another report of a cyclist being robbed at gunpoint, this time of his mountain bike.

I have continued to ride throughout this crime spree, and now, as a service to my fellow Bay Area cyclists and anyone anywhere who faces this threat, I offer my strategies for protecting yourself and—more importantly—your bike.

A few details 

I’ve pored over the articles for as much information as possible, but there are a lot of gaps. The first guy, we’re told, “had been run off the road about halfway between El Toyonol [sic] and Inspiration Point, by two men in a grey VW or Toyota sedan – ‘looked like primer’. He surrendered his bike when threatened with a knife. One of the men left with the car and the second rode the bike, both toward Berkeley. He was not clear on the description of the two men saying he was mostly focused on the knife.” Other than his bike being a “Trek Madrone” [sic] there’s not much more info.

Right off the bat, I’m pretty frustrated. I mean, “VW or Toyota”—what the hell is that? Any normal male above the age of ten should be able to tell the make, model, and year (give or take) of just about any car. But this guy? Let’s face it, VWs and Toyotas don’t look very much alike, whereas Toyotas and Hondas are practically identical. Consider the following exhibits:

Obviously, the car could have just as easily been a Honda, and by extension a Lexus or Acura. So all we really know about the vehicle is that it’s not a Prius and not an SUV. Gee, thanks. (Actually, a Prius would be the perfect getaway vehicle around here because it would be so inconspicuous. But an eco-friendly villain? I can’t see it happening.)

Perhaps more annoying than the victim’s poor observational skills is the typical prevalence of stupid comments below the news story. Lots of politically charged stuff in there about “PC politics,” “defunding the police,” etc. One guy wrote, “Race of criminals; suppressed. Type of bikes; secret.” What does he mean “suppressed”? By whom? There’s a difference between neglecting (or failing to notice) this or that detail vs. it being kept from us as though by conspiracy. And really, the type of bike is irrelevant. Am I safer because I ride a Giant, when the criminals are apparently targeting Treks? Uh huh.

I would argue that the thieves’ race (though it was brought up by four commenters in the first Berkeleyside article) is also irrelevant. We cyclists want info that will help us keep an eye out for the perps during our rides. This is why knowing it was, say, a mid-‘80s VW Jetta would be really useful. But suppose, for the sake of argument, the perps were white guys. Does this mean I need to peer into every car I see and try to make sure the driver isn’t white? Pffff.

There’s also the probability that multiple, independent criminals are involved. Copycat thieves, if you will. Which brings me to my perp-agnostic strategies.

Strategy 1 - Choose different routes

The hardest thing to figure out with these reports is whether the victim was riding uphill or down. This makes a big difference. Consider the guy run off the road on Wildcat Canyon. If he was climbing, he’d have been a sitting duck for the thieves; that climb (from San Pablo Dam Road to Inspiration Point) takes me like 13 minutes (and chances are I go faster than a bike-jacking victim plucked at random). But the descent is under six minutes, so a thief would have to be pretty lucky to happen upon me (unless he’s sitting in wait—but his VW or Toyota or whatever the hell it is better be pretty fast to catch up from a dead stop on that twisty road). So I’ve stopped climbing Wildcat (but I’ll still descend it). Instead, I can go up El Toyonal and Lomas Cantadas and then down South Park Drive . (Lomas is closed to through traffic except bikes; South Park is closed to cars during the pandemic.)

Other thefts and attempts were on Grizzly Peak Blvd, most of which isn’t that great a road anyway. The residential section is dangerous because the locals tend to drive poorly; e.g., pulling out of their driveways without looking , or worse. (Click here for a particularly egregious example.) This stupid street is easily avoided if you go up South Park, and if you don’t want that steep a climb but want to reach destinations south, you could ride through Berkeley and go up Tunnel Road to Skyline. So far those roads haven’t been a target.

Bear in mind, I don’t always feel like climbing Lomas, in which case I stay on El Toyonal. The section east of Lomas, which connects to Wildcat Canyon Road, is closed to cars. I do have to then ride up the top half of Wildcat, but I can do that in under six minutes—a risk I’m generally willing to take. More on this later.

(Am I doing a disservice to my fellow cyclists by giving away these secret routes to prospective thieves? No. First of all, there’s nothing they can do about these roads being closed. Second, thieves don’t read this blog. If they did, they wouldn’t be thieves … they’d be procrastinating grad students, retirees, and/or my mom.)

Strategy 2 - Evasive action

If you’re descending and somebody tries to pull alongside to run you off the road, you could try to outmaneuver them. For example, you could take the left lane. The evil driver would have to have balls like King Kong to follow you over there. After all, if you encountered an oncoming car, you could ditch off the left side and probably not crash—but the would-be thief would be out of luck. Of course this technique has the moral flaw of putting an innocent motorist or cyclist (i.e., the one possibly coming the other way) in danger. So I don’t really recommend it.

Now, if you’re climbing, and really paying attention, you could probably stop quickly enough to avoid being run off the road. Then you could pop your feet out of the pedals and roll backward, paddling with your feet, long enough turn your bike around, clip back in, and flee downhill.

When I climb Wildcat from El Toyonal to the summit, I figure that if I do encounter a thief, and can manage to turn around, I could be back at El Toyonal and the safety of its gate in under three minutes, worst case. That’s not so long to hold off a deranged motorist. And the gate really would save me … it’s not like one of those matchstick ones the bad guys plow through on TV.

Strategy 3 - the “human shield”

I’ve only used this technique by accident. I was descending Wildcat and caught up to another cyclist. I didn’t want to pass (because it’s hard to give the guy the requisite six feet of COVID clearance, so passing would be rude). I hung back 100 feet or so, and in the process realized that if a would-be thief were lying in wait ahead, he’d get the guy ahead of me, and I could turn around and flee. (Er, turn around and get help—that’s what I meant.) And if a motorist started trying to catch me from behind, I could just sprint a bit, pass the other cyclist, and let him be the victim. (While I went for help, of course.) Employing this strategy while riding up a hill would require more patience, but could be done. A downside to this scheme is that you’d have to wait at the top or bottom of the climb for a suitable human shield to show up.

A variation on this would be “humans shield” whereby you ride in a large group. (History has shown that two riders isn’t enough.) Of course, everyone in your group would have to be vaccinated first … but we’re getting there.

Strategy 4 - the “I’m-with-Grandma”

This is a variation on the human shield, with the human being in a car. I discovered this by accident too, when I got stuck behind an elderly, slow driver on the way down Wildcat. Again, a thief sitting in wait ahead would rule me out because there wouldn’t be enough space between me and Grandma’s car to move in. And if a thief came from behind, I could sprint around Grandma … the thief probably wouldn’t dare follow.

Strategy 5 - Capitulate

Of course you could just willingly comply and cooperate with the thief. After all, it’s just a bike, right? And isn’t every cyclist always looking for an excuse to buy a new ride? Consider the following exhibit, a chat I had with a friend recently over the absurd price of new chainrings and even replacing a simple bolt:

(Harrison, in this context, is my late father.)

The are problems with this strategy, though. As far as I can tell, homeowners’ and auto insurance don’t cover this kind of theft—and proper racing bikes are expensive. On top of that, I don’t trust criminals to be reasonable just because I’m cooperating. They’re loose cannons, right? Finally, I don’t trust myself to follow through and be docile. When I think of how angry I got when some shitbird stole the handlebars off my commuter bike, I sense I’d be ready for hand-to-hand combat if someone went for my entire bike. As a kid I used to get in a fair number of fistfights, and a weird, crude part of me misses them. Which brings me to the next strategy.

Strategy 6 - the Walt Longmire

I was unarmed—who brings a Colt M1911 on a bike ride?—so I decided to hand over my bike, even though the guy only had a knife. But knowing he’d try to escape on my bike, I opened the rear quick release as I rolled it to him. I’d taken off my helmet to try to draw his eyes away from my tampering, but he didn’t fall for it. “What did you do?” he asked, looking down. I saw my opportunity and swung my helmet as hard as I could up into his face. As he recoiled, I threw my entire bulk at him, pinning him to the ground under the bike. I wrested the knife from his hand and was about to pummel his face when his accomplice yelled, “Think again, asshole!”

I looked over to see the endless, stainless barrel of a Colt .357 pointed at my face… All I could think was that this was the last thing I would see. Time froze then, and it was as if the air had died…” Suddenly a giant cyclist came barreling down toward us doing at least thirty, stuck out a knee and an elbow, and nailed the gunman, sending him sprawling across the asphalt. I jumped to my feet, seized the dropped sidearm even before it stopped skittering across the road, and had the perp covered within seconds. Henry Standing Bear downshifted, turned around, and rode back up in time to yank the other thief from the ground and put him in a hammerlock before he could do anything.

The big Indian said calmly, “The thieves clearly did not realize you were riding with a friend. It is a good thing you dropped me before beginning your descent of Wildcat.”

(Note: the italicized text above is taken verbatim from Death Without Company by Craig Johnson, Penguin Books, 2006, page 245. Used without permission.)

Strategy 7 - Ride in the morning

There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you: I don’t rely on clever routes alone to avoid bike-jackers. I also ride bloody early in the morning—as in, before dawn. Why am I confident in this strategy? Well, so far the documented thefts have occurred between 11:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. And think about it: thieves are never morning persons. If they were morning persons, they’d have fricking jobs and wouldn’t have to rob people!

So you may be wondering how this is working out for me. So far, it’s great! For one thing, it’s a lot quieter and more peaceful … just me and the turkeys and an occasional jogger. That photo at the top of this post is the view of Mount Diablo from Wildcat Canyon Road, snapped during one of these morning rides.

On a recent outing, I didn’t encounter my first car until almost half an hour in, when a douchebag in a big Benz blew by me, coming way closer to me than necessary—practically grazing me—and going waaaaay over the speed limit. He wasn’t trying to rob me, though—he turned in to the parking lot at Inspiration Point. Why the rush? I’m guessing he wanted to get to his favorite meadow in time to do his sun salutation just as the sun came up over the horizon. What a git.

(Ironically enough, his unsafe pass occurred within twenty feet of this sign:

So you see, he was a scofflaw; just not a bike thief.)

Minutes later, I encountered another vehicle, suspiciously parked at the side of Wildcat Canyon Road, on the stretch where the first cyclist was robbed. But the vehicle was a Honda Element: way too conspicuous, not to mention nerdy, for thieves … it is beneath their criminal dignity. Meanwhile, the aroma of burning ganja emanating from the vehicle was strong enough to put me at ease. Even if the driver tried to rob me, I’d just have to stall him for a bit and he’d forget what he was doing and wander off.

After that, there were a few cars on San Pablo Dam Road but that’s a major commuter thoroughfare (with the traffic in the opposite direction, happily enough). Next up was El Toyonal, which is a beast of a climb but zero mugging risk … even the most boneheaded thief knows almost nobody rides here. You could wait half a day for a victim to happen along.

Not feeling like tackling Lomas Cantadas, I took the El Toyonal cut-through to Wildcat. It’s as peaceful a road as you could want:

Probably the riskiest part of my ride was heading up the top half of Wildcat towards Inspiration Point. That vulnerable bit of the route is why I ride so early. As it turned out, the only other car that passed me was a Tesla. I wasn’t bothered in the slightest, because Tesla owners are more the type to commit white collar crime.

Note that if you adopt the early morning strategy, it’ll get easier as summer approaches and the days got longer. Here’s a handy chart showing civil twilight times for this area:

This morning, civil twilight started at 5:56 a.m. I was on the road at 6:04, plenty early enough to get 20 miles in and still show up to work (at home, of course) by 8:00.

But what if you want to do a much longer ride, like the 70-mile round trip to the Mount Diablo summit? That brings me to my last anti-mugging strategy.

Strategy 8 - Slip between the horns

The other weekend, I wanted to ride Mount Diablo, but wouldn’t make it back to the Berkeley hills until early afternoon. The obvious solution to this problem would be to ride home over El Toyonal and Lomas Cantadas. But I don’t have nearly the fitness to do that … I missed a lot of riding last year due to injury, and I knew I’d be pretty well shattered by the Diablo summit, over thirty miles from home. The alternative would be crawling home over Wildcat in the afternoon, clearly a risky behavior. As I silently pondered the matter, my wife said, “Hey, how about I go shopping in Walnut Creek and meet you for lunch? You could throw a change of clothes in the car and drive home with me.”

Genius! She had seemingly recognized my false dichotomy (the fallacy that Lomas and Wildcat were my only options) and deftly slipped between the horns of the dilemma. Actually, her plan had nothing to do with the local crime spree, which (thankfully) I don’t reckon she thinks much about. It was just a novel idea of how to spend the afternoon.

It worked out perfectly: I destroyed myself on the mountain, coasted down the other side, found the car, changed, and twenty minutes later I was inhaling yucca fries, a Cuban sandwich, and a pint of IPA, with my bike safely locked up in the back of the car. This became the first point-to-point training ride of the year, with a sprinkling of net elevation gain to boot ... and exactly zero bike thieves. NOOICE!

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From the Archives - Punish Me, Young Man!

Introduction

Today’s post is a story I originally wrote for Daily Peloton. (Their servers crashed a couple years ago and all their content was lost, so I’m gradually re-posting my dp articles here.) Enjoy please enjoy.

Punish Me, Young Man – October 14, 2007

On my ride today I got crushed by a guy whose bike had a front reflector. And yet, it was a glorious ride. (If that grabs your attention, read on, but if you’re looking for pro race results, you won’t find them in this story.)

I got off to a late start on my ride this morning, tired and feeling vaguely demoralized. I’d been caught in the rain on the previous day’s ride and was having that standard existential crisis of “Why do I train so much, and so hard, in October no less, when I don’t even race anymore?” So I was dragging to begin with, and then on my second climb, South Park Road, I really started to bog down. I was not feeling any of those “positive sensations” the pro racers are always talking about. And I kept seeing these squashed newts on the road.

These endangered newts are protected half the year by a road closure, but it doesn’t begin until November and I guess they got a head start on their seasonal migration because of the early rain. It was depressing: I saw like two dozen of them, smashed completely flat. Okay, this really shouldn’t have affected my morale, but that’s the kind of morning I was having. I almost turned around and went home.

Fortunately, the night before I’d watched the violent Western “3:10 to Yuma” and was still feeling the effects of second-hand testosterone on the baser part of my nature—the lizard brain that doesn’t make excuses. I decided to push on, taking the steep, long descent of Claremont Road so I could drag myself back up it. Toward the bottom I saw this guy coming up. He waved, and I gave a little nod before realizing, wait, that was a really big wave, maybe he needs some help. I sat up, looked back, and (being basically at the bottom already) turned around and rode toward him. He slowed down so I could ride up alongside him. “Hi, I’m new here and don’t know any rides,” he said.

Now, before I commit to sharing my ride with a stranger, especially if I’m grumpy, I’ll usually try to figure out what kind of rider he is. You can’t really go by how nice his bike is, at least in the Bay Area, where a newcomer to the sport will happily drop three or four grand on a bike. But you can get clues: how well does the bike fit him? Double or triple crankset? And does his gear look suspiciously new, or well used?

This guy was on a spanking new ride, an Ultegra-equipped LeMond, with not only a triple crankset but a front reflector. I think I first recognized the stigma of a front reflector when I was about eleven. In all the shops I’ve worked at, that was the one reflector we always left off on new bikes, even the cheap ones. Getting the risk-averse shop management to approve this was never hard: front reflectors only serve those who ride on the wrong side of the road at night without a light.

And yet, this guy somehow didn’t seem like a novice. (I used to hear the term “Fred” applied to beginners, but one of our local heroes, Fred Rodriguez, has pretty much put that name to rest.) This guy’s position was good—he didn’t have his handlebars jacked up Mary Poppins style, which seems an epidemic among novice cyclists. And he was lean. He also had this European accent, which I couldn’t place. He was medium height, with very dark skin. His clothing looked great (but of course this is something money can buy). I asked him how long he was looking to go, and he said four hours. Four hours!

I told him I wasn’t going that long, but if he wanted I’d take him up the steepest climb in the area. I’m always trying get my friends to do this climb, called Lomas Cantadas, which gains 1,240 feet in about 2½ miles at an average grade of 11%. My friends’ responses usually range from “Yeah, right” to “I did that once and I’ll never do it again as long as I live.” How refreshing that this guy was so willing. Of course, he not only had no idea where else to ride, but didn’t know what he was getting into.

But first there was Claremont to get over. We began the climb—about 1.5 miles averaging 10%—and he started half-wheeling me right away. That can be annoying, but then I know how instinctive this is when you’re riding with someone you don’t know and want to make a good impression. But man, the harder I went, the faster he went, without ever seeming to strain. “New bike?” I asked him. He told me he was borrowing it from a local shop: he’d just moved here from Austria and would be trying out for the Health Net team on Monday. Had I heard of Health Net? Uh … yeah. Wow. Suddenly I realized that, as ambassador for Bay Area cycling to a serious European racer, I was going to have to dig deep to make sure this ride wasn’t a total waste of his time.

Dang, he was strong. Had this climb gotten steeper? I’m known on my bike club for having the strange (and annoying) ability to chatter away merrily right up to my anaerobic threshold, but here I found myself gasping for breath. I asked him how old he was: twenty. I’d been thinking we were more or less the same age, but only because I always forget how damn old I am. He asked, and I admitted I’m thirty-eight. (Going on fifty, I didn’t add.) I asked what his specialty was, and he said he’s an all-rounder. Yeah, he looked it, but he could sure climb. Toward the top of Claremont, he said, “Hey, you ride good.” He paused, then continued, “For thirty-eight.”

I rested a bit descending to Orinda and along the flat section before the dreaded Lomas Cantadas. As soon as we hit the climb I felt its wrath. (At least there’s no traffic—the narrow road winds around through a sparse residential area that eventually gives way to ranchland at the summit.) Within a quarter mile I was in my lowest gear and bogging down, but the Austrian never slowed. I dug deeper and deeper, looking for some sign that he was feeling anything. No sign. I asked him if he raced pro or amateur. “Professional,” said, and quickly added, “but only on a Continental team.” He pointed at his jersey: this past season he raced for Swiag Pro Cycling Team, and for the Austrian national team. I asked if he got to ride Worlds, and he said that the federation screwed up and didn’t submit their results to the UCI, and ended up only getting to send one rider instead of three. He’d been among the original three, but wasn’t the one guy who got to go.

So here I was, riding with an honest-to-God European pro! I wished I’d had better legs, though the difference between my best and worst day probably wouldn’t have been perceptible to him. Boy did I suffer. Somewhere along the line I hit my highest heart rate of the year, 181. I asked him at one point what his was: 150. 150! When I was his age, I would hit 150 riding to class … he must have really been loafing. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between a local boy and a real pro. He’s basically a different species.

On the hardest part of the climb, a couple miles in, I came completely apart. I was fricking rendered. The center could not hold. The infrastructure was crumbling. The fountains no longer worked in my plazas. Goats grazed in the shell of my capitol building. I weaved, my form was shot, my legs howled (albeit silently) like spoiled children, I wheezed like a leaf stuck in the blower. And yet, it was fun! I was taking on all comers: Man Against Man, Man Against Nature, Man Against Himself. I way dying, yes, but I had that wimp in my brain up against the turnbuckles at last. Oh yeah? Feeling lousy? Feeling weak and worthless? Well, let’s head out with this guy, lets offer him up my skinny legs to snap like twigs, let’s let my male ego trounce the rational mind once and for all, let’s see just how low I can go, how much pain I can pile on. I doubted the pro even noticed what I was going through, as he always stayed half a bike length ahead.

Ages ago, when my brother Geoff was an up-and-coming eighteen-year-old racer, he often rode with a thirty-something ex-racer named Bob, a crusty old veteran who’d been pretty good in his day. One day, as they duked it out on an epic Colorado climb, Geoff tried to keep a poker-face despite terrible, terrible suffering. Finally, he sneaked a glance at his opponent. Bob turned to him, grinned, and said, “Punish me, young man!” Ever since I heard that story, I’ve longed to use that line, and this here was almost the perfect opportunity. But the Austrian pro’s English wasn’t perfect, and I’d hate for the language barrier to distort the joke into something embarrassing. I was sure thinking it, though.

My motor control gone, I fumbled and dropped my water bottle. “Oh, I’ll get it,” the pro said. Normally I’d have tried to impress him by circling back and snatching it up without stopping, but I was in no condition to do it, and welcomed a brief respite. Besides, I wanted to see how long it took him to catch back up. He took his time circling back, stopped, stashed the bottle in his jersey pocket, and then smoothly but unhurriedly cruised back up as I kept myself redlined. I was reminded of the time I watched piranhas hunting goldfish in an aquarium: they’re so much faster than their prey, they simply don’t have to hurry. “No rush, I’ll take out the fish whenever I feel like it … okay—now.”

Finally the awful, beautiful climb was over, and we cruised the rest of my ride (he still had two and a half hours to go), chatting. He told me his name, Robel Tedros, and I figured out how to remember the name of his team, Swiag (“I will get lots of swag”). I gave him the URL of the bike club I’m on, and he said he might look me up. He described his plan: if his audition with Health Net goes well and he gets a good offer, he’ll race in the U.S.; otherwise he’ll move to Italy and race there. (I’m not sure why he’s leaving Austria, though he did mention the weather is lousy there.) I described some other roads he could check out, wished him luck on Monday, and we parted ways. I can’t imagine he won’t shred the Health Net boys, but who am I to say?

When I got home I googled his name and found him all over the race results websites, lots of top twenties. His profile on his team’s website, roughly translated by my browser (I don’t speak a word of German), reads thus: “Successes: winner total valuation of the UNIQA junior Trophy 2006, 6 victories in the junior class 2006, 6 further Top three placements in the junior class 2006, Viennese master in the junior class/road 2006, summoning into the Austrian junior national team 2006, 1 victory in the junior class 2005, 3 further Top three placements in the junior class 2005. Qualities: very good mountain driver, good individual time driver, good Sprinter, very good Allrounder, my nerve strength, openness, tolerance, loyalty, ambition.”

[Here’s a photo of Robel from around the time I encountered him.]

So, next time you see a guy with a front reflector on his bike, don’t jump to any hasty conclusions. He might be one of those mountain drivers!

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New Cycling World Record Set in Berkeley!

Introduction

Remember that “Brady Bunch” episode where Bobby and Cindy tried to set a world record for continuous teeter-tottering?  Well even if you don’t, imagine trying to go watch their attempt, as a complete stranger.  You’d be chased off by Mr. Brady, or maybe Alice.  But today I had a chance to interview a daring world record attempter even while he made his attempt.

The challenge

The current world record—yes, as in Guinness Book of World Records record—for “the most vertical metres cycled in 48 hours” is 28,789 meters (94,452 feet), set in 2012 by a Swiss rider.  That’s more than three trips up Mount Everest, if its base elevation were at sea level. 

The guy out there attempting a new world record, even as I type, is named Craig Cannon.  In addition to wanting to set a new record, he’s hoping to accumulate 100,000 vertical feet.  Something I’m particularly excited about is that Craig is doing this via endless trips up my favorite climb, South Park Drive in the Berkeley hills.  (I love this climb so much, I wrote an Ode to it, replete with footnotes & commentary, which you can read here.)  But as difficult as this climb is, Craig is doing his laps on the hardest section, which is 1.1 km (0.68 miles) long, at an average grade of 12%.  The elevation difference between the top and bottom of this section is 129 meters (423 feet).  So he’ll need to have completed about 236 laps (about 321 miles) in 48 hours.  You can see the Strava segment by clicking here.

So how much is 100,000 vertical feet?  Let’s put it in perspective.  A staircase gaining that much elevation would be 35 miles long; would have 166,667 steps; and would take you to the top of an 8,000 story building!

Wait.  Stop.  Set aside, for a second, the math and the grade and even the 100,000 feet.  Just think about bicycling up and down a murderously steep grade for 48 hours straight.  It’s an unbelievably difficult challenge Craig has undertaken.

The challenger

Until this past Thursday, I’d never heard of Craig or this effort.  What I can tell you is that he’s an Oakland area cyclist, a member of the Knackered Tyres cycling club, and has ridden with my East Bay Velo Club teammates a few times.  He asked one of them, Mike, to get the word out about his effort.  Craig wanted to have as much company as possible on the road, for moral support.

The only other thing I’d heard, before meeting up with him on the road, is that he started a little after 5:00 p.m. on Friday, rode through the night, and was joined by a couple of my teammates at around 11:30 a.m. on Saturday.  Here he is—he’s the guy in all black—riding with Muzzy (white arm warmers) and Jamey (behind him).  So this is 18½ hours into his effort.

And here he is at 9:48 p.m. on Saturday, close to 29 hours in.

My teammate MB snapped that photo; she and Muzzy, her husband, had gone to check on him that night (but without bikes).  No good action shots due to the darkness, of course.  That’s Craig’s mom, by the way, with the headlight.

The next morning MB, Muzzy, and another teammate, Lucas, joined Craig for some more pacing.  This photo is from about 9:50 a.m. when he was about 41 hours in.  Still looking pretty chipper, eh?

Riding with Craig

I thought about leaving for my own ride extra early this morning to ride a lap or two with Craig on the way to meeting another teammate, but I just didn’t feel like getting up that early, even to witness history being made.  I figured I’d drop in on the action on my way back from Mount Diablo.  Now, the easy way to come home from Diablo is via Wildcat Canyon Road, which links right up with South Park.  But to be honest, I was afraid that if I took this route, I’d chicken out, tell myself some lie like “He’s surely given up,” and go straight home.  I mean, cycling is hard, and attempting even one out-of-the-way trip up South Park presents a serious “gumption trap” (to borrow a term from Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).

So I came home over Lomas Cantadas, so I could descend South Park and look for Craig.  I have to admit, the small, weak part of me wouldn’t have been too disappointed if he’d given up, because I really, really didn’t feel like riding up South Park, even once.  And frankly, even though Craig had invited us to ride alongside him, I wasn’t at all sure I’d actually be welcome.  I mean, it was close to noon, meaning this guy had been riding for 43 fricking hours straight.  If I get less than 7 or 8 hours of sleep, I’m pretty grouchy.  I’ve pulled one all-nighter in my life, and was a beast afterward.  And that didn’t even involve continuous cycling on a brutal grade.  I feared that, by this point, Craig might be in no mood to deal with anybody, least of all a chatty guy like me.  Plus, not having seen the Sunday morning photo shown above, I figured Craig would look like absolute hell, presenting a truly pitiful sight.  So though I hate to admit it, I was prepared to be (one one level) kind of relieved if he wasn’t there.

But then there he was, cranking his way up the road, flanked by my teammate, MB.  By the time I safely turned around to catch up with them, they were pretty far ahead.  I had to really work to close the gap.  What the hell?  I’d ridden, what, 5 hours?  Amazingly, even after 43 hours, he was putting out a good pace.  After a short introduction whereby I invited him to tell me to shut up and/or go away if I bothered him—because I totally understood the pain cave where you want to suffer in peace—we had a nice chat over three laps (1,269 vertical feet) of the climb.

Some Q&A with the world record challenger

So, how was he doing?  Just fine!  Still on target!  With about 5 hours to go, he’d tallied up about 90,000 feet of vertical gain.  So he had to average 2,000 feet per hour for the rest of his ride to make his goal (half that to break the current record), and we were doing about 2,500 as we rode.  (To put this in perspective, the Tour de France peloton does around 4,200 feet per hour during the mountain stages.)  Craig had been through a pretty difficult period but had come through it.  He’d taken about a 25-minute rest during the night, but couldn’t tell if he’d actually slept or not.

He really did look relaxed and strong.  Here are a couple of photos, taken a little before noon.

 

Is his bike anything special?  Not really.  Another guy who was riding with us complimented him on using an old school steel frame.  “Yeah, I like the feel of steel, and it’s cool to get to hang out with the guy who built it,” Craig said.  “It’s not the lightest bike in the world, but....”  I decided to finish his sentence:  “It’s not like you ride a lot of hills or anything.”

Does he race?  No, he just likes “messing around on a bike,” as he put it.  (I’m quoting him as though verbatim but it’s just from memory.  To do otherwise is just too clunky.)  He hasn’t ruled out racing in the future.  He did do a pretty gnarly competitive event that had the word “Everest” in it.  It wasn’t the Everest Challenge, a race I’ve done and written about a few times, which features 29,000 feet of climbing over two days, but rather a self-paced, virtualized GPS-based event where you try to accumulate that much vertical gain in just one ride.  Craig accomplished that on this very climb—South Park Drive—though he was doing longer laps, from the very bottom to the top.

So, why South Park Drive?  He worked with a coach and thought hard about the best way to tackle this world record, and ultimately decided this climb was perfect because it was steep enough that his speed would be low enough (too shallow a grade = too much speed = excessive wind resistance); the grade wasn’t so steep that his pedaling cadence would get too slow; and this road has a lot of cyclists on it so he’d have plenty of moral support.  He emphasized the need for camaraderie since so much of such an effort is psychological.  Oh, and he needed a route that has restrooms.  And an extra bonus is that when you descend this road, there aren’t any roads connecting to it from the right.  This makes it a lot safer.

Tons of food?  Yes, though most of the calories are from energy drink (I think he said this, and no, I didn’t manage to remember what brand he uses).  Beyond that he eats a total hodgepodge of things, including potato chunks with olive oil and salt.  Caffeine?  Yes, plenty, and he went off it completely for two weeks prior to lower his tolerance.  He also stopped having any alcohol for like six weeks leading up to the record attempt.

Longest ride before this?  Low 40s.  As in, more than 40 hours.  Unbelievable.  He’d also done a 48-hour double-all-nighter (not on the bike) just to make sure he could do it, and then immediately rode up Mount Diablo.  As we chatted, I couldn’t get over how chipper and good-natured he was, and how solid a pace we were knocking out.  Occasionally on a particularly steep pitch he’d stop mid-sentence and say, “Can’t talk now.”  Then he’d pick right back up again later.

Bike lights?  Of course, and good ones.  Three headlights, NiteRider brand (which are sweet), though not the very fanciest ones available.  Also a good tail light, of course, even though very few cars would be driving on South Park Drive at night.  (This is something I love about this road.  It’s just not a very useful route for a motorist to take.  Yeah, there are cars, but no commuters, and generally nobody in a hurry.)

Craig’s support crew

In addition to Knackered Tyre teammates joining him on the road (in shifts, like my EBVC pals were doing), Craig had a team based at the bottom of his route, at the turnaround point.  His mom, who had flown out from Boston to support him, was there for the entire duration of his effort and stayed awake the entire time!  A woman whom I believe is his girlfriend had put an image of him on a stick.  I’m not entirely sure what this was used for, but I like it!

I think it’s pretty impressive that he was able to get these people to devote so much time, through the night no less, to an endeavor that just seems so crazy.  His coach was among those gathered.  At one point his mom poured some water on him (it’s a hot day out there) and he cautioned her not to pour too much—he didn’t want it getting into his chamois.  (In case you’re wondering about his, uh, comfort in the saddle, I was too but I didn’t ask.  If he’d managed to stop thinking about how much his butt hurt, I didn’t want to break the spell.)

The suspense!

It’s 5:02 p.m.  I think he said he started at 5:10 p.m. (last fricking Friday, for crying out loud!) so he might already have the record ... and he might already have crossed that miraculous 100,000-feet threshold!

It was fun getting Craig’s story even as he lived it, and part of me wanted to ride with him the rest of the time, but a) the part of me that wanted to keep going was only the mental part, whereas my body had had quite enough, thank you; b) I was out of energy drink and gels and wasn’t about to bum some off him; and c) I was sure he’d get sick of me.  (I would.)  So I rolled home at around 12:20 p.m., thinking how cool it would be to rest a bit, have some food, and then return to join him for those last few victorious laps.  But in my heart I knew I wouldn’t make the effort.  Bicycling up hills is really hard and we’re not, any of us, made of such stuff as Craig obviously is.

Well?!  Did he make it?!

It’s now 6:17 p.m.  I’ve fact-checked the world record; proofread this report; checked Strava a dozen times; and I’m still waiting....

And now, at 7:00 p.m., I have just received a triumphant e-mail from MB:  “He did beat the record. Muzzy, Sean, Mike and I were there.  Awesome!”

Here are some final photos. The first was taken a little before 5 p.m. (assuming the camera time was set correctly), around ten minutes before the end:

And here he is checking his GPS device. I can well imagine it would be difficult to interpret (much less believe) the instrument’s data after 48 hours of cycling. Good thing he has other people corroborating.  (There was also the (perhaps not wholly unwarranted) fear of the device malfunctioning and losing his record-breaking data, so several pals snapped photos of it.) His total elevation gain was 95,622 feet ... more than enough to set a new world record, though a bit short of his (albeit arbitrary) goal of 100,000. Kind of like hitting a grand slam home run but not sending the ball into low Earth orbit like you thought might be cool to do.

And here he is with MB enjoying a cold post-ride beverage. I’m told NBC News showed up at the end to cover the victory celebration.  Way to go, Craig!

About the type

Assuming default configuration of your Internet browser and computer operating system, this blog post will be set in Georgia, a typeface originally cut with a crude hunting knife into the trunk of a Mongolian oak (quercus mongolica) in Izborsk, Russia, in the early 1800s by Ivan Ivanovich Zakareishvili in memory of Tsar Alexandar I.   Georgia was first introduced to the web in 1997 when bundled with the Internet Explorer 4.0 supplemental font pack.

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