Race Report - Everest Challenge 2013 (Stage 2)

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for coarse humor and mild strong language.

Introduction

A few days ago, when my lips were still too sunburned for me to smile comfortably, I regaled you, or somebody like you, with the exploits of my bike pals and me as we tackled Stage 1 of the 2013 Everest Challenge stage race.  I’ve forgotten half of what happened during Stage 2 already so I better get to it or I’ll be reduced to the classic one-line race report, “There was a race and somebody must have won but it sure wasn’t me,” which could be used for just about any athletic endeavor, come to think of it.

Pre-race

I slept pretty well until about 2:00 a.m.  Anybody with such a daunting race ahead of him, and one just as daunting already behind him, could be forgiven for having night terrors.  But I didn’t have night terrors—I had night bowels.  I suppose we should all be grateful that our bowels shut down and night … when they do.  But to whom much has been fed, much is to be expected.  I was up again around 4 a.m. for another round, and then somebody’s smartphone alarm—something between a purr and a growl—went off at 4:45 and we were all up and about with our pre-race preparations, which consisted mainly of groaning, committing brazen acts of flatulence, and making sophomoric jokes of the very highest (and lowest) order.

Halfway through my bowl of GoLean Crunch (which I pronounce “Goal-ee-an Crunch” and pretend is the food they ate in “Star Trek”) I began to hear murmurs from below.  They were the non-verbal equivalent of “never send to know for whom the bowels move; they move for thee.”  It was time, once again.

Needless to say, with four nervous bike racers sharing a motel room, there was no chance of the toilet being free.  I puckered and squirmed and waited and finally heard the happy gurgle of the toilet flushing.  I was already on my feet when I heard a cry from the bathroom and one of the guys came staggering out, looking (as another described it later) as though he’d just witnessed a murder.  And in a sense he had:  he’d killed the toilet.  Totally overwhelmed it.  Kicked its ass, you might say.  The water level had risen to the rim and beyond, carrying his fecal offspring with it.  This couldn’t be happening!  I needed that toilet!  I needed it now!  I was already crowning!

Fortunately, Paul’s friend Rich had another room just a few doors down, or this report might move from daytime TV territory into another “Silence of the Lambs” installment.  I won’t dwell on the devastating effect this overflow had on our group other than to say that a) I plunged that bad boy myself once the maintenance guy dropped off the plunger; b) we tipped the maid very well, and c) when we got to the race I still wasn’t caught up from that giant dinner the night before.  So I had to brave the trailer-mounted San-O-Let near the start line. 

The line wasn’t too bad, but the tiny trailer’s suspension was shot and/or its tires were low, because being in there was like being in a ship during a storm, or maybe being in a NASA flight simulator.  There was nothing to hold onto and I couldn’t shake the thought that some mistake might be made and the trailer driven off toward some far-flung rest stop with me still in there.

Stage 2 – 73 miles, 14,030 feet of climbing

During the race, I had seven bottles of Cytomax, one bottle of water, one bottle of Heed, one foil pouch of Capri-Sun, half a banana, and five gels.  I thought of the Capri-Sun as a Capri-Sonne; I first became aware of this beverage in 1981 because they sponsored a pro cycling team in Europe that rode kickass Koga-Miyata bicycles.  (That was, incidentally, the first year Capri-Sun was sold in the U.S., and the year I got my first Miyata.)  During the race, the prospect of a) a drink associated with a cool pro team, b) a drink that wasn’t Cytomax or Gatorade or Heed, and c) a drink that might actually be cold, was thrilling to contemplate.  This was at a brutal part of the race when the temperature was 96 degrees and … wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Imagine this.  It’s the summit of the first climb, to Glacier Lodge, and I’ve crested it with the leaders!  In fact, as they slow to take water bottles, I cruise right past to take the lead.  As we begin the blazing descent, I look back and yell, “OKAY DUDES!  ARE YOU READY TO SHRED THIS GNAR’?!”

Now forget that whole vignette because it’s absurd.  Of course that’s not what happened.  In reality I hung with the leaders only until a good number of riders had fallen off, and then I backed off my pace, hoping not to waste all my energy early and then utterly crack on the final climb as I had the previous two years.  I think seven or eight guys dropped me.  I counted two of them whom I’d beaten the day before, when I’d placed sixth, so I figured if I didn’t see them again, I’d slip down in the overall standings.  My hope, of course, is that they were foolishly going out too hard and would pay later.

On the second climb, Waucoba Canyon, I was totally alone, and it started to get hot.  Traditionally it hasn’t been such a bad climb, except that last year they lengthened it (for complicated reasons you don’t care about).  Look, and zoom in:  Waucoba is almost as high as the first climb now (original course is on the left):

I kept my pace ridiculously mellow, my heart rate in the 130s.  It was just a slog.  It was the bike racing equivalent of Traffic School, except more boring.  I’ll tell you the highlight:  I was pedaling along, the air dead still, not a rider in sight, even my breathing so quiet the whole world around me was one huge hush, and then this giant and very loudly buzzing fly, probably a horsefly, flew by, from my left side past my face before flying off to the right, and I got a pitch-perfect example of the Doppler effect.  It was as perfect as an animated short showcasing the THX sound system before a Pixar movie.  And then it was over and things got boring again.

The third pass, to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, has been accurately described as a ░░░░.  That’s right, a word I can’t even put in this blog.  The climb starts at just under 4,000 feet and finishes at over 10,000 feet (with a demoralizing little screw-you descent along the way).  It’s always hottest at the lower sections, where there’s usually a bit of tailwind.  It’s a sauna, in short.  This is the place where you know whether or not you’ve saved enough:  if you start crying, you’ve squandered your strength too early.  I felt okay and only wished it didn’t go on so long.  Sometimes I’d see somebody up in the distance and, over a period of five or ten minutes, overtake him.  Sometimes somebody would pass me, and ride away just as gradually.  It was like one of those car race video games, except in super-slo-mo.  (I could be blasé about any rider passing me whose bib number didn’t start with a 4—that is, any rider who wasn’t in my category.)  It was along this section I got the Capri-Sun.  Somebody had brought it specially for his son, but the son rejected it, the little ingrate, so:  my gain.  Dang it was good.

So, did you notice that just now?  How I started the tale of this race by telling about the Capri-Sun, and then backed up and started the story from the beginning, and then caught up to the Capri-Sun bit again?  That’s a very sophisticated literary technique called in medias res and it’s generally considered a privilege of the élite to get to enjoy such masterfully constructed narratives.  I’d like to thank my mom and dad for paying for a good bit of the English degree that makes such things possible.

I had some trouble with allergies and blew some giant snot comets out my nose.  Twice they refused to detach, and flew out behind me like some grotesque narrow scarf, and I had to pinch them off with my forefinger and thumb and fling them away.  I pretended I was finally expelling the tapeworms that I (and others) have long suspected are living in my stomach.

I just kept pacing myself, going no harder than I needed to, which meant hardly working except for the really steep sections, which were kind of a treat because I could just plow over them by digging a bit deeper.  This went on until I got to around 7,000 feet and passed a guy in my category.  I recognized him from the day before when I’d introduced myself to him.  I remembered distinctly that he was either 5th or 7th place the day before.  (Okay, I guess that’s not actually remembering it distinctly.)  It was one or the other, meaning one of us could pass up the other in the GC based on this stage.  It had taken me awhile to overtake him and I was level with him long enough to exchange looks.  Who knows what my look really said, but to my mind it was something like “Sorry about this, but sometimes a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.”  His look was less inscrutable; it said something like “Damn you all to hell you soulless life-ruiner.”

I pulled away only gradually, and occasionally I looked back to see where he was, and he was never very far behind.  I feared that he’d been loafing and only needed a little extra motivation to dig into his reserves.  No matter how long the climb lasted—and any EC veteran can tell you it’s seemingly endless—this guy was never far back.  He was starting to really stress me out.  I lifted my pace to where I was starting to suffer properly, and thus to doubt how long I could keep it up.  But he just stayed there like some Masters 35+ doppelgänger.  And then, horribly, he started to close in.  Suddenly my dream of “touring” the EC was over, and I was actually racing.

Oh, I did what I could, my heart rate well into the (gasp!) 140s, the memory returning of how cruel this climb could be, but there was really nothing I could do to defy fate.  Soon my opponent had teamed up with some other guy and they were trading pulls in the headwind sections.  (Yes, of course there were headwind sections.)  And finally, after maybe twenty minutes of this mutual struggle, he had me.  I was trying to figure out what to say.  “Chapeau” seemed a bit twee, but “Hey, nice job, way to dig deep” would give him too much encouragement and help seal my doom.  Of course, there was always “Damn you all to hell you soulless life-ruiner,” but that wouldn’t capture the cowardly relief I got by giving up.

But to my sudden amazement, as he pulled up alongside, I realized this wasn’t my Masters 35+ opponent at all—it was one of his teammates from another category!  Somehow, the two had traded places on the road.  I’d been chased up the mountain by a phantom rival!  I could have laughed, except that this would probably have started a coughing fit.

Now it dawned on me that I didn’t have to slow down just because I wasn’t being pursued; I was close enough to the finish to stop saving my legs.  It’s kind of like when I ran out of money in college and thought, “Could I use the Uncle John inheritance?  No, I’m saving that for college … wait, I’m in college!  I can use it!”  So I kept up the higher pace, and hung with the two guys who’d just caught me.  As we gradually neared the finish we caught a couple more guys. 

And then, in the last quarter-mile, I saw another Masters 35+ rider a ways up the road.  How cool would it be, I thought, to pass him with like fifty meters to go?  He’d be morally shattered, of course.  A real sucker-punch, after all that suffering.  Yeah, I figured, I had to do it.  Now, normally a quarter mile wouldn’t have been enough to overhaul anybody, but the last quarter mile of this race is special.  It’s over 10,000 feet elevation and you’ve got almost 170 miles of racing in your legs.  A quarter mile is a vast distance in this case, especially when the guy you’re chasing is totally blown.

So I dug deep and started completely drilling it.  I was surprised—pleasantly or not, I couldn’t say—that I could get enough air to make my legs burn.  But burn they did, and gradually I closed the gap.  I realized maybe I’d actually catch him too soon, and he’d have a chance to react, but once I was upon him this fear was stamped out because once again I’d hallucinated—this wasn’t a fellow Masters 35+, just another innocent bystander in another category.  I felt like the dog who finally caught the mailman.  But a minute later it was all over and the race was finished.

A guy I’d beaten the day before took second on the day, so I slipped to 7th in the overall.  This stage had seemed to take at least an hour less than it had the year before, but looking back it turns out I was only like four minutes faster.  And since I went so much faster on Stage 1 last year than this year, my overall GC time was slower this year.  Lesson learned:  suffering works!  Next year I’m going way harder.

For the nerds out there, here are some power and heart rate stats:

 - 259 watts at 143 bpm on the first climb (vs. 248 watts at 142 bpm last year);
 - 221 watts at 135 bpm on the second climb (vs. 220 watts at 133 bpm last year);
 - 232 watts at 136 bpm on the final climb (vs. 220 watts at 136 bpm last year).

Before you get all smug about being way stronger than I, consider that those are “dog-watts”—that is, they’re based on my rate of vertical gain and my weight (from the formula f=mgh) without considering wind resistance, etc.  A real power meter would’ve read higher.

Presently Mike arrived, and before long he started digging through his bag.  He pulled out a large shiny foil-wrapped thing that ended up being leftover pizza.  Amazingly, he had enough to share with Craig and me.  Because Mike’s initials are MC, he gets lots of ad hoc nicknames (e.g., MC Everest, MC Hammer) and through this gesture he earned the moniker “MC Genius” which seems to have stuck.  Here are some photos of us at the top.  Paul, Mike, Jamie, Lee, and Craig ... if you don’t know who these guys are, check out my Stage 1 report.

Post-race

For lunch we went to Erick Schat’s Bakkery in Bishop, a tradition we somehow didn’t follow last year.  In the report I filed two years ago I called it a Bakery but it’s actually a Bakkery, as Ian pointed out, or maybe it was Lee.  (I was tired and those British accents all meld together, especially when they’re saying non-English words like “Bakkery.”)  Lee was all excited about the pastrami sandwich until I pointed out the placard that says “Note:  our pastrami is not lean.”  Amazingly, this turned him off to it. Obviously he’s got a lot to learn about food, but give him time … he’s still young.

While we stood in line at Schat’s, Craig challenged me to a sandwich-eating race.  Over dinner the previous night I’d bragged about my Burrito World Championship victory and I guess he thought it was time for my comeuppance.  He also decided that for some reason it would be fair for him to get a head start on me and start eating as soon as he got to the table.  Well, I was delayed finding a fork for my potato salad, and moreover forget all about the race, and he beat me.  Man, was he stoked.  He gloated like he’d just won Everest.  To quote Lermontov, “I feel that one day he and I will meet on a narrow path, and one of us shall fare ill.”

Note that it was impossible to get everybody to pose for this photo.  They were all too into their food.  My pastrami sandwich was not lean, and I mean that in the best possible way.

During the drive we stopped at Bridgeport again, at a little shack where we got milkshakes and whatnot.  Look at MC Genius here, two-fisting it with a shake and curly fries:

The smoke was just as bad on the drive home.  Man, it stunk.  It all but blotted out the sun—check it out.

In the grim town of Escalon (at least, it was grim when we rolled through) Paul badly needed some dinner.  I was a bit hungry myself.  We stopped at Taco bell, a good 15 minutes before closing time, but the good-for-nothing staff had decided to close early.  We could see them in there, cleaning up.  I’m sure Paul considered driving the Intimidation Van through the glass doors at high speed, but was just too tired.  So we did a driving tour of Escalon, growing increasingly despondent as place after greasy place was closed.  A little cat was lapping water from a puddle in a parking lot and we slowed to a crawl, considering its plight.  We passed a supermarket.  “You could just stop there and buy a big bag of frozen shrimp,” I offered.  Finally we found a McDonald’s that was open.  My fries came from a totally fresh batch—the fry cook seemed pretty proud of them—but they were oddly disgusting, even to my starvation-softened palate.  Paul ate some damn thing, I don’t remember, and everybody else just kept up the post-Everest patter, words that drifted away instantly, like smoke.

MC Genius loaned me his truck to drive home.  Along the way, I noticed an ominous dashboard light:  Tailgate Open.  I could lose my bike right out the back!  That would be a disaster, of course, but as I pondered the bruised state of my respiratory system, and suppressed a coughing fit, I reflected that there would be a silver lining to such a mishap.  I’ve had enough cycling for awhile....

Postscript

It turns out that, although I was indeed 7th place in the second stage, I maintained my 6th place overall.  That does it, I’m going to race again next year!  (Actually, this was never in question.)

Race Report - Everest Challenge 2013 (Stage 1)

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and coarse humor.

Introduction

I decided to do something different with this year’s Everest Challenge report and turn it into a performance art piece with mimes acting it out for a group of homeless people down at the Civic Center, but I’m running low on time.  So I’m going with text and photos for the fifth year in a row.

I hope that, like me, you don’t really care who won or how.  All that chess-game-on-wheels stuff happened way up the road from where I was.  But you know what?  You can line up the guys who beat me—let’s make it a line at a buffet in a Vegas casino—and I’ll eat those motherfrockles under the table.  In fact I’ll bet you money I could destroy them in a beer chugging competition, the birdlike climber bastards!  And now that the EC is over I’m going to catch up on lost beer, believe me.

Pre-race

This year we met at Mike C’s place in Oakland because we’re born competitors and enjoy duking it out for parking there.  Paul had brought the Intimidation Van again this year and was already loading bikes on its ass-kicking roof rack when I arrived with my wife and my daughter Lindsay, who almost certainly has developed some grudging respect for me after seeing that van and grasping my association with it.  She begged to be allowed up on the roof.  She was so stoked.  Ten years from now she’ll probably be our soigneur, and by then (if Chris Horner’s example teaches us anything) we’ll all be top pro racers with giant salaries and will give her a Rolex for Christmas.

Next Ian and Craig showed up, and this new guy named Lee.  By “new” I mean not just new to our group, but freshly minted.  I think he said he was like 28.  I’m not even sure his fontanel has closed up yet.  Basically he’s like that new Death Star that was still under construction and we’re all Millenium Falcons.  He came all the way from London for the race, with no plan for getting from San Francisco to Bishop.  He mentioned his situation on some social media platform, which caught Ian’s notice.  (These Brits look out for each other.)  To sum up:  we EC veterans, when we’re not riding bikes, are all dithering with our 401(k)s and living wills, while this guy is just winging it, pointing himself blithely and vaguely at unknown distant couches … and yet he still lands a spot in the coveted Intimidation Van.  Well played!

A week ago Paul e-mailed the group recommending that everybody bring something to supplement the chocolate chip cookies his girlfriend would be baking (for the second year in a row).  I mumbled something aloud when I read this, knowing my daughter Alexa might be in earshot if the word “cookie” was involved.  That was as close as I came to issuing an edict, but on Thursday morning I was working from home, my wife gone somewhere, and Alexa and Lindsay started crashing around in the kitchen.  A couple hours, some loud disputes about chocolate chips, and three sticks of butter later we had a bunch of banana bread.  Actually, it was kind of chocolate chip cake with banana added.  Glorious. 

I thought this banana bread would make me a hero among the guys, but they’d also stepped up their game.  Craig’s kids had made like three kinds of cookies including soft ginger snaps and spicy chocolate cookies, Paul had a massive supply of chocolate chip cookies and Mike had styled us out with oatmeal cookies and auxiliary chocolate chip ones.  I just realized that the sheer number of instances of the word “cookie” in this post will draw unprecedented traffic to this blog.  Sweet.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is the terrible fire raging just west of Yosemite that required us to detour north through Sonora.  The smoke was terrible.  We stopped at a visitor’s center due to Mike’s micro-bladder and the air outside the van was really unpleasant to breathe.  The stuffy van air, filtered through our respiratory/flatulatory systems, was actually preferable.

Lunch was at J’s Place in the tiny town of Bridgeport.  The air was a bit better in Bridgeport, and the temperature quite pleasant, but the air conditioning in J’s place was jacked way up.  We all went back to the van for sweatshirts, and that’s when I realized just how fit and awesome we all were.  I’ll bet anybody with double-digit body fat would have been perfectly comfortable in there but not us elite über-athletes.  Speaking of temperature, in the endless race-planning e-mail string Mike had written, “High temps look lovely:  92 degrees in the valleys, and high 70s on the peaks.  I don’t know the conversion to Kelvin or whatever it is folks use in the UK.”  I followed up with some more advice for Lee:  “At the Everest Challenge the vertical gain isn’t measured in meters, but in shitloads.  You should calibrate your Garmin accordingly.”

My Philly cheesesteak was way better than the grey-meat, Velveeta-clad, white-spongiform-roll atrocities I’ve had in Philly, but not as good as that place in North Beach.  The fries were pretty sturdy.  Mike sort of out-ate me by supplementing his animal flesh sandwich with a salad, but I let this roll off my back.  I mean, salad?  As in, what chicks eat?  How about a nice glass of Crystal Lite while you’re at it?

I’ll get to the dinner report, but first check out this photo.  Zoom in.  See all those little white specks on this bike?  No, not some new spatter-paint bike finish; that’s ash from the fire.  I’d also like you to check out how new the tire is on this bike.  More on that later.

After checking into the motel we went for our traditional spin-the-legs ride, joined by Jamie and another guy from the UK.  I can’t remember who was forcing the pace at the front—I was sitting in as usual—but it was ridiculous.  (Craig would mention later that this was the hardest he went all weekend.)  This was on one of those grades that are common in Bishop that are much steeper than they look.  Plus, we had a headwind.  My legs felt terrible.  I finally had to go up to the front just to slow it down.  Then we stopped for a photo-op and headed back to Bishop.

We’d got to the registration early this year, and the pasta feed wasn’t really going yet.  Having the race a year early shrunk the size of the fields, and the overall operation was scaled back appropriately.  So we decided to skip the free meal and tank up at Astorga’s, the Mexican place our teammate Marybeth recommended last year.  Just about everybody ordered the Twelve, their three-item combo platter (chile relleno, enchilada, taco, rice, beans, garnish).  I got mine with a side of flour tortillas so I wouldn’t have to tinker with a fork while eating all my platter-shrapnel.  It’s much better to pack it into a burrito that I can guide into my mouth like a branch through a wood-chipper.  Oh, I just remembered that Mike got steak fajitas, because I got one of his tortillas, some of the steak, and most of his shrapnel.  Glorious.  I’d say we each ate at least 3,000 calories there, but we didn’t get any guacamole because, you know, we had to stay fit and trim for the race.

Stage 1 – 88.5 miles, 14,965 feet of climbing

We had two suites this year in the motel.  I was in the MegaSüite which had four beds, and it was a hive of pre-race jitters on Saturday morning.  There was only one bathroom, which meant the toilet was busier than a Model-T assembly line.  The Bishop water table probably still hasn’t recovered.  The bearings in the bathroom fan are probably shot. 

Breakfast was Crisp Lice, which is what I call house-brand Rice Krispies to make my kids laugh.  (If you didn’t laugh, or at least chuckle, how did you get so bitter?  You didn’t even race!)  Mike had some highfalutin home-cooked meal with quinoa and a low glycemic index.  I’d have thought he was trying to intimidate me, but we were racing different categories!

“You’re putting on deodorant?  Before a bike race!?” I heard Paul ask.  “Yes,” Lee replied.  “I have to smell nice for the ladies!”  A  moment later he added:  “Because I’m going to be riding with them!”  Laughs all around.

During the race I drank eight bottles of Cytomax, one bottle of Heed, and a bottle or two of water.  Ian was working support for us again, though he started the support role a bit later so he could ride the first mountain pass.  (I know, so selfish, right?)  Mike, an EC newcomer, had given Ian very clear but complicated instructions, I think even in writing, but somehow for the second year in a row I simply neglected to do this.  I guess I don’t learn because every time I do this race I destroy another few billion brain cells, plus the desire to race it indicates that a certain amount of memory has been repressed from the previous year.

My strategy for the race this year was a peculiar mix of fatalism and a desperate, groping embrace of my radical free will.  You see, last year I had my fastest-ever time on Stage 1, only to completely crack on Stage 2.  I was determined not to repeat this, and thus to go easier on Stage 1.  This meant willingly letting other riders go on climbs, even when I could simply choose to ride faster.  This takes a lot of discipline because it means descending solo, which is slow.  A group is so much faster because you can all slingshot off each other (really, one of the most exhilarating aspects of this sport).  The fatalism comes in when you remind yourself that the time gaps between places are pretty big, and dinking around on a downhill or stopping to get fresh bottles at the van won’t make much difference in the overall placing.

Still, that crucial moment of letting myself get dropped by the leaders, maybe 2/3 of the way of the first climb, didn’t go quite like I’d planned.  I was sitting in sixth and saw that the grade was only getting steeper.  We’d all been absolutely hammering for a good while and it was time for a gel.  I’d have liked to wait for a lull in the action but that clearly wasn’t going to happen.  The problem was, I ripped the top off the gel package too high up, and couldn’t get the bleb to break (i.e., I couldn’t get any gel out).  I thought of putting it away, but figured it would burst in my jersey pocket and soil everything.  Plus, I needed those calories.  So I tore at the plastic with my teeth, getting more and more panicked and violent, my breathing more labored, and I imagine I was thrashing my head around like a bull terrier trying to rip the bull’s nose off.  I kept catching little bits of plastic with my other hand and stuffing them into my jersey pocket to assuage my liberal guilt for expelling so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere while cycling.  Finally I got the damn thing open and the gel down my throat, but I was breathing so hard I actually kind of inhaled it, and by this point I was completely anaerobic.  I backed off my pace and moved to the side to let the rest of the pack pass me, hoping that by the time I hit the back of the group I’d be recovered enough to latch on.  (As always, we had a stiff headwind for most of this first climb.)

Well, imagine my surprise at discovering the pack was no longer there!  I’d been the last rider in this front group without even realizing it.  Of course I’d have loved to glom back on the first five guys but it was simply impossible.  I drifted back to what was left of the group (it had pretty much shattered by this point and had been a small group to begin with).  By the way, I’m not trying to imply that the gel mishap cost me the race.  My plan had always been to release myself from the race leaders on my own recognizance; this just forced the issue.  You cannot imagine the amount of grief the guys gave me when I told this little gel story.  You’d think I started out by saying, “I had the race in the bag until….”

I found a few guys to ride with until very near the first summit, when I decided I was bound to detonate if I kept it up.  So, I did the first descent solo, and in fact for most of the race I was all alone, fighting the wind.  By the way, my compact crank certainly cost me some time because I only have a 50x12 top gear, and spent a lot of time coasting when pedaling a 53x12 would have been faster.  But then, I’m kind of a grandma on the descents these days anyway, after a big crash in 2011.  I’m not going to run out and buy an 11-25 9-speed cassette (if I could even find one) because I just don’t care.  I get major points with the wife for being such a wussy descender.

Still, things went pretty well for most of the first stage.  On the second climb I was able to dial in the pace I wanted, vs. struggling to turn over my lowest gear.  I kept my heart rate around 150, my cadence around 70, and was comfortable.  Sure, I had the impulse to say “Screw this!” and start hammering, but my memory of destroying myself on the final Stage 2 climb the year before kept me in line.

I only had one moment of difficulty.  I was pedaling along into the wind on a straight section where the grade had eased off a bit, and having gotten a bottle of water from the neutral support decided to mix up some energy drink.  I had a Ziploc baggie of the mix, but when I pulled it out of my pocket I realized it had ripped.  I desperately tried to guide the powder into my bottle but the wind was blowing it everywhere, especially right into my face.  (This was Cytomax, which has such fine granules it makes baby powder seem as course as gravel by comparison.)  With one hand I held the bottle, with the other tried to increase the size of the rip in the bag, and the cap of the bottle was in my teeth, and my precious drink mix was literally slipping between my fingers.  Then I hit a bump and my bottle splashed all over my hands, making them a magnet for the drink powder which quickly formed a sticky pink candy on everything.  It was like one of those disasters at the Willy Wonka factory.

On the flat section leading toward the Paradise climb (a nasty little bonus grade on the way to the final of the three main climbs) I caught two guys who had dropped me earlier.  One of them was a pretty tough-looking dude with his arms completely covered in tattoos, and biceps so big he’d had to slice the cuffs on his jersey’s sleeves.  He was leading at the base of the Paradise climb and suddenly veered left and started swinging his head around as if looking for something.  “I keep hearing voices,” he said (soberly).  I joked that if the voices told him to do anything violent, to please ignore them.  He didn’t chuckle or anything, just kept looking around.  I took this as my cue to exercise my radical freedom and get the hell away from him.  In the process I dropped the other guy too, and was all alone again.

On the final climb I passed two fellow Masters 35+ racers who had dropped me at least three hours before.  I don’t mind admitting I enjoyed that.  And, due mainly to the smaller field, I got my best result ever in an EC stage:  sixth place.  For the nerds out there, here are some power and heart rate stats:

 - 281 watts at 155 bpm on the first climb (vs. 285 watts at 154 bpm last year);

 - 253 watts at 152 bpm on the second climb (vs. 260 watts at 153 bpm last year);

 - 233 watts at 147 bpm on the final climb (vs. 240 watts at 148 bpm last year).

Before you get all smug about being way stronger than I, consider that those are “dog-watts”—that is, they’re based on my rate of vertical gain and my weight (from the formula f=mgh) without considering wind resistance, etc.  A real power meter would’ve read higher.  Being solo for more of the first climb is surely why I put out less power than last year but at a higher average heart rate.  (No, I wasn’t fitter last year.  I’m fitter this year.)

Food was a bit more sparse at the top, though they had burgers, leftover pasta, some ad hoc soup, Coke, and granola bars.  I had something better:  my kids’ banana bread.  Man, that was good.  Jamie was already there, having placed a stellar third in the Masters 55+, and the other guys rolled in before long, one at a time according to their start times.  (Oddly, no two of us raced the same category this year; because of the August heat, Craig was doing the Clydesdales so he could start earlier.)

My legs felt fine after the race, but my gut was roiling.  I had had to resort to one bottle of the race-provided energy drink.  I’m sure it works just fine for a great many riders, but EBVC lore is full of horror stories and now I’ve lived one.  I figured a trip to the outhouse would settle everything, but I couldn’t find one.  Some joe said there was one around the other side of the parking lot, but he was probably just making me waste energy and wear down my cleats because he has a teammate in my category or something.  Fortunately, during my walk I had two of the most amazing bursts of flatulence of my life.  The second one actually lifted me off the ground I think.  After those I was golden.  Needless to say I described this to the others, and Paul and Craig have both had exactly the same experience.

Here we are maxin’ out at the top.  Note the sweat on Craig’s sleeve.  Mike’s too, for that matter.  By the way, that bike in the background of the second photo isn’t one of ours.  I assume that its owner wandered off into the woods, curled up into the fetal position, and died (which is what Mike was fantasizing about doing). 

Ian had driven the Intimidator Van to the base of the final climb, and we all rolled down there to sit around in the heat and wait for Lee to arrive.  His category started over an hour after the rest of us, but still it seemed to take forever for him to show up.  He’d kept us waiting a bit after the shake-the-legs ride too, due to his advanced hair styling regimen and other sartorial niceties long abandoned by our ageing set, so we were less than patient.  Craig even managed to recruit a replacement—a guy who would call himself Lee and fake a British accent, so we could pretend we made good in driving Lee the twenty miles or so back to the motel—but finally the real Lee showed up.  He’d ridden well, with a respectable rolling time, but had punctured twice.  He only had one tube, so he had to bum a tube off another rider, but its valve was too short, etc.  He ended up spending forty minutes battling this. 

Post-race

Remember that photo above, of the bike with the Willier-branded SRAM brake caliper and the ash, and the brand-spanking-new Continental 4000S tyre?  (It’s a tyre because it’s on a Brit’s bike; click here for details.)  Well, the quality and newness of those tires deprived me of the opportunity to play my favorite game, Blame The Victim.  Lee just had some bad luck.  The shard of glass responsible for both punctures stayed in the tire and he didn’t find it within the tire tread until we were back at the motel.  Here it is now:

The maid had neglected to replace our shampoo, but it worked out for the best because I borrowed some English shampoo from Lee that is designed specifically for men.  Not only that, but it’s a revitalizing formula, as well as a sport formula.  (If there were a doping control at EC, I’d probably have washed my hair and man-parts with mere soap, just to be on the safe side.)  Did this shampoo actually revitalize me?  Damn right it did.

Dinner was magnificent.  We went to the Upper Crust Pizza Company for the fifth year in a row.  Last year I vowed to get my own pizza for an appetizer, because it was so painful not eating more than my fair share last time.  (Ian said this restraint was also painful to watch.)  But Craig offered to split a pizza with me, and then Ian said we could all three share one if we got the XL “Giganticus” size (as Ian called it).  So we did that, and refused to share with the others.  This didn’t bother Mike or Jamie, who also ordered appetizer pizzas.  Plus our entrées came with soup or salad.  This year they didn’t have the curiously spicy cream of mushroom, but instead potato-leek that was so good I discreetly licked my bowl.  I hope nobody saw me.  Actually, I don’t even care who saw me.  And I’d do it again.

My entrée was the spaghetti Bolognese.  It was very good, though the sauce was not so rich that it would be a solid at room temperature, which is my gold standard.  Not the hugest portion either, but the pizza helped and I also inherited some steak.  This steak was very rare, which I really dug.  It awakened something primal in me, in fact, and I’m thinking of having some rare steak in the cooler during next year’s EC, just to prime me for an attack.  I don’t know who I’ll attack or why, but it’s going to be glorious.

To be continued…

You probably feel sorry for yourself because this story has been so long.  Gosh, I feel really bad.  But don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to rest and recover, maybe put a cool washcloth over your tired eyes and get a manicure on your mouse hand, before I get around to writing the second and final installment.  Check back, because something disastrous happened on day two that’s almost daytime talk show material.  You won’t want to miss it.