Endurance bicycle riders are a strange breed.

A ride like RAMROD requires you to wake up at around 3AM, drive to the starting point, check in, get on your bike, ride a circle around Mt. Rainier, only to find yourself back where you started, tired, sweaty, and salt-encrusted. In return for this effort you receive… well, there has to be something that got me to pay good money to do it…

Oh, yeah, you get a patch:

that you will toss in a dresser drawer. So, the reward/effort for the ride seems to be a little low, but that hasn’t stopped me from doing it 4 times. So far.

If you need further evidence – and I’m confident that you don’t, but I have to do something to pad these ride reports out – in late summer, my riding group does a ride called “The Food Bank Challenge”, where we show up at our usual meeting place with backpacks full of food to donate, and then we carry the food with us on one of our usual rides, then we put the food in my car and we go out for burritos. As a participant’s wife noted, “Why don’t you just put the food in Eric’s car and then go on the ride?”

Indeed. As I said, a strange breed.

But… the patch you get for RAMROD and the knowledge that you helped out some hungry families were too much for one visionary. His vision – perhaps “delusion” is closer  – was to create a ride so pointless that even other cyclists would question why anybody would do it. For example, on organized rides you often get to:

• Ride in picturesque scenery
• Climb impressive hills
• Socialize with other strange people

In OHMon, all of that is out. The whole point of the ride – its raisin of entry – is be pointless as possible. There is a charity involved, which means I fear that some good is destined to come out of the experience, but other than that, it’s pointless.

And it’s a special brand of pointless, because you design the ride yourself. You are responsible for all of it.

That’s right, it’s the Fat Cyclist “One Hundred Miles of Nowhere” ride.

(I feel compelled to mention that while I really like the jersey design, the red indicator should be pointing to the left rather than the right.)

Though this is a do-it-yourself ride, you do get a box that has some things that are useful to set up the food stops.

The Course

Some of the participants in OHMoN eschew the whole concept of course entirely, riding the entire time on their rollers or trainer. I agree that that is pointless, but a) I can’t spend more than 20 minutes on a trainer without wanting to shoot myself, and b) it misses the chance for public ridicule. So, it would be outside.

I started with a very short course; my house is located in a small loop off of a main road. That would give me a course that is 0.3 miles long, and I’d have to do 334 laps of it. It has a 36’ climb each lap, so that means it would involve a total elevation gain of 334 * 36 = 12,024’.

Ouch. I like pointless things as much as the next cyclist, but I’ve been battling some back issues the past 6 months. Further, I fear that my neighbors would think of me as “that crazy guy who kept riding his bike around and around and around”, which would complete with my current label, “that crazy guy who puts up all of those holiday lights”.

So, I need something better, and for that, I cast my eyes to the east. I live at the top of a hill that rolls down towards Lake Sammamish. I am very well-acquainted with the roads, so there will be little joy in riding them. I map it out, and it comes in at 2.6 miles with 256’ of climbing. 39 laps @ 256’ of climbing = 9984’. Better, but still, ouch.

3.4 miles @ 312’ = 30 laps and 9360’, 4.6 miles @ 338’ = 7436’.

Damn. It’s pretty hilly to the east of my house.

I play around some more, extending the route to the west, and I finally end up with the following figure-8 route:

It clocks in at 7.1 miles and 469’ of climbing = 14 laps = 6566’ in total. I’m going to call that the “base reference plan”, but I fully expect to modify it along the way.

The Plan

The official date of the ride is October 18th, but the weather in the Seattle area is notoriously fickle in October. At some point, a switch will be flipped to “rainy fall”, and it will be hard to find decent weather, so I chose “the first good weekend day in November”.  Luckily, the weather forecast for the weekend of the 4th is great, and I ease back on my ride intensity to give my legs and back a chance to rest and on Wednesday, I’m motivated to get up early Saturday and go nowhere.

Only to find on Thursday night that a rampaging rhinovirus has bludgeoned its way into my respiratory tract. Friday is not good, so it’s clear I can’t participate in the event. I instead compete in an alternate event of similar difficulty, called “Taking a Shower”. There were a few rough spots where I thought I might have to abandon, but I managed to push through to the finish.

The next weekend. Ah yes, the next weekend.

The next weekend coincided with “The October Switch”. Seattle has a reputation for being a rainy and gray place, but what we don’t like people to know – lest they move here – is that our summers are pretty nice, and that niceness generally extends through September and the first part of October. And then we reach a day where a switch gets flipped, and the weather pattern changes. We’ve had nice weather the first week of October,  but not the forecast is rain, rain, rain, and more rain. Luckily, this weekend also coincides with a trip out of town to visit the offspring at school, so I couldn’t ride anyway, but it does not bode well for future October weekends.

The next weekend – which is the official day for OHMoN – Saturday is rainy, but the forecast for Sunday looks much more promising:

 

The ride

I get up at 6:45 AM, have some breakfast, get ready, and get all my stuff together. It’s 58 degrees so I put on arm and leg warmers, and spend 30 seconds to get to the starting point. I head out on the first loop on damp streets. I do the upper half, then head down the hill to the lower half. Off of W. Lake Sam, I do a couple of gratuitous climbs. They are steep steep and if I stand up, I spin up the back wheel, so I take it really slowly . I do a bunch of other neighborhood exploring along the way. On the way up Northup, I stop to take a picture of the nice weather:

I climb up back to the house, and then do the loop in the opposite direction. This takes me up 24th street, a 20% gradient that is about as painful as I expect. Back to the top for a loop, and while climbing up a short hill I notice the front is a bit squishy. It’s down to something like 50lbs, but it’s enough to get to the first food stop, so I take it slowly and manage to make it there safely.

The mechanic is a bit surly, but he quickly finds a pinhole in the tube, and then locates the small piece of wire in the tube that caused it. While I wait, I take a trip to the food table:

The Cheez-its are used to refill the bag in my pocket, and grab one of the brownie bites. I also get a refill of my water bottle with Skratch Labs raspberry. While I’m snacking, I do a bit of strategizing. For the first 25.1 miles, I climbed 1829’ and averaged 13.1 MPH. If we project out to the full ride and apply the usual Strava elevation conversion factor, that would put me over 8000’ of climbing and spend 8 hours on the bike. I don’t think I have 8000’ in my legs today, so I decide to spend my time on the less-hilly upper half of my route rather than the lower half.

The second 25 miles are pretty boring – leave the food stop location, climb up to the top, work my way back and forth a few times, descend back down. Repeat, repeat, then repeat some more. I’m starting to get tired, which does not bode well for the second half of the ride. I finish the section, and head to the second food stop:

The food stop is now manned (perhaps that is not the right term…) by Stan, who is appropriately attired. He has a Coke Zero, a turkey wrap, and, most uniquely, a set of flip-flops so that I can pull off my bike shoes for a few minutes. The turkey wrap is exquisite, the Coke Zero is cold, and I eat a few chips and grapes (not pictured).  I also sit down and relax for 15 minutes or so, which does wonders for my back and neck.

Looking at my stats, I note that I only climbed about 800’ in that segment. I did want to reduce the climbing, but that’s a bit more than I wanted to reduce it, so maybe I’ll add a little back.

I feel *way* better than I did when I stopped for lunch, and surprisingly, my legs feel pretty good when I get back on the bike. Back out on the upper loops, though I start extending them to the north and the south to make them longer and start doubling and tripling the flatter sections. It takes forever to get to 60 miles, but the next 10 miles after that aren’t that bad. During this section, I decide how great it would be to have a Coke Slurpee on my ride, so at around 70 miles I had off to the local 7-Eleven. Only to remember that Slurpees are sweetened with HFCS, which is a guaranteed to generate severe stomach cramps when I’m riding. I settle for buying some beef jerky, and on the way back from the 7-Eleven, I revel in its saltiness. It’s time to head to the third food stop:

I spend a minute or so talking to Stan. He is volunteering in the hope that he can earn a bypass in next year’s ride. I wish him luck,  refill my water bottles, and head out for the last 25.

After 75 miles, I’ve climbed 3303’.

I feel decent – decent enough that I decide to head back down to the lower part of the course for one last time. It’s not as painful as I had feared, but it’s enough. Time passes slowly. I eat some more jerky, eat a few Cheez-its, drink some of my drink. Repeat, then repeat again. About this time, my Garmin says “Low Battery”. I stop and find out that, for some reason, the backlight is on at 65% despite it being on auto day/night. I turn off the backlight and hope that the battery will last for an hour. I’ve done some measuring, and I now that my loop on the upper part is about 3 miles, and that it’s perhaps 2 miles back to the finish, so at 88 miles I put the plan into action. I start riding with a bit more effort – as much effort as I can generate after 90 miles on the bike – and the 3 loops go by quickly. I head down to the finish line, and find I’m at 98.3 miles. A quick out-and-back trip, an few loops around the neighborhood, and the GPS says:

I get off the bike, take off my helmet, and head over to see what food is available.

I grab a beer, and then a picture with Stan:

I mix up some Endurox in one of my bottles, and after drinking it I head out to find some real food.

Thoughts

I expected a stupid ride, and I got it. I found it nice that I could modify the route, but when there are 30 miles left and you aren’t 30 miles from the end, it’s really tempting to just pack it in, so the mental part was pretty hard for me.

The chosen route as fine except that it was in the city. Looking at my data, I had to stop approximately 7000 times for stop lights, stop signs, pets, and children playing street hockey. That doesn’t do much for your average speed, and it made it really hard to get into a groove. Most sections are only 3 minutes or so in length.

Logistics

I appreciate getting some items for the food stop, but it seemed like a lot of them were just random. Perhaps molasses is a decent substitute for gel – and probably better tasting – but the salsa and mustard had me a bit confused. It would be nice to get better options here.

The jersey for the ride ran small, so I ordered a large. It’s quite a bit smaller than most of the mediums I have, so if anybody ordered a medium and it was too small, let me know.

 

Thanks to Elden for setting this up, and thanks to two of my riding buddies who kicked in some extra money for Camp Kesem, which I matched and which Microsoft will also match.

 

Strava ride

My cycling goal this summer was to try new things, which would take me to Port Angeles to climb Hurricane Ridge, to the San Juans to ride with my wife and climb Mt. Constitution, and south of Rainier to climb Windy Ridge. The first two have been accomplished, and I’m feeling pretty good, so it’s off to the third.

This is the first time I’ve done this ride, and the first Cascade ride I’ve done in quite some time. I didn’t do RAMROD this year (I tend to alternate year to year), so I was looking for something to ride instead. Last year I did the Passport2Pain, but I decided not to do that this year, so I picked HPC.

I like the ride concept, and – since I lead a bunch of rides for Cascade – I can exchange my “ride leader points” for my registration, so it won’t cost me anything to enter. It starts at 7AM rather than the 5AM start of RAMROD, but unfortunately it starts in Packwood, which isn’t near to anything. Rather than get up extra early and drive the whole way, I decided to spend the night nearby. After some research on cost, reviews, and minimal stays, “nearby” ends up being at the Crystal Mountain Village Inn. It’s about an hour to get to Packwood from there, which means:

6:30 AM packed pickup

5:30 AM Leave Crystal

4:30 AM Wake up

Which isn’t that bad. If I drove from home, I would have to leave home at 4AM.

Training-wise, I feel pretty good. I was able to push hard and stay consistent up Hurricane, and my power up Mt. Constitution was better than I expected (though the hard part was shorter than I expected). HPC really only has one climb – granted, at 14.6 miles and about 3000’, it’s not to be ignored, but Cayuse on RAMROD is 11 miles and 2500’, and I’ll be climbing this one in the morning and I won’t have climbed up to Paradise first.

For this ride, they give out medals based on your time to the top (they used to give them out for total elapsed time, then realized that encouraging people to descend as fast as possible was probably a  bad idea). This puts it half way between a “ride” and a “race”. Playing with some numbers, I get the following:

Start to base of climb: 1:33 (assumes 17MPH)

Climb: 1:30 (assumes 600 meters/hour, which is conservative)

Portage: 0:48 (down and up to windy ridge, 15 MPH)

Total: 3:53

With a  few minutes at food stops, that gets me to the top at 11:00, enough for the “silver ribbon” category. Pulling back the 30 minutes to get into “gold” seems problematic. If I could do 19MPH on the first part, that would cut off 7 minutes, and if I climbed at my Mt. Constitution rate, I could be down at 1:10 for the climb. We shall see. I want to go hard, but I don’t want to go too hard and have a serious amount of “not fun”. This is the time of year to revel in one’s fitness, not kill oneself.

I have a poor track record at accomplishing this.

The riders are supplied with timing chips to attach to our helmets, so they can know exactly when a rider went over the start line and when they got to Windy Ridge. They can therefore know that it (for example) took you 4 hours to get there, thereby qualifying for a silver award (assuming you finish). This means you can start any time between 7:00 AM and 8:30 AM and have you award be based on your time.

Oh, wait, that’s what it would make sense to do. In fact, the award times are hard cutoffs that assume that you started at 7AM, so despite having an electronic system that can provide accurate elapsed time, everybody who cares about the medals is going to be wanting to start as close to 7AM as possible. My guess is that it’s because – lacking cell phone support – you would need to physically take the starting time information to the finish, but my guess is that you can drive it quickly enough to still work. Or you could rent a satellite phone & hot spot for $200 for the week, and use that to push the data up to the windy ridge location.

I’m going to hang back a bit at the start; I’m worried that it’s going to be like the triathlon starts I’ve been in.

Food Etc.

I will be carrying with me:

• Two bottles of Skratch Labs Hydration Mix (Raspberries flavor)
• Four bags with mix for another bottle of the same mix
• 1 Honey Stinger Ginger Snap Waffle + 1 lemon waffle
• 1 Large sandwich bag of Cheez-its
• 1 Small bag of “o-boy” oberto beef jerky.

The Skratch Labs stuff has worked well for me; it doesn’t seem to upset my stomach even if I’m working hard. It has half the calories (120/bottle) than the Accelerade (240/bottle) that I was using, and I think part of the reason it works better is that it is just more diluted.

The Cheez-its are something I have figured out through trial-and-error. They have a decent amount of sodium, and still remain palatable late in a ride. They do have a fair bit of fat in them, but I seem to be doing fine with them.

Day 0

I head out at 4PM to get to Crystal at a reasonable time. I’m not really that hungry, so I stop by Taco Time and grab a natural soft taco. Traffic is slow slow heading up, so I get there and check in, and eat my dinner. I’ve been sitting on my butt the past two days, so I go for a walk to warm up my legs and see if I can score any snacks now what it’s obvious that dinner was not enough. The market is closed and I decide not to try the restaurant & bar. Walking around ski areas in the summer is always a little weird; it feels a little bit like a movie set or something.

Lacking snax, I scrounge in my bike bag and find a package of Sport Beans and a Lance-era honey stinger of very dubious parentage. I eat them and go to bed. Before I turn out the light, I discover that Crystal not only offers wedding packages, they also offer elopement packages, which I mention in case it is of use to my readers.

Ride Day

I have managed to combine sleeping in a new bed, sleeping at altitude (Crystal is 4500’ up), and sleeping with somebody’s ventilation fan on and phasing in and out to achieve the trifecta of insomnia. I wake up at 2:30 convinced that it is time to get up, and then am sort-of asleep when the alarm kicks off at 4:30. I get up, spend a few seconds choosing between another honey stinger and a granola bar for breakfast (I can’t eat much before rides). The honey stinger (ginger snap IIRC) wins out.

After dressing and putting on sunscreen, I head outside at 5:15, get in the car, and drive away. It’s 49 degrees at Crystal.

The drive to Packwood is unremarkable. Driving down Cayuse is a very different experience than climbing up on a bicycle. When I get to Packwood, I stop at a service station to buy some water & beef jerky (I buy water because water availability is sketchy in Packwood). I head a bit farther and turn into the starting location and parking. It’s about 52 degrees.  I pick up my packet, take a nature break, and sit in the car as long as I can. I note that those who are wanting to start at 7AM are going to unhappy to be stuck in porta-pottie line. I pull out my rarely-used cycling windbreaker – which folds into one of the pockets and fits in a jersey pocket – and put it on.

I get in the line at 6:50, and shiver. The general rule is that it’s okay to be a little cold at the start, but this is more than a little cold. I don’t want to carry anything else, so I gut it out.

At 7AM the ride starts, and the group pulls out. It takes about a minute before my section starts moving. The first mile or so is pretty chaotic, with riders 4 and 5 abreast and a lot of sketchy riding, but it thins out after a bit as the fast group heads off the front. My plan is to just take it easy, but the combination of smooth road (I road lots of chipseal over the last week) and a slight downhill makes it easy to ride, so I grab onto the back of a paceline. We are in the low 20s but it’s not taking much effort so I’m happy to stick in the group. It’s not terribly well organized; somebody will pull off and the next person will slow way down, somebody else will bridge to head to the front, etc. I keep trying to work to the front to take a pull, but with all of the overlapping I never get there. It’s mostly safe except for the time when we are passing a group on the shoulder, the paceline is on the fog line, and one of the paceline guys pulls over into the shoulder. And stops. Lots of yelling but luckily we avoid the sound of bike scraping on asphalt.

We turn off at Randall and head south; the paceline holds together until we get to the first climb. I end up near the front of the group at the top, and we continue in a much smaller paceline to the first food stop at iron creek. My average speed is just under 20MPH for that whole section, which is much faster than I expected. I spend a couple of minutes at the food stop, and then head out.

We are currently at about 1100’, and we need to climb up to 4089’, so I’m going to call that 3000’ of climbing. The first part oscillates around in the 6-9% range, and I’m climbing at around 235 watts. You may wonder how we manage to make it through the pain and tedium of long mountain climbs. Which shows how little you know about bike riding; not only do we choose rides deliberately because of the pain and tedium, we pay money to experience that pain and tedium. Some of us even take trips to Europe so we can experience the same pain and tedium that the pros experience.

But it still goes down (well, actually, it goes up) better with a  bit of diversion, so we look for ways to pass the time. We only made it through 3 iterations of “I spy”; it’s not very interesting when the answer is always “a hill”, even when you put colorful adjectives in the middle. And you can only sing so many rounds of “the wheels on the bike go round and round”. So, mostly, you vow that you will never, ever enter a ride like this again, and you use what breath you have left over to talk. I spend the first third of a climb talking with a Tacoma firefighter and then lamenting how much harder things are when you get older with the other guy climbing with us, only to find that the other guy is 13 years old than me.

When other riders passed us – and, since the fast guys were pretty much in front of us, the passing took a while – I started calling out “no passing” as they rode by. This then got modified to “you can’t pass until you’ve pushed me up the hill for 30 seconds”. Neither were successful.

After 4 miles of this, the road kicks up again, and the two guys pull off for the water stop. I elect to skip a water stop because I think I have enough for the hill.

This is, in retrospect, a pretty stupid thing to do, especially since I have only about 2/3 of a bottle left and I have the rest of this climb – say 1500’ left. For somebody who thinks he doesn’t care about a medal I’m not making the best choices.

Anyway, I resume the hill at a more reasonable pace, say 210 watts or so. None of the hill has felt very good; my legs have no snap in them at all (the climb up Mount Constitution three days before is still in effect (this is a great example of planning your excuses well)), and my head hurts. I’ve done a bit of calculating, and it’s seems likely that I’m not going to finish before the gold cutoff, and it’s more clear that I really. don’t. care. I back off a bit more, and finally, but finally my GPS pops over 4000’ of elevation and we finish the section. There is much rejoicing.

This hill is pretty annoying. Most hills change gradient pretty slowly; you might have 15 minutes at 4%, and then 30 minutes at 6%. You can find your speed, get in a groove, and just climb. But this hill is all over the place; you climb for a minute at 4%, then it hops up to 9% for a minute, then there’s a short descent, etc. It makes it very hard to get into a rhythm, which gives me the blues (ha ha – rhythm and blues…)

We are at 4089’, and the lunch stop at Windy ridge is at 4150’. So, we need to climb only 61’, which should be easy to do over the next 12 miles, but unfortunately we will descend down to about 3500’ and climb up to 4350’  (another 850’) before we descend down the to lunch stop. It’s worse that this, however, because it’s not just a descent and a climb, each descent has climbs as part of it and each climb has descents as part of it. So, it’s more like a series of rollers that tend up or down.

And I’ve realized that there is no water stop between here and Windy Ridge. I’m dehydrated at this point and riding slowly at 150 watts or so. My head still hurts, my stomach is still upset, and my legs still hurt. And the joy of coasting down every descent is tempered by the knowledge that I will have to climb back each of them on the way back.

A picture from the ride is an apt description of how I feel; out of focus and fuzzy at the corners:

 

I’ve decided to call this “no man’s land”. Here’s a plot of the ride to Windy Ridge and back. 1200’ of climbing each way, and I count 20 climbs overall.

 

Objectively, it is worse than a pure climb, because it hurts just as bad both directions.

(Spirit Lake. The grayish part to the left back of the water is floating logs. They’ve been floating there for 30-some years since the eruption)

Eventually, I come to the spirit lake overlook, and use the cover of taking a picture to take a 30 second breather. Then it’s back for the last little push. I finally finish the 11-mile trip to the lunch stop, and roll through the timing section at 11:37, 7 minutes past the cutoff for gold. The climb + no-mans land is as bad or worse than Cayuse on RAMROD.

At this point, I really need hydration, so I take my bottles over to the water table, and find out that all the water containers are empty. They are working on transferring water from a big container to the small containers, but they don’t have a pump.

This falls into the “you had one job” category; it’s not that hard to get this right. So, I wait to fill one bottle, drink half of it right away, get a sandwich (with crème cheese – yuck), wait for the porta-potties, then I wait in the water line again for the second bottle. I have this thing where lack of logistical forethought drives me crazy, but I do manage to stretch out on the pavement, eat a second sandwich and the 7 chips in my bag. I take a 2 salt tablets and 2 motrin.

(Mt. St Helens. The eruption blew apart a 1/2 cubic mile of mountain)

I start to feel marginally better, so I take a picture of the mountain, and then start heading back. 170 watts seems about right, and I do the up/down/up/down/up/down back over no man’s land.

(even though this was off-axis from the direction of the eruption and on the backside of a ride, it was still strong enough to swat the whole forest flat).

Finally, we crest the final part of this section, turn the corner, ride up the real final part of the section, and we are ready for the descent.

The official directions for this say:

The descent from Windy Ridge is quite technical, and even though 99 has a smooth surface, there are patches of rough road. Please be extremely careful! And, once you’re on NF 25, you’re back into the shade headed downhill, so be extra cautious here too.

I’ve thought about how to describe this section, and I think the best description is “intense”. There are sections of nice straight and smooth pavement. There are a number of well-signed curves. And then there are sections where the road is a bit sketchy. Where sketchy means things like “2 inch cracks across half the lane”, “heavy washboard across the road”, or, my personal favorite, “8 inch sinkhole about 6 feet wide”. The Cascade crew has done a pretty good job of marking these with paint so that you can avoid them, but even when you avoid them, the road can be pretty rough. At least once I find myself unexpectedly in the air for a fraction of a second, and I need to deploy my bunny-hopping skills once or twice. Because of the roughness, I spend a lot of time standing so that I can let the bike move beneath me, and the balls of my feet are painful because of all the vibration. I am very much not trying to be fast here, just keepin’ it smooth and safe. It takes about 40 minutes for this whole section, and my guess that that’s about 5 minutes slower than I would have been on a smooth road.

I finally pull back into the Iron Creek food stop, refill one bottle with water, and refill the second one with Berry Nuun. I’m sitting on a log massaging the pain out of my feet, and trying to make a decision. I overheard the mechanics telling me that some people are skipping the next section (a little dogleg) and just heading straight back to Randall. I pull out my map, look at the mileage numbers, and figure out that it would save me 10 miles. I get back on the bike, start to ride out, and then turn back towards Randall. I’m tired, my body hurts, and I really don’t want any climbing. I have 10 miles to get there. Initially, I get to descend that nice road that I climbed five and half hours ago, and then it flattens out. There is some crappy pavement here as well, but it’s not marked and the lighting is variable, so I pay close attention. Back on the flat, I start rolling along. My average speed is 14.something MPH, and I’d like to finish about 15, which is about what I did on my last RAMROD. There are a number of light uphills. After about 5 miles, I get a thought.

I really need a drink. Not water, not Nuun. What I need is a Coke Zero.

You may ask why I go with the diet stuff when I need calories. And the answer is simple. I am fructose sensitive, and it’s especially bad when I’m exercising. At one RAMROD long ago (2007?), I grabbed a grape soda at lunch. One sip, and my stomach cramped. Bad.

I think about it for the next few miles. Ice cold. Frosty. Refreshing. And then I think back, and because I was in a paceline and paying a lot of attention, I don’t recall whether there were actually any stores in the section we turn off. I convince myself that the turnoff is right in the middle of some fields, and am quite depressed that I may have to wait all the way until Packwood, when I crest a bridge and see that there’s a gas station at the intersection. I cross, get stiffly off the bike, and head in for the aforementioned Coke Zero, 20 ounces of heaven. There are some tables in front, but it’s sunny and hot (around 90), so I roll my bike to the side, sit down on the decidedly grimy ground and lean against the building. Drinking my zero, and snacking on cheez-its.

After a couple of minutes, I have slightly recovered, and I cast my eyes across the parking lot and a small road.  Just off the highway, there is a covered tent with a sign that says “huckleberries”. Next to it, another vendor has set up a second tent, with a sign that reads, “buy and sell – mushrooms and huckleberries. Better prices”.

I am very impressed by their proper use of “better”, and quite amused by how impressed I am.

Finally, the third and final tent says, “huckleberries – best prices”. It’s like a grammar lesson in real life. Next to me, there is a nice pickup with a picture of the aforementioned fruit, along with an appropriate caption. Turning out onto the highway, I notice there are two more tents on the other side of the highway, also selling huckleberries. Apparently Randall is the headquarters for the huckleberry mafia.

I have 17 miles to ride back to the start, which is flat to slightly uphill, but never much more than 2%. I’m feeling better, and I should be able to do it in about an hour. After about 15 minutes, a paceline goes by, and I say, “legs, how do you feel about putting out a bit of effort to catch this group so we can finish earlier with less effort”? Before legs can answer brain decides to go for it, so I chase, hooking onto the back of a group of about 12 riders, and relaxing into the group.

A skilled paceline is a joy to experience, a finely-tuned machine, a sublime fee lunch, all parts in harmony as it effortlessly eats up the miles.

This paceline, however, is like that shopping cart at the grocery store that randomly changes direction every few seconds. I have prepared a visual aid to help make my point:

Here I am, just cruising along before the paceline shows up. The green line shows my speed (19MPH), the red line shows my power output (150 watts or so), and the blue line shows my cadence (85 or so). They are nice and smooth. The spike at the end is 400 watts where I decided to hop on the paceline, which leads to the next graph:

The first thing to notice is that speed (green) is all over the place; ranging from 19 MPH to 23 MPH. The blue and red lines show my reaction to it; sometimes I am soft pedaling (power down but cadence the same), but most times I have to react by coasting (on the worst drop on the right side I have to use my brakes). What it doesn’t show is that I am also drifting to my right to increase my drag to help me slow down, and I’m not the only one doing this.

This is what is called “the dreaded accordion” – the group is continually compressing and expanding. A few of us are trying to reduce the effect, there’s a solid core of riders who are faithfully trying to react to any change in speed as quickly as possible, which is why it is happening.

I have a couple of choices. I could pull left, work my way to the front, take a pull, and then try to slot back into the front group of 5 or so (the accordion is worse the farther back you get). I could sit here and deal with it. Or I can drop off.

Not only is it very aggravating, there are a lot of tired riders here, and there’s a decent chance somebody will touch a wheel and go down, and I’m in the back, so I will have to deal with the carnage.

I drop off and resign myself to a calmer spin back to the start. As I cross a bridge, I see a guy on the side holding a wheel with a forlorn look on his face. I ask him, “do you have what you need?” as I roll by, and he says, “not really…”, so I stop, and ride back. Only to find that it’s one of the guys who regularly rides with me on our Tuesday/Thursday rides. He has flatted twice, and would just patch the tube but his pump isn’t working so he can’t find the hole to patch it. I offer him my spare tube, he says, “you might need it”, I point out that we are only 6 miles from the end, but if it makes him feel better, he can pull all the way. As we are getting the tire back on, a support car pulls up, so we borrow his floor pump to inflate the tire, and we’re back on the road.

In payment for my services, I wheelsuck mercilessly for the last 22 minutes and we finally hit the finish line.

Summary and Reflection

This is one hard ride (and I avoided a bit of climbing with my shortcut); not as hard as RAMROD, but certainly in the same class, and the combination of the varying gradients, the quality of the pavement, and the out-and-back nature made it very mentally challenging.

A few stats:

Distance	105.6 miles
Moving time	6:43:20
Average speed	15.7 MPH (yea pacelines)
Calories (kJ)	3553
Elapsed time	7:55:20
Average power	147 watts
Top speed	42 MPH
Strava suffer score	310 (Epic)
Strava ride	Link

Last year, my wife Kim and I did a Backroads guided tour on the California coast. We liked the experience, but weren’t overjoyed by the cost (they’re quite expensive) and the set itinerary. We therefore decided to attempt a do-it-yourself version in the San Juan Islands.

Transportation and Lodging

If you are going to the San Juans, you are going to have to deal with ferries. In fact, ferries are going to become central to your life, as that is how you are going to get from where you are staying to where you want to ride, and you only go when they go. We paid $68 to get us and our car from Anacortes to our lodging on Orcas Island, which sounds like a lot, except that you only pay when travelling westbound, so our return trip was free. If you are willing to not have a car during your stay (and if you choose to do that, I’d recommend staying in Friday Harbor), it will cost you much less from Anacortes, though you may have to pay for parking in Anacortes so it might be a wash.

The cost for bicycles and passengers when you travel between islands is pretty cheap. In fact, it’s free; you can take your bike between Orcas, Shaw, Lopez, and San Juan islands without paying at all. And you don’t have to worry about getting there early to make sure you get on the ferry, so it’s convenient as well.

There are a several different ferries that travel the route. We spent most of the time on the Klahowya, which is one of the small ones, chosen because some of the inter-island passages are pretty tiny.

You might end up on one of the super ferries, depending on schedule. They are a fair bit bigger, and are 75% more likely to be equipped with loud running children.

Which takes us to the ferry schedule. If you go to the state ferry website, they provide a simple schedule for you to use:

That is just the westbound schedule; there is also an eastbound schedule. You will need to understand both to plan your trips, and you’ll also have to understand the little marks to the side of the times. And you’ll have to know the order of the islands from east to west.

Or, you could do the easy thing, and click on the Schedule by Date link. It will give you something like this:

 

Which is customized to what you want to do. The cycle time on this route is around 3 hours – which is fairly typical for inter-island ferries – though it’s not uncommon for there to be big gaps at times. This makes keeping track of time important; if you miss that 5:40 ferry coming home you are going to have to wait until 10:00 for your next chance.

Kim booked us into Grandma’s Little House as our base camp, which is about 100’ uphill from the ferry dock at Orcas Island. This was a great place to stay; very close to the ferry but surprisingly pretty quiet, a deck with a great view, and a small but well-stocked grocery store right by the ferry dock. It was great to walk off the ferry and be done. There is only one restaurant (the one part of the Orcas Hotel) which we didn’t try because of mixed reviews.

I highly suggest bringing a set of light shoes that you can wear while you are on the ferry. Your feet will thank you. When you get on the ferry, make sure to ask which end to put your bike on; sometimes it’s the front, and sometimes it’s the back. You should also pull off anything you care about (computer, phone, tool) when you tie your bike to the wall on the car deck.

Day 1 – Orcas Island

To help level set, Eric is a serious recreational rider who rides around 80 miles/week with perhaps 5000’ of climbing. Kim is in good shape and is quite strong, but hasn’t ridden much this year.

To properly get into vacation mode, we decided to skip the ferry hassle, sleep in, and ride on Orcas on the first day. Orcas is roughly horseshoe-shaped, and we planned to ride from the southern tip of the western side to the southern tip of the eastern side and back, which Google maps assured us was 32 miles and 2300’ of climbing.

We started heading north at around 9AM. The road surface looked like this:

Except that it wasn’t quite that nice and didn’t have a smooth shoulder.

That wonderful surface is known and “chipseal”, and the majority of the roads on the islands feature it – both on the road and on the shoulder, assuming there is a shoulder. It adds a lot of vibration and slows you down perhaps 1MPH or so over a route. We were both running 25mm tires, and I heartily recommend them for this sort of surface, plus backing off a bit on inflation pressure. The surface quality will vary from “almost like asphalt” on some roads to “really rough” in others.

Confusingly located at the north end of the island, Eastsound is the main town on Orcas. Early on the way there, we hit a 300’ climb that peaks at about 12% grade, and a couple of other significant rollers. The islands are hilly, and Orcas has a reputation for being the hilliest. We settle into a rhythm where we each climb the hills at our own pace, and I wait for Kim at the top. We decide to skirt the outside of town to the north, and take a quiet side trip down to north beach next to the airport. We then head south on the east side of the island. After a few miles, we come to a 400’ ish climb in the 8/10/12% range, which tires Kim out a fair bit, and I’m getting hungry. Not knowing what our food options are farther south (we later find that they a pretty much “Rosario grill or foraging”), make the executive decision to turn around and head back into town.

It would be fair to say that the islands are not a culinary bonanza; there aren’t that many choices where to eat. We ended up at the Island Skillet,  which has good sandwiches and uneven service. We finish our lunch, ride back to our cottage and laze the rest of the day. Dinner is a packaged salad and sandwich from the ferry dock grocery, which was pretty good (the bread we had on the trip was pretty universally great), but I recommend finding a place with a full kitchen for dinners if you want to stay here.

Distance	27.3 miles
Elevation	2662’
Strava	Link

Google maps says 1765’ of climbing for that route, which means that it underestimated the climbing on the route by about 1/3rd. This was a consistent pattern across our rides; as somebody who has spent a lot of time looking at elevation models, my guess is that the elevation model for the islands isn’t very detailed and it’s missing a lot of the small undulations, so keep this in mind if you use it when planning rides. I expect that other sites will have the same issue as they all use the same elevation data bases.

Day 2 – Lopez Island

The second day found us up early on the 7:something ferry to Lopez island. We spent some time riding there on a family bike trip led by Bicycle Adventures in 2007, so we had some idea of what to expect, and we had a map from Lopez Bicycle Works. Lopez is a nice place to ride; great views and not too much traffic, and the hills are mostly reasonable. Our southern destination was agate beach, but a bad bit of planning on my part (not doing a gps route) and a bad bit of navigation (also on my part) took us all the way down to Shoal Bight, adding a few miles and 300’ to the day. Somewhere in this section, we see the rusted shell of an old truck in a field, with a sign that says, “runs great, one owner, low miles, $8 OBO”.

We eventually got to agate beach and took a nature break (where the outhouse featured a copy of “The Economist” for your edification). We shared a honey stinger waffle and some cheez-its, and headed to the west side of the island to go back north and get some lunch. About 3 miles from the village, I notice that my front tire is a bit soft, so I stop by Lopez Bike works to get a new tube, since it’s conveniently on our road. “Bike works” is really just a small shack, but it’s well equipped, though the teenager working hasn’t seen a carbon bike before; he starts to clamp the downtube in his stand, and then, when I ask him to use the seat post (aluminum on my bike), he starts to loosen the seat. Once I get the seat bag off, he does fine, though they can’t go above about 80 psi with their compressor. That’s enough for now. I notice later that the village features a bicycle shop that looks a bit better.

We ride down to the village and have lunch at a somewhat forgettable café, pick up some bread and cookies at the bakery next door (both were excellent), and head out to meet our ferry. *Up* to the ferry dock, since there’s a hill between the ferry dock and the village. This was a great day; weather was perfect, route was good, scenery was good, company was great.

Distance	37.3 miles
Elevation	2455’
Strava	Link

Day 3 – Friday Harbor

The forecast is rain, and not the gentle kind, so we bag on the cycling for the day and take a trip to Friday Harbor (on San Juan Island) for lunch and bowling. Friday Harbor is a small city, and if you want more options for lodging, you will find them here.

Getting on a ferry to go bowling seems a little weird to me, but since the cost is zero, all it costs us is time, with which we are well equipped. For lunch, Kim has a good basket of scallops and I have a forgettable basket of fish & chips. It’s sunny when we walk up the street to bowl, and find that we have the 8-lane bowling alley to ourselves. As usual, I present little challenge to my “bowled for years when I was younger” wife, but after a bit of coaching I manage to take the third game. After a couple games of pool, we walk back down to the ferry dock in a light rain, which changes to a heavy rain by the time we get there. When the ferry shows up, we board, along with some very damp cyclists and pedestrians.

We camp out inside for the afternoon and listen to the thunder and lightning, congratulating ourselves for our foresight. We head into “town” to the Lower Tavern for dinner (so named because there is a tavern located higher in town as well. Just kidding – there is no other tavern in town). Our dinners are good by usual standards (not island standards, so they’re pretty good), as is the service, though if you are into mixed drinks you should look elsewhere because it’s strictly beer and wine.

Day 4 – San Juan Island

With the promise of nicer weather and a beautiful morning, we take the 10:something ferry back to Friday Harbor. This time I’ve pre-planned the route using ridewithgps.com, but that doesn’t keep me from making a wrong turn right off the bat. The climb from the ferry dock isn’t bad, and pretty soon we are on on Roche Harbor Road heading to the west. About this time, I remember that telling my GPS to navigate isn’t the same as telling it to start recording, so I’m missing a bit of distance. It’s a nice enough road, but there’s a fair bit of traffic for a weekday morning. I expected to see a few nice water views, but this section is mostly just through forest and farm land.

There’s an interesting dichotomy on the islands; there are some really nice houses right on the waterfront, and then lots of agricultural land on the interior sections. On Lopez, for example, there are are waterfront homes for $500K+ (or perhaps you’d just like your own island), or you can head inland and find a small lot with a well for $40K. 

After about 8 miles, we turn off and head down towards Roche harbor, or, more technically, towards Roche Harbor Resort. We go straight past the upper village, descend down a steep hill, and then work our way back towards the marina. There is a small grocery store there, but we decide to eat at the Lime Kiln Café, named for the lime kiln that used to operate in a state park about 10 miles away.

We grab a nice table outside in the sun, and I go to stand in line to order. Overheard while I am waiting in line:

This is our last day here. My husband and his helper are getting the boat ready to go back to Seattle, but I have somewhere I need to go, so I’m going to fly out.

Here’s a typical picture of the marina, there are a lot of very expensive boats here:

There is a serious amount of money in this place, and they’re doing a bunch of building to ramp it up a bit.

After lunch of sandwiches – which were quite good and reasonably priced – we had a choice: we could either ride up the very steep road we came down, or we could ride up through the steep road on the village. I suffered up it; it was short, but it was in the 15%+ range. Kim also suffered up the first part of it, and walked the rest.

We returned back to the turnoff, and headed south, onto Mitchell Bay Road and then West Side Road. I had hoped for some nice water views here, but it was just hills the whole way, which reminded us that we ate too much at lunch (pro tip: you will be happier after lunch if you save half your sandwich for later). After a tight steep descent we finally ended up in the state park, where we rest for a bit and go out to the whale watching overlook. After 15 minutes in which neither cetaceans nor pinnipeds are in evidence, we clip back in and resume our climbing. At least this section has some nice views of Vancouver Island. Eventually, we turn inland and eastward, heading back towards town. After 5 miles of rural traffic, we hit the asphalt-paved outskirts of town and breathe a sigh of relief to be off the chipseal. We still had a couple of hours before the ferry, so we read the paper and buy a pizza (trendy ingredients, average flavor, but I’m a traditionalist in this area) to eat on the boat.

Distance	30.3 miles
Elevation	2624’
Strava	Link

Day 5 – Mount Constitution

This was our last full day before heading back. We discussed heading over to Shaw island, but it has an inconvenient ferry schedule and Kim was feeling a bit tired, so she opted out of riding for the day. I decided to head over and climb Mount Constitution, the tallest point in the county at 2399’. I headed out at 9:30 on the same route that we had taken the first day. My legs were a bit heavy and I didn’t feel particularly peppy as I retraced the route. I had done some reading about the climb; it was fairly easy at the beginning, had a big section of 13% in the middle, flattened out, and then had another steep section at the top.

I rode up the steep hill where we turned around the first day, which put me 400’ higher, and soon saw water on my left. My first thought was, “Damn, I’m going to have to climb up all the way from the sound again”, but I was instead riding next to Cascade lake, a pretty large lake at 350’ of elevation. That left me with around 2000’ to climb. Soon after that, I hit the base of the climb:

This is a pretty small sign and you need to pay attention or you may miss it. I turn off, and start the climb.

The first section is about what I expect; lots of 7% climbing, and a few sections of 10%. I don’t want to overdo it, knowing what is to come, so I keep my wattage in the 225-250 watt range. That puts me at around 140-145 on my HR. Interestingly, That’s about 10% more power than I was pushing on the climb up Hurricane Ridge last month but with a slightly lower heart rate.

The climb reminds a bit of the first part of Paradise on Mt. Rainier, though it’s quite a bit steeper. After about a mile, a road branches off, the road tips up, and the fun begins. This is about a 2000’ climb, and I climbed hurricane at about 660 meters/hour, which means I should be able to do the climb in a perhaps 50 minutes.

The next two miles are steep. It’s typically around 12%; some sections a bit flatter, some a bit steeper. My legs feel okay – as okay as they can on this steep of a climb – and I keep the same wattage, which puts my cadence about 55 RPM. I stand up every couple minutes to give my legs a chance to rest. A car passes me now and then; I keep checking to see if it is a blue outback, as Kim has volunteered to chauffeuse for me today. If there is no traffic and I can see well, I ride the sharp hairpins on the outside to make them as flat as possible. My back – which has been bothering me for quite a while – starts to hurt, and it still hurts even when I stand up. I keep pressing on.

After what is a surprisingly short period of time (my data says this section was 2 miles long, 1000’ high, and I did it in about 22 minutes), I turn a corner and the road flattens out. This is the flatter section I had been waiting for, so I shift up and try to keep my wattage where I want it. It is challenging. Part of this section is flat, but there are still some small climbs. It takes me about 8 minutes, during which I travel a mile and climb another couple hundred feet. The description of the climb said that it has a hard section at the top, and sure enough the road tips back up, I start climbing hard again, and a very short 2 minutes later, I’m surprised to see the buildings at the top. One quick loop of the parking lot to get my heart rate down, and Kim pulls up. I switch to my regular shoes, and we walk up to the top. She takes the obligatory picture (I couldn’t find a sign that had the elevation on it):

That’s Puget Sound and part of Mt Baker behind me.

I climb to the top of the observation tower:

and run into a couple of other cyclists. Then it’s back down (and I’m happy to not have to ride the brakes on that descent), and we head into town, back to the Island Skillet for lunch (there really aren’t that many places to eat on Orcas).

I take a shower when we get back, then we head into town at 4:30, back to the Lower Tavern so that we can watch the Hawks beat the Packers. I drink two bottles of beer-flavored water, we share a couple order of vegetables and a burger, and of course, you already know what happened to the Packers…

Distance	19.9 miles
Elevation	3424’
Strava	Link

The climb was shorter than I expected; a bit of research shows that the traditional hill climb starts down at the water at Rosario, and the start of the road is at around 500’, so the climb from the entrance is only 1826’. I did it in 43:00 @ 228 watts and 777 meters/hour, which I hope bodes well for the Windy Ridge climb that I’m doing on High Pass Challenge in a few days.

Summary and Totals

I had a great time. Being able to have a central location and ride from there worked very well, and having a car available was very convenient.

Distance	112.6 miles
Elevation	11,158’