Fitness Over 40

Tour de Blast - Unfinished business

My next event is on Saturday.  I am riding the tour de blast.  It will be an 82 mile ride (that’s 135k for you metric fans out there); and it will have over 6,000 feet of elevation gain. 

The ride is at Mt. St. Helen’s.  Here is what their website says about the profile:

Elevation gain/difficulty
The elevation gain from the start line at Toutle to Elk Rock (27 miles into the ride, elevation 3,800 feet) is approximately 3,300 feet. From there, the highway descends 1,270 feet over five miles to Coldwater Lake(elevation 2,530 feet). Then riders will begin a nine-mile climb of 1,670 feet to the Johnston Ridge viewpoint and turnaround. A rider going all the way to Johnston Ridge and back to Toutle will climb a total of 6,240 vertical feet over 82 miles (135K) including the climb back up the eastern side of Elk Rock.

This is a ride I have done once before, in 2003.  I was riding with Mark and Mitch.  The weekend before had been in the mid 80’s.  The forecast said that the day of the ride would be in the high 60’s to the mid 70’s.  All of us wore fingerless gloves, cycling shorts and jerseys, and light rain jackets.  Bad idea!!!

It started raining about two hours into the ride.  Then the wind picked up and the temperature started to drop.  It wasn’t so bad for us because we were climbing Elk Rock (the first of the two ridges).  Going uphill, the rain felt good.  At the top, however, the temp had dropped into the mid to low 30’s (okay - I admit I’m an ugly American, I have no idea how to convert that to Celsius). 

Anyway, the minute we hit the top we all started freezing.  The ride calls for you to drop a couple thousand feet, then climb the second ridge.  From there you turn around and go home.  There was no was we wanted to descend, then be stuck if the weather turned even worse.  People were aborting the ride all over the place, and we decided to turn around as well. 

Heading back down, I have never  been so cold.  I am a clydesdale, and I may be slower than road kill going up the hill, but I fly like an eagle going down hill.  I was coasting at over 40 mph (roughly 65kph).  I was so cold that my front handle bars were wiggling from my shivering.  I couldn’t apply the breaks very well because it was wet, and there was no feeling in my hands. About half way down the hill, we saw that people were stopping at the resource center.  We decided to stop as well. 

There were about 100 soaked cyclists in a very small place  - trying to get warm and get their clothes dry.  After getting at least some feeling back in our hands and feet, we went into the gift shop and overpaid for tourist fleece jackets.  With the jackets we were able to get back off the mountain and back to our cars with no trouble. 

Needless to say, I want to finish what I started.  This is only the second time I’ve had to abort a ride (the first was for a broken spoke).  With the other ride, I went back the next year and finished it.  For various reasons, this ride has been eluding me since 2003.  The schedule has never quite worked out.  On Saturday I hope to rectify that.

By the way, I checked the weather report for Saturday.  It’s suppose to be cloudy and in the mid 60’s…

Filed under: 2007 Resolutions, Cycling, Goals, Uncategorized, fitness, fitness over forty, male over forty, over forty  |  Digg! this story.  |  Leave a Comment