The Scottosphere

Race day was Sat­ur­day August 21.

Weather: 70 and sunny at the bot­tom; 46, clear, and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally calm at the peak. There was a nice 5 MPH breeze above tree­line. Vis­i­bil­ity: 75 miles.

Total climb: 4,727 feet over 7.6 miles
Aver­age grade: 12%

Race result: 1:23:46
Fin­ish­ing: 182/526

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

July 18 was my one oppor­tu­nity to attempt Mt. Wash­ing­ton by bicy­cle before race day. I had a cou­ple of goals in mind: find­ing a rea­son­able pace and test­ing my hill-climb setup.

It’s worth point­ing out that the ride is much too steep and long for con­ven­tional road bike gear­ing to make sense—an effi­cient cadence would not be pos­si­ble. It seems like every­one has an opin­ion about what makes a per­fect setup. Some peo­ple run with a road triple crankset up front, or maybe a com­pact crank. Some peo­ple install a moun­tain cas­sette on the rear wheel, which usu­ally requires a long-cage moun­tain derailleur to go with it. Since I have only one road bike, and re-tuning derailleurs is not my idea of a great time, I came up with a dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tion: a moun­tain crankset, hold­ing only a 22T chain­ring on the front, and a con­ven­tional 12–25T road cas­sette (and stan­dard derailleur) on the back. With this setup, I can achieve bet­ter than a 1:1 gear ratio. And the only parts I have to swap out are the cranks, bot­tom bracket, and chain! (Shame on Shi­mano for mak­ing road and moun­tain bot­tom brack­ets very slightly dif­fer­ent.) One unfor­tu­nate con­se­quence of hav­ing the bike con­fig­ured for hill-climbing is that my top speed on level ground becomes about 8 MPH, which can be embarass­ing if you’re actu­ally try­ing to get somewhere.

We stayed at a friend’s cabin in Tam­worth, then drove up at the crack of dawn. There aren’t many oppor­tu­ni­ties to catch me awake and alert at 5:30 AM, but this was one, as the road would close to bikes after 7:00. Bad news greeted us upon our arrival, though: in spite of the stun­ning sun­rise and picture-perfect weather on the ground, the course was closed due to high winds. Above tree­line there was a steady 55 MPH breeze gust­ing to 70. Appar­ently they will run the race in winds up to 45 MPH, but beyond that appar­ently peo­ple have dif­fi­culty stay­ing upright. After much moan­ing and groan­ing and re-checking of wind speeds, it was deter­mined that we would be allowed to ride only the first two miles of the auto road. So up we went. It was the hard­est two miles I’ve ever biked! At least there was a bonus: we were per­mit­ted the unusual oppor­tu­nity to ride our bikes back down. Wheeee!

After all the bikes had cleared the course, the auto road opened to cars. We paid the toll and drove to the top so I could study the route. Check out the day’s pic­tures here. As you can see, the weather above tree­line is just as intim­i­dat­ing as the slope of the road!

One of my “res­o­lu­tions” for 2010 was to join a cycling team and start rac­ing. I have fallen a lit­tle short on that task: although I trained all win­ter and even took a bike rac­ing class, my sum­mer sched­ule filled up so quickly that join­ing a team started to seem like a waste of money. But months ago, when snow was still falling and every­thing seemed pos­si­ble, I seized upon a moment of mid-winter hubris and signed myself up for one epic race: The Mount Wash­ing­ton Auto Road Bicy­cle Hill­climb.

For some back­ground, let’s turn to a descrip­tion of the course from a Sep­tem­ber 2004 arti­cle in Out­side magazine:

The Rock­pile, as Mount Wash­ing­ton is unro­man­ti­cally nick­named, tow­ers 6,288 feet above sea level. We’ll be climb­ing the upper­most 4,727 feet, over a mere 7.6 miles. (For per­spec­tive, one of the tough­est races in the Rock­ies, the Mount Evans hill climb, near Den­ver, rises 7,000 feet over 28 miles.) With an aver­age grade of 12 per­cent and sus­tained stretches of 18 per­cent (high­way grades rarely exceed 7 per­cent), Mount Wash­ing­ton is steeper than L’Alpe d’Huez or any other climb in the Tour de France, Spain’s Vuelta, or the Giro d’Italia. Mile for mile, it is arguably the tough­est one-day bike race on the planet.

There are a whop­ping 72 turns on the Auto Road course, and the longest straight­away is only a few hun­dred yards—on dirt. Most hill climbs ease off at the top, allow­ing rid­ers to drop into a more mus­cu­lar gear and enjoy a burst of accel­er­a­tion. Not on Wash­ing­ton. In the final 100 yards—a sec­tion alter­nately called the Corkscrew, the Lad­der, and the Wall—the grade steep­ens to a hor­ri­fy­ing 22 percent.

So there it is. Why did I sign myself up for this again? It’s true that I enjoy rid­ing on hills. And I do score rea­son­ably well on that golden met­ric of hill­climbers, watts per kilo­gram of body weight. But this is start­ing to sound a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ing. There’s no coast­ing: if you stop ped­al­ing on this hill, you’ll fall off the bike. And at a “race pace” of 5–6 MPH, draft­ing isn’t much use either. Will I even be able to eat or drink? Will my cus­tom hill­climb gear­ing pro­vide the right ratios for effi­cient riding?

The Mt. Wash­ing­ton Auto Road is not nor­mally open to bicy­cles, but to help answer some of these ques­tions, the orga­niz­ers allow for one unsup­ported prac­tice ride a month before the race. And with the actual race com­ing up on August 21, that prac­tice ride is hap­pen­ing this Sun­day. More to come!

As I have men­tioned, I’m try­ing a new sport for 2010: bike rac­ing. For this rea­son, I enthu­si­as­ti­cally took to April’s NEBC Spring Rac­ing Clinic, even when that meant rent­ing cars every Sat­ur­day and dri­ving all the way to Fort Devens. While the pace of the class was a lit­tle uneven, it was com­pletely worth­while. Two drills took me most out­side my com­fort zone: the water bot­tle pick-up drill and high-speed cornering.

“Grad­u­a­tion” was par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Wells Ave Train­ing Cri­terium on May 2. A cri­terium is a short race involv­ing many laps around closed-off streets. This for­mat is ideal for spec­ta­tors! For us begin­ners, the total dis­tance is only 12 miles (15 laps), and it goes by fast! My bike com­puter recorded an aver­age speed of 23.6 mph. The classes pre­pared me well, but I also fol­lowed the last-minute advice of an expe­ri­enced bystander: stay to the front and the out­side to avoid crashes. Good advice, I think, because there were two pretty bad wrecks. It’s dif­fi­cult to resist the temp­ta­tion to look at them, but there is too just much going on when you’re nearly rub­bing han­dle­bars and wheels with a dozen other people.

I was get­ting excited about being near the front, since by the penul­ti­mate lap I had worked myself up to 3rd or 4th place. But sud­denly, the guys who I had been fol­low­ing dropped back, and I found myself lead­ing the last lap—with the wind in my face and legs start­ing to tire, not a great sit­u­a­tion to be in! After a sur­prise last-minute encounter with a car on the course, the fin­ish line came into view, and sud­denly 5 or 6 guys sling­shot­ted around me. I started my sprint. It was too late to catch the guys who passed me, but I man­age to get my speed up to 36 mph, fast enough to keep the rest of the pack from pass­ing. This left me some­where in the top 10 (out of 39), close enough to feel like a suc­cess but not high enough to appear in the race results.

As we were fin­ished, an ambu­lance showed up to attend to the two crashes. One was caused by over­lapped wheels, and another guy had been stuck on the inside of a cor­ner was trapped too close to the curb. A lit­tle scary!

Before rid­ing home with another Rapha-clad blogger-friend named Scott, we stayed to watch the first half of the B race. The speeds are a lit­tle higher, but most impor­tantly, they looked so much more orderly! I have much to learn. So I’m moti­vated to find a team. And to keep train­ing for my big race in August, which I will write more about in a sep­a­rate post.

Also: it is con­firmed that the Igle­heart road bike I got last year rocks!

I recently found this pic­ture of me at age 12. It’s funny that it took me so
many years to dis­cover this sport, since appar­ently I’ve always had some enthu­si­asm for it.

Meet your newest cat­e­gory 5 racer. Next task: find­ing a team.