RAMROD post
So, finally the RAMROD story.
I may be a morning person, but getting up at 3 A.M. will always suck. However, I did manage to drag myself out of bed. After munching on some granola, writing out directions to the start line, pumping up my tires and saying goodbye to my mum, I drove off into the darkness. Given how little I've driven around Seattle, it was honestly a bit freaky, but I made it to Enumclaw (yes, that's really the name of the town. It smells like manure) without much trouble.
Somehow, it had escaped my mind that it would probably be pretty cold at 5 in the morning, especially in the Cascade foothills. So it was rather nippy as I set off. This made drafting even more attractive as less wind meant less wind chill. Even after riding for a little while, I was still unsure whether or not I should even be bothering to ride. I had been sick right after StP and hadn't gotten any good riding in since then, not to mention a distinct lack of hills in my training earlier in the summer. However, I somehow convinced myself to keep riding. Unfortunately, breakfast had been a bit insufficient, so I was definitely running low on fuel by the time I made it to the first food stop. However, snarfing down half a bagel and an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie perked me up. It continued to be cold until about mile 40 when the sun finally made itself known. By then I was well on the way to Sunrise and slogging my way uphill. Going so slowly can get boring, but this was balanced out by the gorgeous view at that point. Getting to stare at snow covered mountains in July is pretty nifty. On the flip side, seeing people already coming down the hill was a bit disheartening. Little did I realize how close I was to the top (I had forgotten to bring the cue sheet with me). It was with great relief that I rolled into the top of Sunrise. The views were still stunning and I realized that I had already made 50 miles by 9:45. Not bad at all given that it had been uphill almost the entire way there. By then I was feeling a whole lot better about deciding to ride RAMROD.
Refueled, stretch and rehydrated, I set off down the hill. I'll admit to a bit of schadenfreude as I bombed past people coming up the road. It was amazing to already be more worried about going too fast (there were a lot of hairpins and I'm not quite confident enough to lean my bike hard enough to take those turns very fast) than weather or not my legs would hold out. I seriously was going downhill for almost 25 miles. Damn lot of fun.
The RAMROD coordinators were pretty good about making sure there were people posted at the various turns because as noted, I didn't have a cue sheet with me. The climb up to Crystal was marred by the crappy pavement and some pain in my knees, but it was also only six miles uphill, so it wasn't long before I had polished off ~80 miles and had most of the uphill work behind me. I refueled again, managed to snag some ibuprofen (vitamin I) from the volunteers and called my mum as it was the only place I had been able to get cellphone reception since Enumclaw. It was 11:45 by the and she was shocked to hear that I was already at Crystal, as she had expected that I wouldn't even get to Sunrise until 11. The ride down from Crystal was a bit slower due to the aforementioned crappy pavement.
After getting back on the highway, I wasn't riding too fast, but eventually managed to snag the back of a pace line. Some of them split off at the base of the Natchese hills, but the rest of us continued up. The grade was shallow enough that I kept in the paceline for a while, zipping along at 18-20 MPH for quite a while. Eventually the grade got rougher and I had to push ahead. One rider going the other direction offered an unhelpful shout of "You'll be sorry!" to those of us going uphill. It had been passed along that we were coming up on a stretch of 12% grade. Lo and behold, it wasn't long before we got to that bit. Because of the double front chain rings on my bike, I was reduced to standing up and weaving across the lane in my lowest gear ratio, doing maybe 6 MPH. It honestly wasn't possible to get up that hill any other way. However, I managed to hold out until the top when the terrain turned into rolling hills. In many ways I would have preferred a solid uphill so I could just roll down the other direction, but it wasn't so bad. A bit freaky was then going down a 12% gradient because that meant that we'd have to go up it the other way. Finally we hit mile 110 were there was water and enormous boxes of pain au chacolat waiting for us. I ended up eating a little bit before turning around. Going up the 12% gradient wasn't actually so bad and I ended up joking with a girl on a TT setup bike that we were kind of screwed on hills like that. But we both made it up. Going down the first 12% gradient section was actually worse in some ways because my front brake started losing grip as I was going down. Pumping the brakes seemed to work a bit better, so I made it back to the highway without crashing.
After that it was mostly a slog back along the highway. There was a major food stop at mile 120, but I was getting kind of tired of peanut butter & jelly by then and didn't eat much. However, I did have a rather good conversation with one of the volunteers. Always neat to talk to people who have been cyclists for longer than I've been alive. Heading back towards Enumclaw, I picked up some other riders drafting me, which turned out to be rather helpful because eventually they swapped out with me and let me draft at a greater speed than I would have been able to put out on my own. By then the ride was actually a bit boring because we had already been riding for so long and there wasn't any interesting terrain left to cover. I got left behind going by Mud Mountain Dam because I just don't ride so fast downhill, which left me without anyone to draft for the last few miles. By then I was regretting my decision to not eat much at the last food stop, but I managed to drag myself all the way back to the high school I had started at. My parents narrowly missed seeing me at the finish line, but they redeemed themselves by bringing me the tastiest cinnamon roll I've ever had (that was mostly due to hunger). After walking back to my car, we all drove back to Seattle. After a shower (oh, delight!) and tasty Indian food, I was mostly feeling human again. Sure, my knees were hurting a bit, but not nearly as badly as they did after the StP (not having to bike home with a full messenger bag probably helped).
Overall I surprised myself by not just finishing the ride, but doing it in much less time than I thought it would take if I was actually going to finish. It took me ~9 hours on my bike and ~10.5 hours overall do ride a gross of miles and cover 12,000 ft of elevation change. It's good to be done.
I may be a morning person, but getting up at 3 A.M. will always suck. However, I did manage to drag myself out of bed. After munching on some granola, writing out directions to the start line, pumping up my tires and saying goodbye to my mum, I drove off into the darkness. Given how little I've driven around Seattle, it was honestly a bit freaky, but I made it to Enumclaw (yes, that's really the name of the town. It smells like manure) without much trouble.
Somehow, it had escaped my mind that it would probably be pretty cold at 5 in the morning, especially in the Cascade foothills. So it was rather nippy as I set off. This made drafting even more attractive as less wind meant less wind chill. Even after riding for a little while, I was still unsure whether or not I should even be bothering to ride. I had been sick right after StP and hadn't gotten any good riding in since then, not to mention a distinct lack of hills in my training earlier in the summer. However, I somehow convinced myself to keep riding. Unfortunately, breakfast had been a bit insufficient, so I was definitely running low on fuel by the time I made it to the first food stop. However, snarfing down half a bagel and an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie perked me up. It continued to be cold until about mile 40 when the sun finally made itself known. By then I was well on the way to Sunrise and slogging my way uphill. Going so slowly can get boring, but this was balanced out by the gorgeous view at that point. Getting to stare at snow covered mountains in July is pretty nifty. On the flip side, seeing people already coming down the hill was a bit disheartening. Little did I realize how close I was to the top (I had forgotten to bring the cue sheet with me). It was with great relief that I rolled into the top of Sunrise. The views were still stunning and I realized that I had already made 50 miles by 9:45. Not bad at all given that it had been uphill almost the entire way there. By then I was feeling a whole lot better about deciding to ride RAMROD.
Refueled, stretch and rehydrated, I set off down the hill. I'll admit to a bit of schadenfreude as I bombed past people coming up the road. It was amazing to already be more worried about going too fast (there were a lot of hairpins and I'm not quite confident enough to lean my bike hard enough to take those turns very fast) than weather or not my legs would hold out. I seriously was going downhill for almost 25 miles. Damn lot of fun.
The RAMROD coordinators were pretty good about making sure there were people posted at the various turns because as noted, I didn't have a cue sheet with me. The climb up to Crystal was marred by the crappy pavement and some pain in my knees, but it was also only six miles uphill, so it wasn't long before I had polished off ~80 miles and had most of the uphill work behind me. I refueled again, managed to snag some ibuprofen (vitamin I) from the volunteers and called my mum as it was the only place I had been able to get cellphone reception since Enumclaw. It was 11:45 by the and she was shocked to hear that I was already at Crystal, as she had expected that I wouldn't even get to Sunrise until 11. The ride down from Crystal was a bit slower due to the aforementioned crappy pavement.
After getting back on the highway, I wasn't riding too fast, but eventually managed to snag the back of a pace line. Some of them split off at the base of the Natchese hills, but the rest of us continued up. The grade was shallow enough that I kept in the paceline for a while, zipping along at 18-20 MPH for quite a while. Eventually the grade got rougher and I had to push ahead. One rider going the other direction offered an unhelpful shout of "You'll be sorry!" to those of us going uphill. It had been passed along that we were coming up on a stretch of 12% grade. Lo and behold, it wasn't long before we got to that bit. Because of the double front chain rings on my bike, I was reduced to standing up and weaving across the lane in my lowest gear ratio, doing maybe 6 MPH. It honestly wasn't possible to get up that hill any other way. However, I managed to hold out until the top when the terrain turned into rolling hills. In many ways I would have preferred a solid uphill so I could just roll down the other direction, but it wasn't so bad. A bit freaky was then going down a 12% gradient because that meant that we'd have to go up it the other way. Finally we hit mile 110 were there was water and enormous boxes of pain au chacolat waiting for us. I ended up eating a little bit before turning around. Going up the 12% gradient wasn't actually so bad and I ended up joking with a girl on a TT setup bike that we were kind of screwed on hills like that. But we both made it up. Going down the first 12% gradient section was actually worse in some ways because my front brake started losing grip as I was going down. Pumping the brakes seemed to work a bit better, so I made it back to the highway without crashing.
After that it was mostly a slog back along the highway. There was a major food stop at mile 120, but I was getting kind of tired of peanut butter & jelly by then and didn't eat much. However, I did have a rather good conversation with one of the volunteers. Always neat to talk to people who have been cyclists for longer than I've been alive. Heading back towards Enumclaw, I picked up some other riders drafting me, which turned out to be rather helpful because eventually they swapped out with me and let me draft at a greater speed than I would have been able to put out on my own. By then the ride was actually a bit boring because we had already been riding for so long and there wasn't any interesting terrain left to cover. I got left behind going by Mud Mountain Dam because I just don't ride so fast downhill, which left me without anyone to draft for the last few miles. By then I was regretting my decision to not eat much at the last food stop, but I managed to drag myself all the way back to the high school I had started at. My parents narrowly missed seeing me at the finish line, but they redeemed themselves by bringing me the tastiest cinnamon roll I've ever had (that was mostly due to hunger). After walking back to my car, we all drove back to Seattle. After a shower (oh, delight!) and tasty Indian food, I was mostly feeling human again. Sure, my knees were hurting a bit, but not nearly as badly as they did after the StP (not having to bike home with a full messenger bag probably helped).
Overall I surprised myself by not just finishing the ride, but doing it in much less time than I thought it would take if I was actually going to finish. It took me ~9 hours on my bike and ~10.5 hours overall do ride a gross of miles and cover 12,000 ft of elevation change. It's good to be done.