March 27, 2012

Day 7

Today we ride Sierra Nevada. Last night there was lots of talk about how hard this was going to be, some of the girls got pretty anxious about it. Everyone got in the vans early enough to get out on time. The bikes were packed in Andy's trailer, a really neat contraption that has one rack to hold about 10 bikes with the front wheel off. Then it closes up and locks, the front wheels also fit inside. Just as we were getting ready Andy points out to me that I have a split in the sidewall of my rear tire, I have an extra tire with me so I planned on changing it before I started the ride in Grenada.

 

 the village at the bottom of the climb

It was an hour's ride to Grenada, we stopped just on the edge of town for coffee, then rolled further in to a staging area about one km from the beginning of the climb. Everyone pulled their bikes out and I got to work changing my tire. I was pretty quick changing the tire, only to find that I pinched the tube as I was doing it, and had to do it again with a new tube. Not my favourite way to start a ride. Francine, Erika and Heather headed off first, in our best guess on how to stage the starts. The rest of us waited a while. We took our time riding to the bridge where the official start is, then Roxanne headed off. Then it was Richard and Dan, then me, then Tim and Jamie, then Gerrad and Colin.

I hadn't warmed up, and it wasn't long before I regretted it. After only a few hundred metres the road gets steep, and my legs felt like I was hauling wood up the hill. The first 10k started with open road with switchbacks, the grade going from 6% to 14%. Then we were in the quarry with grades hitting at one point 22%. I passed Roxanne before the worst of it, then Colin passed me right where there was a little downhill reprieve before one last kicker of 14% in the quarry. 

 

 Roxanne finishing strong

As I exited the quarry road Tracy (Andy's wife who was driving the van) held me up because there was traffic on the main road, I missed carrying that momentum. From then on it was major road, very good surface with good shoulders and grades averaged 6% with little variation for the next 10km. It was a good time to recover and figure out how you were doing. Up until the end of the quarry my heart rate slowly creeped up to about 164, then came down from there after I finished that section. This was good and bad: Good because theoretically I had a lot more to give, bad because I can usually reach much higher heart rates while working out - I thought it should have been higher. It took me 49 minutes to do the first 10km.

I spun out the next km or so, then set a tempo that I thought I could maintain. Right when I thought I was doing well Gerrad passed me... Guess I wasn't doing as well as I thought. A little while later I passed Heather. I tried to increase the effort gradually, but my heart rate still wasn't coming up very much. The weather was very nice, warmest day we had yet. It was the first time I was riding without knee warmers and a jacket. I did pull out my camera a few times to get some pics. 

After 20 km

I kept looking behind to see when Tim and Jamie were going to catch me - they never did, apparently they made a couple of stops - Tim dropped his bottle, they stopped for water at one of the trucks. They took their time. I kept trying to push it, but I couldn't get the effort up. At about 22km you make a left turn into a wooded area and the grade comes down to near flat for a couple of Kms. I got into the big ring, hit 33kph and felt like I was flying. Then you turn right again and the grade goes back up. As the kms ticked off I thought I could ratchet up the effort and keep testing myself - it didn't work out well. The grade was hitting 8-9% mostly now, though the terrain made it look a lot lower. Kind of like Magnetic Hill, but in reverse. Every time I stood to gain some speed it just wasn't happening. Last year I did this climb in 2:14, I was hoping for 2:10. I had already seen the 2 hour mark go by, and was doing math in my head to figure out what kind of speed I needed to match my goal. I caught Erika then saw Francine up ahead. It wasn't far now, I recognized the landmarks, but it also got steeper as it got under one k to go. 

Just as I caught Francine at the last corner Andy was there to pace us up on his mountain bike, he accelerated and I had nothing! I finished at 2:11, better than last year, but not quite what I'd hoped for. There were some other fantastic times, I think Colin achieved the 4th best ever time, but we'll review all of those another night when Andy writes up our little plaques to put on his wall.

 All of us at the top

Dinner was great big meatballs and white rice with salad, and carrot cake with ice cream, all of it very tasty. 

 Double dessert for Colin

After dinner we tried to work out what was going to happen with our trip to Alhambra tomorrow. It didn't take long for us to find out that there was a wrench in our plans: The tickets to get into Alhambra were sold out, and if you couldn't get in there it wasn't worthwhile going to Grenada. After a bunch of debate over various other towns, including Nerja where we'd gone last year, we settled on going to Malaga which has lots of historic sites, shopping, and tapas bars - something to please everyone. We'll see if the plan holds when we get up in the morning.

Oh yeah, riding stats: 30kms, 2:11 (my ride time), average speed 13.7 kph (sounds pathetic) and 1778 metres of ascent. One of the toughest climbs in the world, I believe it.