Adam Paul
Adam Paul
  • Home
  • Bicycling
  • Hiking
  • Photography
    • Instagram
    • Flickr
    • Birds
    • Wildflowers
  • Travel
    • Articles
    • Trip Reports
Menu back  
 

2003 Terrible Two Ride Report

2003-08-131 CommentBicycling, Photography

Saturday, June 28 in Santa Rosa, California:

See also my photo album from this ride.

Pre-ride lecture

I started (along with 250+ of my closest cycling buddies – the largest mass-start I’ve participated in by far!) at 5:30 after we received a safety lecture from the ride organizer. He reminded us that our field was larger than the TdF, and not to sling mud on us, but we aren’t nearly as skilled as the pros, so be careful! We started at a fast clip, with a pace car trying to trip all of the stoplights as we travelled through Santa Rosa. Some drunken maniac ran out into the road and just stood there as the peleton swerved around him – what was he thinking?! (he probably wasn’t) A few lights turned before everyone got through, and by the time we got out of town, things were pretty well strung out. It wasn’t too cold, which was worrysome, as it would only get warmer from here out! It was a lovely ride along Bennett Valley as the sun fully rose and I found myself leading a line of 10 or so people as we boogied towards the first climb of the day – Trinity Grade.

Looking down into Sonoma Valley

I was surprised to find that the climb was actually pretty difficult (for some reason I had it in my head that Trinity wasn’t very steep – not true!). Fortunately only the bottom mile or two is really steep and the rest is just generally uphill. I saw my first walker here and wondered how he was going to do if he was walking on the first climb of the day! Finally I got to the top and started down the backside into Napa Valley. There were course officials here and there emphatically warning us to be careful on this descent, and I could definitely see why – it was steep and extremely curvy, chock full of 10-15mph hairpins. No wonder a few folks crash here every year! My front tire went squishy on a relatively flat and straight section, so I pulled off to fix the flat (my first since I switched to Avocet tires).

Balloons rising over Napa

A SAG vehicle went by just as I was unmounting the tire and told me to just relax – they changed the tube, found the wire that caused the flat, and pumped it up to my specified pressure for me – now that’s service! We merged onto Oakville Grade, a stark contrast to Trinity in that it was nearly straight with great visibility, yet like Trinity, quite steep. I wasn’t going anywhere near as fast as I could have since I don’t know the road, but I hit 52.3mph anyways – yeehaw!

Crossing Napa Valley

Another 20 miles or so through beautiful Napa Valley (I again got to see the balloons rise – one of my favorite sights on any ride (also a feature of the Knoxville Double)) and north on the Silverado Trail brought me to rest stop #1 in Calistoga at about 50 miles. I rode with a couple from Palo Alto for part of the final stretch on Silverado Trail – the guy was good company, but the woman was pretty silent.

Napa Valley vines

I only stayed 8 minutes at the rest stop, wanting to conserve time, as I had arrived only 40 minutes before the stop closed. It was more pleasant riding for 20’ish miles through another wine valley (Antelope, I think?) north of Calistoga, but my right knee started really bothering me nearly as soon as I left Calistoga.

Vineyards in Alexander Valley

This was worrysome, as it felt fine on Trinity, but bugged me after not even doing any hard riding for the previous hour+. I’d made sure to stretch and take aspirin and endurolytes, but that doesn’t seem to have helped. As I arrived at the foot of the second (and by many accounts, hardest) climb of the day, the Geysers, I stopped to stretch a bunch, have some caffeine, and take an Alleve in the hopes that it would shut my knee up.

Geysers Road and Alexander Valley

Geysers is a very steep climb with very little shade and few letups in grade – after half a mile or so my knee was being unbearable (stabbing pain with every pedal stroke), so I pulled off and pondered. The usual pain remedies weren’t working, and there was no way I was going to be able to ride another 130+ miles of extremely hilly terrain with my knee feeling as it was. I stretched a bunch more, enjoing a nice view down into the valley, then tried again to ride up the hill.

Alexander Valley

No dice. My ride was over – I wasn’t about to jeapordize the rest of the season (including the Death Ride in two weeks and the Climb to Kaiser in four, both already paid for (and expensive!)) in a vain attempt to finish this ride. I flagged down the next SAG that came by and got a ride to the top of the Geysers (which, by the way, looks like a HARD climb!), and from there got a lift back to the start. At least my lights hadn’t yet been taken to the last stop, so I just picked them up at the start and went back to my hotel. I enjoyed the part of the ride I did do, the support was phenominal (and they had sustained energy and hammer gel – yay!) and the course beautiful. I’ll definitely be back next year. It was pretty disappointing that my knee prevented me from finishing, as my legs and the rest of my body felt up for a good deal more abuse (who knows if I’d have made it or not, but that’s moot), but so it goes.

Ride Stats:

Distance: 71.9mi
Total Time: 5h 1m
On-bike Time: 4h 44m
Average Speed: 15.1mph
Average Speed (including stops): 14.3mph
Maximum Speed: 52.2.0mph
Total Climbing: ~3,000 ft
Rating (out of 10):
Difficulty: 7, at least for the portion I completed. I’m certain the remainder is much harder!
Support: 10 – lots of helpful people everywhere
Food: 10 – all the correct endurance fuels
Route: 8 – very pretty
Overall: 8, but I sure wish I could have ridden further
santa rosaterrible two
Share this post
TwitterFacebookGoogle+Pinterest
Related posts
Review: Billingham Hadley Digital camera bag
2015-07-31
X-T10 does pets
2015-07-08
Ai Weiwei at Alcatraz
2014-10-07
Wordless Wednesday: Calaveras Big Trees State Park’s North Grove
2011-02-23
Wordless Wednesday: Ferry Building Farmer’s Market
2011-01-19
Wordless Wednesday: Mission San Miguel Arcangel
2011-01-12
1 Comment
  1. Pingback: 2003 Climb to Kaiser Ride Report « Adam Paul
Leave Comment

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

clear formSubmit

Recent Posts
  • Review: Billingham Hadley Digital camera bag
  • X-T10 does pets
  • Ai Weiwei at Alcatraz
  • Wordless Wednesday: Calaveras Big Trees State Park’s North Grove
  • Wordless Wednesday: Ferry Building Farmer’s Market
  • Wordless Wednesday: Mission San Miguel Arcangel
  • Wordless Wednesday: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
Popular posts
  • Review: Billingham Hadley Digital camera bag
  • Ai Weiwei at Alcatraz
  • Bicycling
  • Wordless Wednesday: Calaveras Big Trees State Park’s North Grove
  • X-T10 does pets
  • Prague, Part 24: Prazky Hrad (Prague Castle) – I
  • Hiking the PCT from Ebbett’s Pass to Nobel Lake
Categories
Architecture Art Bicycling Birding Books Camping Cooking DIY Drinking Food Hiking Jewelry Memes Misc Movies Music Nature Photography Travel Uncategorized Urban Wildflowers Wine Wordless Wednesday Yoga
Tags
abbott's lagoon air force alfons mucha art nouveau baroque bradley grove burn of the century calaveras big trees cemetery century charles bridge chico wildflower climb to kaiser clock columns of the giants crowds czech republic davis double death ride devil mountain double double century ebbetts pass farmer's market ferry building fighter gargoyle giant sequoia golden gate park gothic graffiti grand tour grizzly peak century half century mala strana marin museum pleasanton prague prague castle primavera century san francisco solvang century st. vitus cathedral top hat classic vysehrad
Adam Paul
Copyright (c) 2015 by Adam R. Paul. All rights reserved. No scraping. Don't be a jerk. Dream-Theme — truly premium WordPress themes