Old Caz Grasshopper (again)

So, I had an impromptu day off on Thursday and decided to do the Grasshopper loop on my single bike.  After having a great breakfast with Claire at Howard Station in Occidental, I took off at exactly 10:00 for my ride.  My main focus was to not push myself to much so that I would have plenty left over for the climb up Willow Creek at the end, and the 15 mile ride home after that.

Well, the plan worked perfect until the final climb up Willow Creek where I decided that I wanted to try to meet a finishing goal.  What a weird concept, the entire ride I'm not worried about my time, and then with 10 miles to go, I pick an arbitrary time and make it a do or die situation to beat that time.  Anyway, my arbitrary time was 3 hours and 45 minutes, and I beat it by 15 seconds.  Hurray, I think.  I was in a world of hurt on that final climb.  For most of the ride I had been keeping my heart rate under 160, but for the final climb I was hitting almost 190.  To make a long story short, I felt much better than I expected I would and the ride home afterwards wasn't even that bad.  And no cramping!!!

Here is a link to my loop.  The first lap is the Grasshoppper loop and the second lap is the ride home afterwards.  I did end up with enough energy to make some taco pizza for dinner, which I thought was great, but Claire wasn't quite as excited about it.

Oh, yea, I almost forgot.  Claire and I went up to Annadel on Wednesday and I got to ride my new Cannondale single speed 29'er.  It was a beautiful evening and we saw plenty of other folks up in the park enjoying the park.  Here is a picture of Claire riding off into the sunset.

Old Caz Grasshopper

We raced the Grasshopper this last Saturday.  There were 7 Hubsters out there at the start out of 245 racers.  That means that we made up almost 3% of the field.  Quite a showing.  Lets see if I can remember everyone.  From left to right...Claire, Handsome Jeff, Troy, Melinda, A1, Chaz, and Eric the Fireman.  Here is a link to the loop.  Claire and I were on a tandem as well as A1 and Melinda.  For those of you who aren't familiar with this race, it is considered a "cross" race since about a quarter of it is on dirt.  It ended up being just a little over 50 miles long and had 5000 feet of climbing.

Waiting for the start

This year the race started out by heading up Coleman Valley Road.  There is nothing like a race that starts with a 10 yard warm-up before turning up a 15% grade and climbing around a 1000 feet.  Needless to say, we were separated from most of the solo bikes by the time we started heading down Willow Creek Road.  We had plenty of encouragement from the solo riders as we were heading up the climb.

By the time we hit the coast and started heading back inland for the rest of the race, the pack of racers had thinned out.  The solo Hubsters were up ahead somewhere, but the two tandems were sticking together.  We worked together like a finely oiled machine on the flats and ate up the climbs like a thinly sliced piece of chocolate cake.  

In the shadows on Willow Creek

The final climb up Willow Creek was a doozy with plenty of cramping going on.  Claire, much to my dismay, decided that we needed to stay on the bike for the "two sisters", which are a couple of very steep pitches on Willow Creek that leave plenty of riders lying on their sides or walking.  We cleaned them.

We finished in fine spirits at the top of the climb and then coasted into Occidental after having to fix a front flat on our tandem.

Claire and I rushed home, showered, and then met some friends for a night out in San Fran.  We didn't get home until almost 2 in the morning after seeing the Old 97's in concert.  Needless to say, we were a little tired the next day at the shop.

A1 and Melinda before the start

Aaron and Melinda finishing at the Old Caz Grasshopper

A beautiful ride through wine country

Well, this Monday's ride was terrific.  It was the first time this year that we got to ride in shorts and short sleeve jerseys.  It was a great group.  The ride turned out to be 55 miles and we averaged right around 18 mph.  This was one of our last rides before we race the Grasshopper this coming Saturday.  Claire and I will be on our Ibis tandem and Aaron and Melinda will be on their Cannondale RT1000.  They have it set up REALLY cool with 26" wheels for off-road and 700c wheels for the road.