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Mt Hamilton Challenge 2004 - 4/24/2004


125mi 8kft climbing

Last saturday I rode the Mt Ham challenge for the first time. This being my first big ride of the season I looked at it as calibration for the other rides I was planning.

I woke up at the ungodly hour of 4:00 in order to get to the start in Santa Clara by 6:00. Lorah was nice enough to actually get up with me and drive me down to the start and then drive me home later. I met Piaw and Lisa, gave them a few spare clif bars and got out of there by 6:20.

10 miles into the ride the climbing started and I was soon in my granny (uncle!) gear on the way up Mt Ham. I ran into Piaw and Lisa on the first part of the climb and we chatted for a bike about tandem stuff. At some point they stopped to take off jackets and I continued on.

Climbing 4k ft all at once is a lot of work. If you have low enough gears it's all about spinning, patience, and keeping your heart rate below your lactic threshold. For me this means watching the hammerheads pass me on the way up. Did I mention patience is a good thing?

I hurt my knee a little last week on a tandem ride with Lorah with a ton of climbing and at the top my knee was bugging me a little. I figured it'd get better now that the bulk of the climbing was over. I refilled my food bottle and camelback and headed down the back side of the mountain.

I wasn't familiar with this descent so I took it easy. The sharp turns with lots of sand definitely kept me in control. I got passed by a few guys who probably had better insurance than I did.

After the descent and into the rollers my knee started acting up again. At this point it hurt to turn the pedals and I was seriously thinking of just finding a shady spot to wait for the sag. I've been sagged before and all I remember is waiting a long time to get picked up, waiting a long time to get dropped off the next checkpoint, and waiting a long time to get taken back to the start. I figured that I'd just continue the 15 miles to the second checkpoint and wait there for a ride back to the start. I took two motrin to relax my knee so I could continue riding.

Today the Devil Mountain Double was taking place and I passed a lot of really strong looking riders going in the other direction heading up Mt Ham. They had started their day climbing Mt Diablo and were now heading up Mt Ham in the heat of the afternoon. I'm not sure I'd call that fun.

By the time I got to the second checkpoint my knee was feeling much better and I was moving fairly well again. This was my first hard ride of the season and it all started coming back to me that this was supposed to be hard and painful so I decided since 5k ft of the 8k ft climbing was behind me I might as well finish the silly thing. I did my best to get in and out of there quickly and got back on the bike.

The next 70 miles were pretty uneventful, with lots of annoying rollers and another good climb and descent on Calaveras road. Lorah and I had done that section of Calaveras in the other direction on the tandem last weekend during the Primavera Century and coming in this direction, while not as steep, wasn't nearly as fun. I'd much rather do a bunch of steep climbing all at once than deal with a bunch of annoying uphill rollers.

The last part of the ride was all downhill and into the urban sprawl of the south bay. I finished in 10:30 with 9:15 on the bike for a 46/200ish place finish. This was my best place finish in any hard ride I've ever done. I contribute some of that to the DMD removing many of the best riders from the playing field, but it still felt good to have a strong finish.