the california death ride...

the california death ride. 129 miles. 15,000 feet of climbing. 5 passes. what a great day!

over the weekend i completed a feat i've been training for all spring. the death ride had 3500 riders this year and the registration filled up in 7 hours back in december. joseph lee and i registered within 1 hour of the registration opening. since registering the race has weighted on my mind. my training began with a few rides in feb/march. april was consumed with study for my oral boards (which i passed--and became board certified!) may and june were filled with 100 mile training weeks--often with over 10,000 feet of climbing each week. the staple of my training was the alpine loop.

key in all of this was the support of amy and the kids. thank you so much for allowing me to ride my bike 10 hours a week these last two months!

the event began with travel to markleeville, california to pick up registration packets on friday. i slept 3 hours on thursday evening and left my house at 1 am and drove 9 hours straight to turtle rock park. i met a couple from upstate new york in line who traveled together to participate in the ride. after registration we headed to south lake tahoe where we rode ten miles, slept on the beach (while joseph swam) and loaded up on pasta and calzones...

we awoke at 4am and loaded the bikes.

during my ACLS training i found an internal medicine physician whom i'd met during medical school, charlie ayers. we found then that both of us happened to be riding the tour of california. we decided to carpool to the start of the race. with 3500 riders there were cars stretched along the highway for miles. we found a spot about 1 mile from the start line to park and climb onto the bikes. below you see a photo of charlie and myself.

nutrition plays a key part in a day long endurance event. the difficult issues are fluids--to prevent dehyration, electrolytes--to prevent muscle cramps and hyponatremia, carbohydrates--to prevent 'bonking' where your glycogen stores are depleted and you muscles are unable to contract anymore...

i'm still working on my pre-race carb loading plan. the main issue for me is that ingestion of large amounts of simple carbs induces GI upset. i won't give details, but this required me to visit the loo at every mountain peak, lunch and other various rest-stops...

joseph and i were off (after visiting the loo at the start) at 5:55 am. this placed us starting 25 minutes after the bunch start. the event was not officially timed and the emphasis was on finishing each climb. regardless, starting late like this had us passing riders all day. the first climb was up 'monitor pass' the climb was 3,000 feet of climbing and about 10 miles.

climbing in an event like this was fascinating. joseph and i had trained very similar and amazingly on the day there were rare occasions where either of us felt we had to pull the other along. we ended up passing riders all day. one of the coolest aspects of this event was its scale. there were 3500 riders and it was amazing to climb past hundreds of riders up the 1st climb. riders of all body types, from all over the country with jerseys often stamped with monikers from their home towns. i'd like to say i enjoyed the gorgeous sunrise during this climb, but i spent most of the time ticking away on the pedals and keeping track of the riders we passed ahead.

at the top of the first climb my father would have been proud of all the boy scouts who helped staff the first support station. another defining aspect of this ride was the phenomenal support. rumor is there were 700 volunteers...all of whom seemed to be smiling and happy. every support station had pbjs, chips, gu, oranges, bananas, cytomax, water, toilets and lots and lots of riders...

getting past the first climb felt good. it felt like the ride had definitely begun and we could settle in. the descent down the backside of monitor was amazing. we claimed a photo at the top before the quick descent...


this was probably one of my favorite sights from the perspective of human scale. we probably passed 250 riders up monitor, but on the way down monitor we saw over a 1000 riders coming up as we descended...

i thought the site was so cool that i couldn't help but pull out my camera and shoot a short video of the scene.

the second climb was 3000 feet over 8 miles--meaning that the grade was more relentless often sitting between 8-10%. it was fairly hot up this climb with no trees and the sun beating down...

after arriving at the base of the monitor descent we turned immediately to climb up what we had just come down. this was another climb of human scale as we passed 100's of riders. i caught part of this climb as well on video. you can see the tempo that allowed us to see so many riders from the race as we rode up the climbs...

and a photo op.


the third climb of the day was the toughest for me. this 3,000 foot 14 mile climb kicked up the last 8 miles with a unique profile where you would undulate from 5% to 14-15% steep sections. this was the most beautiful section of the ride though and while this was the only time on the day that i thought i might not be able to stay with joseph's pace, i turned inward and suffered up past gorgeous views.

before the final kick up to the top we captured this shot on a beautiful section of the course.

you can see a hint of relief in this photo below as we'd finished 3 of the 5 climbs.



at the top of the descent down the backside of ebbetts joseph noticed a bulge in his rear tire. he made his way slowly and safely down the descent and luckily there was technical support at the bottom where we purchased a tire and replaced it. 30 minutes later we were happy to be back on the road.

the climb up the back of ebbetts was 1800 feet and 5 miles. a hot climb but manageable. (for perspective, the climb up the utah county side of suncrest is 4.5 miles and 1200 feet of climbing.)

we descended the gorgeous ebbetts hillside with a few stupid riders passing us and taking big risks and crossing well over midline at high speeds.

lunch was at the bottom of ebbetts (mile 77 or so.) we met a guy from the bay area who was riding his 4th death ride in a row. so many really nice people (and so many really nice bikes...) it seemed anytime you would greet someone on a climb they would smile and give you a kind answer. a lunch of potato chips, chocolate chips, turkey wrap, ramen and water before heading out for the final monster climb of the day. we were done with 4 of the climbs by 75 miles, but still had 50+ miles and 4000+ feet of climbing to ride.

we hopped in a paceline for the traverse to the bottom of carson pass. at one point joseph blew up the paceline with a blistering pace up a 400 vertical foot ascent of 8%. we hung with him and moved to the base of the final climb.

in our paceline (a nod to aj if he even reads this far), there was a strong rider with an oregon ducks jersey and shorts on. i yelled go ducks when he first jumped in the paceline and he said, "that's right go ducks." he said he'd already had an oregon state beaver fan yell, "f*** the ducks" during the ride. i let him know while i was a BYU fan i could appreciate duck fans because of my brother in law's loyalty to the school. we rode together together at a fast pace for 10-15 miles before we hit the base of carson pass.

at the carson pass support tent there was a water shower, a man dressed as a grim reaper, lots of food, and port-a-pottys (my 5th visit on the day to the loo?) for the final climb i knew i would need extra motivation, so i played muse and weezer on my phone speaker in my back jersey pocket coming up that final 16 mile 3000+ foot climb. how can you not tap out a fast tempo when listening to the likes of 'i am the greatest man who ever lived' and 'love is our resistance'..?

regardless, we powered up that final climb (i definitely felt better than i had on ebbetts.)

the final 1/4 mile of our ascent a guy crashed on the descent just ahead of us and i pulled over to look him over. he had no spinal column pain but had road rash over his hip. however his pain in the pelvic region was too great and he stayed on the ground till the ambulance came. we soldiered on. in all there were 4-5 ambulances and 2 helicopters called out for various crashes--amounting to .2% of the riders experiencing physical mishap...the three riders i saw looked like they had no limb or life threatening injuries luckily.

at the top we held our hands above our heads together across the summitt. what a feeling of accomplishment as we two had paced each other over climb after climb that day. we pushed each other and pulled each other in ways we couldn't have done alone. we were a great team.

we then headed to the support tent for ice cream and to sign the 5-pass finisher's poster...

after some ice-cream and a coke we shot these photos capturing the beautiful scenery to be found at the top of carson pass.



we then descended and made the final small climb to our car.

the finish line included live music, chicken fajitas and relief/relaxation. we drove back to tahoe to soak in the lake and the hot-tub.

we watched the tour stage replay at a bar in harvey's casino (a bit boring with chavanel taking back the yellow jersey.)

i locked my keys in car the next morning and delayed my drive home by nearly 2 hours. oh well.

all in all it was an epic day. sadly i erased my garmin gps data the evening of the ride, but not before reviewing it mentally. our spinning time on the bike was 8 hours and 21 minutes with total time including rest stops, photos and tire change somewhere in the 10 hour range.

below is the race profile i created on mapmyride...

and if you read to the end of the post you deserve some award for endurance as well!