June 19, 2004, Mt. Washington RR
Comox, BC   41.9 miles

I knew little about the race before arriving there, only that it was 75 km and had a hill climb at the end of it.

I had been doing pretty well recently in the races that had hills in them, so I was looking forward to this race. It consisted of 2 laps around a rolling 17 km loop, then an additional half a loop where we turn off onto another road of about 4 miles with a stretch of gravel road, then 11 miles of climbing with a gain of 3285 feet of altitude with the first 2.6 miles at 10.5% and many long stretches of 8% to 10.5% further up the road! The temperatures were in the 90's, which also had an impact. Two weeks ago I did quite well in a race with 1400 feet of gain of 6 miles, which we did twice, but the grades were typically not more than 6%. In the Tucson Bicycle Classic, we had to climb Gates Pass 3 times, which is about 12% and I managed it quite well.

This race was put on by the BC Masters and all the participants had to be 30 or over and there were classes for each 5 year age group up to 70, so lots of medals available. There were 6 registered in my 50-54 category. This time I wrote their numbers down on my arm to keep track of my competition, as we started with a few other classes and there were staggered starts where older classes started first, so there would be a combining of more riders during the course of events.

The first two laps were at a moderate pace and we caught the group ahead of us after the first lap. There were two riders in particular who seemed to be strongest, so I kept my eye on them. Derek was one of them and he is apparently quite an accomplished rider; he certainly look lean and fit. We were usually taking turns at the front and a slight grade on the backside shed off a few of the weaker riders. When we turned off the loop on the third time around, Derek started to put on the pressure and I went with him. There were a few elevation gains along this stretch and he was going rather hard. Knowing that the hard climb was coming pretty soon, I didn't want to approach it exhausted and let him motor off, hoping I'd catch him on the climb. The gravel stretch was not long, but a little unnerving. Immediately we start the first real climb and there were 2 other riders from my class close behind me. I started my climbing and slowly put some distance on them. But this was damn steep. My lowest gear was a 39x23 which had been fine for 8% climbs and 12% climbs of less than half a mile. But after about 2 miles, I ran into a problem: I started to cramp! From this point on I could not gauge my speed by how hard my lungs were working or how much power I had in my legs, but by limiting the onset of a cramp. In the saddle, one set of muscles would complain (quite loudly), so out of the saddle to use some different muscles until they began to fail. I still had 9 miles to go and this situation would continue until I stopped riding.

I got passed soon after by another rider in my class, which put me in third, still in medal contention. So I did the best I could. It was pretty frustrating because I was not breathing hard and I had plenty of power, but if I used it, TWANG, a cramp would twinge on me and I'd have to try something else. I considered quitting, since I still had quite a ways to go, but I seemed to be able to still move forward by alternating different pedal strokes. Then another rider of my class caught and passed me. I stayed about 100 feet behind him for many minutes, but the cramping onsets were getting worse. I was about a third of the way up the climb and was just about to turn around and go home, when he stopped and put his feet down (he never did finish). So on I continued, still in medal contention. I got about half way up and really wanted to get off and walk (which I had already witnessed others doing), but damn if the hill was going to beat me.

I had to slow a bit more to stop the cramps from coming on. Another rider from my class passed me and I accelerated to stay on his wheel, but my calves were just twitching every half second with minor cramps and after about 30 seconds of this I had to let him ride away from me. Ok, continue on with the goal just to finish this torture fest. Maybe one of those riders ahead of me will quit and get me back into contention. I can't medal if I don't finish.

Then the cramps got more severe. They'd hit like a hammer and I'd yelp so loud that riders ahead of me looked back to see if I had fallen. I had to stop pedaling. Damn mountain. Contemplating my situation, I decided to try to walk the cramps off and make forward progress at the same time. This helped and I felt immensely better when I got back on the bike, but it was only temporary. FOUR times I had to stop and walk off the cramps that were too severe to allow me to continue pedaling. Other riders from classes that had started behind us passed me. The sweat was so bad that half the time I was riding with my eyes closed until I could try to wipe them clean. But even then, there was so much dried sweat on my glasses, that I had to pull them down to look over them. Sometimes I was doing less than 4 mph and it was a balancing act between pedal strokes. Many riders were doing S turns back and forth across the entire road to reduce the effective grade. I still had plenty of power and lung capacity, but I was crippled from utilizing it.

Amazingly, I made it to the finish line after 9 miles and 1 hour and 15 minutes of cramping. It was not fun. I would not call it racing while I was in this condition. I think I was about 21st out of 25 finishers (about a third never finished). Derek who had blazed away from the rest of us was super powerful. He was smoking up the mountain, but with only a few kilometers left, he started to suffer from heat stroke (he has had this problem in the past). To prevent serious consequences, he removed his helmet to pour water over himself. However, he had some officials hold his helmet while he did this and since you are not allowed to remove your helmet during a race, he was disqualified. This moved me up to third in my class and I got the bronze medal.

I had to ride down the mountain to get back to my car. On those steep grades I was doing over 55 mph, coasting.


In the future, I will either avoid hills of this steepness and length unless I can find some much lower gears, which requires changing out the crankset and the rear shifter. The stress I put on my legs was felt for the next seven days and I was only able to do easy rides until the damage was repaired. Although I had to skip the TT on the following day, I was fortunate in that I had no other races for about a month, which allowed me to heal.

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