The Kaos Theory

I was surfing around the internet before heading off to the neighbors house for poker and I found this cool pic from the Tour of Romandie. This is one of the many reason why I love to ride, especially up here in the Northwest where you can get a glimpse of these same types of views while on the road.

After my internet friend , KBJ wrote some nice words about my Daffodil Classic post. I’ve found another ride to do before the RTB ride, Monster Cookie Metric Century. I wasn’t going to do this ride this year but after last weekend, I just can’t help it. An upshot to this is my wife is going to do the ride as well. She doesn’t know how far she’ll make it but she’s gung-ho to give it a try. The route is mostly flat from what I know but 62 miles is a long way anyhoo. This will be the fourth rally this year for me. Let me tell you something about cycling, it’s like crack, addictive as hell.

Update** I found this ride at Bikeride.com which is a great site to find out what cycling events are happening in your neck of the woods. Here are a few links to site with different ride in the Northwest area.

Here or here or here or here.

Ok, finally made it back down home. Woo Hoo! Took today off, double Woo Hoo! Let’s start with how I feel today and to be honest I thought it would be worse but I feel great. The legs are slightly heavy but other than that I’m ready to go. Yesterday, the weather in and around the Puget Sound was absolutely gorgeous, perfect for riding with the temperature at the beginning at around 50 degrees. I’m going to break down the ride into three sections. Section I, from the startline to the first rest stop, about 20 miles. Section II, from the first rest area to the second rest stop, about 13 miles. Section III, from the second rest stop to the finish line, about 15 miles.

Section I.
The town of Orting is located east of Tacoma in a valley situated between the Cascades and a small set of hills. We arrived about 8:30am and promptly found the regsitration area, thank god for pre-reg. There were a lot of people queued up at the registration desk trying to get their race packages and I hate standing in line for just about anything. The ride was divided into a 28 mile family ride, two 50 mile rides, one 70 and century. I was going to ride one of the 50 milers but had not chosen which one until I got a good glimpse at the topo map of the rides. The Kapowsin loop looked somewhat harder due to the multiple up and down rollers and to be honest with you this ride was supposed to be a training ride. So I chose the Buckley loop with it’s relatively flatter profile. The first 3 miles or so was flat which was good because it gave me some time to warm up the legs and clear the lungs. I felt OK but since I wasn’t sure what the course was actually like, I had some apprehensions. The next several miles consisted of rollers I handled with not to much difficulty. I kept seeing in the topo map in my head and I was trying to figure out when the first climb would start. I knew it had begin sometime soon. Before I could get the thought out of my head, it appeared. It didn’t look like much at the beginning, slowly turning right then left, then it started to get steeper and steeper. After about 1/2 mile I was thinking to my self, “when is this going to end”. It kept going on and on. I’d go around a corner with the expectation of SOME flatness but no just more up and up. Finally after about 2 miles it finally abated and I was rewarded with a nice downhill to recoup. I rode for the next half hour basically by myself enjoying the scenery, sipping on my Propel(that’s for perverted Josh). Following the Dan Henry markers to make sure I don’t get lost making a 50 miler into either a short ride or end up on the top of Mount Rainier. At this point I met my riding buddies for the day, Mike, Orrin and Doug at an intersection where the markers weren’t exactly clear. It was a 6 way intersection in the middle of nowhere. Apparently the race organizers missed this one. I saw Manny, Moe and Jack(MMaJ) as I’ll refer to them, on the other side so I decide to follow them. I finally caught up to them and decide to sit on on their tail to and get a feel for riding with more than one cyclist. Being a nice guy I decided to take a few turns at the front so they wouldn’t get pissed off, I know I would. We rode like this for the next 5 to 6 miles up to the first rest stop. I enjoyed this immensely because out of all the organized rides I’ve done, it seems I ALWAYS end up riding by myself. It’s amazing how nice it is to retreat to the end of the line after pulling for awhile and hugging the back wheel of the cyclist in front of you just being pulled along with minimal effort at all. We could keep a nice tempo, 18-19 mph, without killing ourselves. Especially if you add a headwind to the mix. MMaJ, as best as I could tell, varied in age from late 40′s to late 50′s but they were all in pretty decent shape. I found out later that they used to ride together a lot. We finally pulled into the first rest stop in the town of Buckley to grab some grub. At this point I went and introduced myself to MMaJ. The first thing they said, almost in unison, we can’t keep the pace your doing for the whole ride. Each providing various reason why, sore kees, bad back etc. I took this in stride because I don’t think I could have kept it up either. I ensured them that I understood and agreed to keep it mellow.

Section II.

I chowed down during the rest, it’s amazing how hungry you can get while riding. Banana, oatmeal cookie, peanut butter bagel and a couple of orange slices and I was on my way. Coincidentally, this was the same moment MMaJ decide to leave along with two other lady riders. The ladies took the lead and we followed in a nice line letting them break the air for us. A nice thing when you’re going in to a steady headwind. One thing I learned on this ride is some bike etiquette. For instance, when you are leading the pace line and you see something in the rode like glass or a pothole good riders will point these out for the rest of the line. Well, one of the ladies failed to notify the rest of us as we all bounced through a big pothole. Thankfully no one flatted or broke a spoke but that didn’t make Moe happy. He fumed a bit but got over it. Somewhere about 2 miles from the first rest stop on the gang lost his powerbar out his pack so they all slowed to wait but I kept going on. At this point the ladies had advanced about 100 yd in front of me so I decide to catch up to them. My main reason was I didn’t want to ride into the headwind by myself. Once I did catch up, I just sat on their back wheel and enjoyed the draft. I did this almost the whole way to the next rest stop. I didn’t offer to take a turn, I guess in a sort of payback for not pointing out the pothole earlier. After a while their pace had slowed to the point that I need to pass because I wanted to get going. I ended up catching up with another rider and then another using each to rest while I sat on their back wheel. Finally I arrive at the last rest stop in Bonney Lake with some fatigue in the quads.

Section III.

Ate the some food regimen. It seemed to be working, as best as I could tell. Called my wife to tell her when I’d be getting to the finish line. MMaJ arrived about 3 minutes behind me but didn’t stay as long as I did and took off. I left about 5 minutes after MMaJ. Once I started back out my legs were real heavy and stiff. The rest had tightened me up good. It took me about 2 miles before the stiffness went away. Lo and behold I found myself behind the ladies again but I dropped them on a short hill soon after. After that I rode solo for several miles around Bonney Lake. Based on the topo I knew the middle part of the ride was going to be fairly simple, I also knew at some point there was a exhilarating decent to be had. I have to say going down a nice wide, smooth road at 38 mph is awesome. Once I was down to the valley floor I knew there was only one more climb to get over. Bombing the long decent enabled me to re-catch MMaJ about 2 miles before the last climb. As I passed them one of them shouted out, “There’s that guy from Portland again”. They were impressed I came all the way up from Oregon to ride. I started talking to them about where they were from etc when the one called Doug asks me “Have you ridden this before” and answered “No, why?. He goes on to tell me about the hill we’re going to climb. Steep, very steep. I knew there was a climb coming but I wasn’t expecting what I was about to find. It was only about 3/4 to a mile long but it was nasty steep and at one point I could see it continuing up to the left and I started to get demoralized. Was I going to have to get off and walk it? Thankfully, I saw we were going off to the right at a fork in the road. I could tell this by the gaggle of cyclist perched at the top of the climb, resting. Once to the top, Orrin, who had some sort of device on his bike enabling him to determine the percent gradient, mentioned at the steepest part of the climb it was 13%. Folks, that’s Alp d’Huez stuff. To say I was gassed is an extreme understatement but I knew the rest of the ride was flat so I was home free.

Overall I had a great time, met some interesting people and got closer to the shape I want to be in. Here’s a photo of me at the finish line.

Stats: 47.75 miles in 3 hours 23 minutes and 11 seconds, average speed 14 mph. Max speed 38.4 mph. Once again a selfish traffic inducing moment from the Kaostheory courtesy of Outside the Beltway traffic Jam.

I know you are waiting breathlessly for a blow by blow account of my ride at the Daffodil Classic. However, I’m beat and my mind thinks only of Beer and it’s making it very difficult to write anything. I will have an update once I get back to Portland. Cheers.

Just signed up to ride the Daffodil Classic in Orting, Washington on April 23rd. It should be fun and a good training ride for the Reach the Beach ride in May. This was one of the rides I wrote about in one of my earlier posts that I wanted to do this year. I almost forgot about it until I checked my archives and found the post.

The weather was perfect today making it difficult to concentrate on work. I kept looking out my home office window waiting for the clock to strike 4:00pm. Once it did I pumped up the tires, oiled the chain and headed of to the open road. All in all it was a good ride. My goal as always is to do my rides averaging 15 mph. I got closer this time. With about 4 miles to go I was at 15.62 mph but I still had Strawberry Hill to conquer. Invariable this streatch brings down my average and this time was no different. I went up the hill fairly well, stronger than the last time I did it which is a good sign. But the hill did it’s damage and when I returned home my final average was 14.7 mph for 20.74 miles. Slightly better than the last time. Like I posted earlier I love DST and living in the Northwest. The time change and being above the 45th parallel means the sun stays up a lot longer than when we lived in CA.