MORE 2011 MONTHLY BIKE PHOTS

Here's July through December. 

July. A lovely summer afternoon climbing the upward-tilted Burnout Road with terrific views overlooking Samish Bay. Samish Island is the foreground (ish) strip of dark forest with super-steep Mount Erie in the distance.

July (part 2). Mount Shuksan as seen through the spokes on one of my repeat rides up the ski area on the Mount Baker Highway. Because of 2011's mega-snowfall, this year the road never opened all the way to Artist Point.

  

August. Mount Shasta Summit Century. Ultra hard, ultra long ("That's what she said" joke goes here.)--130 miles with 14,750 feet or so of climbing, 10-plus hours on a bike. Glad I did it but it was the day I realized that anything longer than about 6 hours begins to enter the This-isn't-a-whole-lot-of-fun-anymore zone. Also in August, I turned 50.

September. Riding across the Skagit Flats on the way to La Conner and back with the Cowboys Titanium. Seventy-three miles, a stop for coffee in L-town, some hellatious town sign sprints thoughout--certainly one of the year's most enjoyable rides.

October. Crazy Jacob Stewart holds onto his bike for dear life after dropping down into a hole atop Anderson Mountain. This was on a cool MTB ride with Jacob, Ryan Rickerts and Scott Young. 

October (part 2). I just really like the colors on this helmet cam photo of Titanium Cancellara pedaling down the Interurban Trail. 

November. Another helmet cam shot, this one during a warm-up lap of the Cross-Border Clash CX race outside Ferndale. That's Glenn Gervais in blue; he won the men's master C race that day.. 

December. I've not taken many bike photos this month. (We've been running too damn much.) Here's a snapshot taken from a helmet cam video I shot of our Samish Loop ride 'n' bushwack. The reason I'm not wearing a helmet is that I'm pointing the camera at myself whilst riding.

Happy New Year, y'all!   

SHASTA SUMMIT CENTURY REPORT

I’m a few days removed from the Shasta Summit Century and have had time to reflect on my 10-plus hours in the saddle. Here are my thoughts, all sorta bullet-pointed.

• It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than the 2006 Ironman Coeur D’Alene which I did in 92-degree temps. There, however, I was able to stop every mile during the marathon and shove ice and cold sponges in my cap, my shirt, everywhere. I tried that here (and the Shasta aid stations were terrific) but during a bike tour/century ride, aid stations are fewer and it's farther between each one.

• Because of the heat, I felt horribly nauseous from the four-hour mark on, which was the start of the second climb. (The high was 86 degrees but riding all day on the shadeless tarmac felt much hotter; the ambient temperature was about 100.) I also reached a point on both the third and fourth climbs where I couldn’t elevate my heart rate above 130 (usually on rides like this, I try to stay right around 150) and I began to wonder if I was doing damage to myself. First time I’ve ever had thoughts like that. During these climbs my interior monologue was filled with personal vows: this is the last of the ultra-long stuff. No more Ironmans, no more 50K running races, I’ll probably never do a 100-mile mountain bike race, etc. They’re just not my strength and I don’t want to do permanent damage. Give me three-, four-hour events, but that’s it; Shasta is my swan song to the long stuff. I’m turning 50 in a few weeks so the time seems right.

Mark Clausen and I. Photo by Adam Morley.

• Truthfully, I have no idea how I made it to the end of the final 14-mile climb (with its 4,150 feet of elevation gain) to the foot of Mount Shasta. When I hit the lunch spot after climb 3, I was done and though disappointed, I knew I’d gone as far as I possibly could. So I lay in the grassy shade for what seemed like hours, commiserating with some dude who was going through the same thing I was. I couldn’t eat or even drink anything; I just wanted to go back to my air-conditioned hotel room, lay in bed and watch the Yanks-Red Sox game on TV. At some point though, I realized I was beginning to feel only regular horrible, as opposed to I-want-to-vomit-up-my-guts, shoot-me-now-please-and-put-me-out-of-my-misery horrible, as I'd been feeling. So I got on my bike to pedal back to my car at Mount Shasta City Park.

• Luckily, the route to the park was the same as to get to the final climb and, since I wasn’t feeling quite so bad, with the help of my Garmin 500, I did some quick math. I’d ridden 100 miles to that point and climbed 10,000 feet which I’d done only once before (RAMROD ’04). But if I could just make it another 3 miles or so, I’d have 11,000 feet—my biggest day of climbing ever, so I’d at least be able to salvage something. So I did that. Felt a little more horrible, but not terribly horrible. Then figured I’ll try for 12,000 feet. Did that. Then I figured out where the halfway point of the climb was, then the two-thirds point, then what time does darkness hit? OK, I should be able to make it to the top by then. Bit by bit I fought my way to the top. Meanwhile, however, the heat nausea was back (along with the I-want-to-vomit-up-my-guts, etc.), my upper hamstrings started barking (never had that before) and again, my heart rate wouldn’t elevate past 128. (Lower down on this climb it had more or less been normal.)

• By the time I reached the top, I was certainly relieved, felt some feeling of accomplishment but also was a bit concerned. Other than making a pedaling motion, I couldn’t move my legs very well and at the summit aid station, getting off my bike and trying to walk to get some of the lovely peanut butter-filled pretzels was sketchy. But I’d made it to the top and that's all I cared about. I got me an orange sody pop, soaked myself with ice water and just sat there admiring the views. At 14,162 feet, Shasta is a mega mountain and from our 7,800-foot vantage point, the panoramic vista was incredible. Then it was on to the descent.

This shot is from the hill climb race the day before the century ride. Black Butte is the peak in the foreground, Mount Eddy in the distance.

• Note that at the top, I soaked myself with ice water which at the time felt terrific. However, on the descent this proved to be a problem—weirdly, the exact opposite problem I had on the way up. For by now, the sun had lowered enough that the road was fairly shaded—I swear, I would’ve paid thousands of dollars for any amount of shade during the first nine hours of this ride—and with the 6- to 8-percent downhill grade spurring my bike to speeds of 40-plus m.p.h., it wasn’t long before I was freezing cold. Shivering uncontrollably, in fact, with my bike weaving and wobbling no matter what I did. This had turned into a comedy of errors. And all I wanted to do was get the cuss off the cussing mountain. Alas, I made it down, back to City Park where I ate lasagna and traded Shasta war stories with Seattle’s Mark Clausen and Adam Morley, with whom I’d ridden much of the first 60 miles.

• All this said, this ride and routes are highly HIGHLY recommended. Organization and food are tops. The course is well marked and the towns—Weed, Edgewood and Mount Shasta—are small and traffic doesn’t seem to be an issue. (Though we did see at least one police officer parked by an intersection seemingly itching to hand out tickets to riders who didn’t come to complete stop. I heard about riders being warned about riding too fast on the Castle Lake descent too.)

The 5:30 a.m. start made for early preparations.

• Here’s how the day started: After meeting at City Park at 5:30 a.m., Mark, Adam, Cliff (whose last name I forget) and I rolled out, about 40 minutes before sunrise. The first climb begins at about 13-mile mark (Parks Creek Summit: 13 miles long; 3,800 feet gain) so we were nicely warmed up by the time we hit it. The climb itself is mostly one-lane forest road with some bumps and potholes here and there but ride organizers made sure to highlight them with orange spray paint. Nice safety touch for the descent, which was screaming fast. First climb out of the way we headed for Climb 2. ... which didn't start until after the 60-mile mark. In the meantime you meander across scenic flat and rolling ranchland with giant Mount Shasta overlooking all. Beautiful yes, but by this point the sun is getting ever higher and hotter and truthfully, this stretch through the valley was like pedaling through a furnace. By the time we started climb 2 (Mumbo Summit: 10 miles; 3,300 feet gain), I was roasting, sweat dripping from my arms to my hands and off my handlebars, my jersey totally unzipped and flapping behind me like I’m a school boy with a paper route. (See previous ad nauseam comments re: nausea, etc.)



• Partway up climb 2, I decided I’m going to skip climb 3 (Castle Lake) and go right to climb 4, the 14-mile one to Mount Shasta. That’s the longest, highest, most scenic one and to me, the one that counted the most. But descending from Mumbo Summit, I thought what the heck, I’ll give Castle Lake (7 miles; 2,200 feet) a try. Not a good move. This was the hottest part of the day, where my Garmin registered 100 degrees and where my heartrate first showed a reluctance to go above 130. I got to exactly the halfway point—1,100 feet of the climb gave me 10,000 for the day—and pretty much couldn’t turn the pedals anymore. I was done. After calling my wife for some moral support, I turned around and headed down to the lunch stop, which is pretty much where I started this narrative. Somehow I was able to muster another 4,700 feet of climbing. Total stats for the day: 130 miles; 14,754 feet of climbing; ride time of 10 hours and 23 minutes.

• I don’t think I would do the Super Century again but since I love riding the area—it really is spectacular—I’d be interested in riding the Saturday morning hill climb race (the 14-mile climb to Mount Shasta) and then on Sunday, riding a personally customized century or thereabouts. Maybe the first and last climb, or just the three–Mumbo Summit, Castle Lake, Old Ski Bowl (the 14-mile one)—that are all close to the city of Mount Shasta. Apparently, a lot of people did this or similar rides.

Near the top of Parks Creek Summit, climb 1.

• Pretty cool: I added two new road biking events this year— Mount Shasta Summit Century and the Chelan Century Challenge and they’re probably my new Number 1 and 2 all-time road rides.

SHASTA SUMMIT CENTURY PHOTOS

More words and pics to follow in coming days ... The updated post is here.

About two-thirds of the way up the Everitt Memorial Highway climb to the foot of Mount Shasta. It's the last climb of four, 14 miles long with 4,100 feet of elevation gain. 

  

Me, relieved to have finally reached the top of that last climb (7,800 feet). In all, I rode 130 miles with 14,750 feet of climbing. Toughest thing I've ever done.



Some incredible (he wrote facetiously) over-the-shoulder photography whilst riding.

More incredible photography whilst riding. Seattle's Mark Clausen and I make our way up the first climb (Parks Creek Summit; 3,800 feet in 13 miles). This is before things got crazy hot.

Me, at the 100-mile mark, when after climbing 10,000 feet despite feeling ickily nauseous for hours--the heat just killed me--I was pretty darn sure my day was done. For a contrast, see above pic taken 15 miles later, and 4,700 feet higher up Mount Shasta.



More from the road to Mount Shasta. It's got to be one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited!



MORE CLIMBING; TOUR DE FRANCE THOUGHTS; BELLINGHAM-ROUBAIX

McNeil Canyon descent in last month's Chelan Century Challenge; I'm scared and this isn't even the steep part.

With just a couple weeks to go 'til the Shasta ride that I may or may not do, I spent the last few days getting in a rather eclectic collection of climbs. Mountain biked up the Pine and Cedar Lakes Trail which is probably the steepest ridable trail around B'ham. (That I can think of anyway.) Climbs 1,360 feet in 1.7 miles; my Garmin doohickey registered grades of 36-percent in spots. (Though I don't know how accurate that is.)

Also a climbing workout of Cleator Road followed immediately by a schlep to the top of the Galby Towers (MTB); the next day was some Squalicum Mountain repeats with a foray down to Lake Samish (road bike). Between the two days, I got in eight hours of riding with about 8,000 feet of climbing. So we'll see ...

Speaking of the Tour de France, methought this one was amazing, and I'm super glad Cadel got it done. I'll make a prediction too, that Andy Schleck will never win the Tour de France. Great climber, but that's all he can do. Along with not being a good time trialists, we learned during this tour that he's not a great descender either (he's like me in the top photo) and since Alberto Contador excels at both and is highly motivated to win the next few (he's already said he'll never again do the Giro), I think Andy's climbed as high on the podium as he's ever going to get. (I'm a big Cadel fan but at 34, he's already the oldest Tour winner in the post-war era so I don't expect him to repeat.) The only way Andy wins the Tour de France is if there are no time trials, just 21 mountain stages, and Alberto Contador crashes out. (Or is serving a drug suspension.)

So ends my catechism ...

Switching gears (pun sorta intended), watching so much Tour got me thinking about our Paris trip last year and the incredible day we spent watching Fabian Cancellara destroy the field at Paris-Roubaix. So I thought I'd share a story I wrote about that experience and how it ultimately led to a broken collarbone; the story originally ran in last fall's Adventures NW. Please enjoy ...

The cobbled streets of Compiegne.

Bellingham-Roubaix
by Mike McQuaide
For as long as you can remember, you’ve been this way. You watch someone do something really cool and you get inspired. You think, I can do that! I can be just like them! Even when you probably can’t. Even when you’re probably a little too old to still be thinking this way. Even when it might not be smart or even safe to attempt what it was that so inspired you.

So there you are in the north of France at Paris-Roubaix, the most prestigious one-day bike race in the world. Held each April since 1896, it’s a 165-mile megamarathon known as the Queen of the Classics. Known also as the Hell of the North because of the 28 sectors of rough cobblestones—called pavé—that the riders have to negotiate. Big, blocky hunks of granite lain in the earth a tad sloppily to be honest; some sectors are so rough the riders say it’s as if the cobbles fell off the back of a truck and were left to lie where they landed.


And there you stand at the most famous pavé sector there is, the Arenberg Forest. (Or Trouée d'Arenberg to true aficionados, as you now consider yourself.) You and thousands of screaming, beer-filled Belgians and Flemish and French and Brits and Australians and Americans and Netherlanders and Colombians and cycling fanatics from everywhere.

Tom Boonen pulls the peloton through the Arenburg Forest.

I want me some of that! you think to yourself. I want to be just like them!

You are inspired.
And that evening, on the high-speed train back to Paris, you come across Yoann Offredo, a pro racer who’d just finished Paris-Roubaix for Française des Jeux, a French team. And your mind is boggled because here’s a professional cyclist not only riding the same train as you, but apparently—like you and your family—he doesn’t have a proper seat. Like you he’s forced to squeeze in near the luggage racks. And you talk, you and Yoann Offredo who just finished Paris-Roubaix (64th out of 71 finishers, but he finished!) like you’re two normal cyclists chatting it up at the Farmer’s Market after the Donut Ride. And outside the windows of the high-speed train, the French countryside scrolls by and eventually you see the unmistakable spire of the Eiffel Tower and you think, This is the coolest thing in the world.


Again, you are inspired.


So what you do when you get back to Bellingham is you take that second road bike of yours, the one that hasn’t been ridden much since you upgraded a couple years ago, and you turn it into your Bellingham-Roubaix bike. A bike on which, Tom Boonen-esque, you’ll power over the pavé of Bellingham. OK, if not exactly pavé, you’ll power over the hard-packed dirt and gravel trails of Bellingham’s Greenways. Heck, you figure, if the pros can survive Paris-Roubaix on those delicate bike of theirs, your beefy aluminum bike will be fine.

Fabian Cancellara on the homestretch through Roubaix.

And it is. (For a couple days.) You have a great time pedaling the flats of the Interurban, hitting 22, 24 miles-per-hour, hands on the tops of the bars just like you saw Tom Boonen do in the Trouée d'Arenberg. And you think, This is so much fun! Why doesn’t everybody do this?


Then rudely your question is answered.
You’re Bellingham-Roubaix-ing it on the trail from Boulevard Park to downtown. It’s deserted this early afternoon two-and-a-half weeks after Paris-Roubaix, and so you let it rip. You’re Fabian Cancellara making the winning move in this year’s race, a move so sudden, powerful and fast, that he was accused of riding a motorized bike. Today, Mike, that’s you. You’re hammering it, riding so hard you convince yourself that aging is a myth. That getting slower as you get older is something other people suffer from. Not you. No, Mike, not you.


But then …


… your skinny tires, the ones made for smooth paved roads not rough and tumble riding like this, hit a bump—a thimble-sized bump a hundredth the size of the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix—and your hands slip off the handlebars. You’re launched airborne like Superman, which is a problem because as far as you know, you can’t fly. So while your return to earth isn’t surprising, it’s still jarring, what with the hard crash, the sliding and tumbling over on your right shoulder, and your helmet grinding against the ground before you finally come to a halt.


Ouch.


Your shoulder hurts and when you trace your right collarbone with your finger you reach a point where it just disappears. Like a road that comes to an abrupt end at the edge of a cliff. Broken. You have surgery to pin the pieces back together again and two days later you get a phone call from your buddy John Clark, whom you’ve been riding and running with for the past 10 years and whom you’ve never known to suffer even the slightest injury. He’s calling to tell you that he’s sitting in a ditch waiting for his wife to come pick him up because he just flipped over his handlebars and broke his collarbone. W, T, you-know-what?!


Neither of you are allowed to run or ride for far too many weeks than seems fair and so you go on long walks together. You feel like patients from a mental institution out for your daily exercise. Life, as you know it, has been flipped upside down. How, you wonder, did you go from being Fabulous Fabian Cancellara to someone whose main exertion is a pleasant bayside walk?
 You’re one of those annoying types who search for some reason or meaning to attach to things like this, as if your inconvenient little collarbone break has some major role in the order of the universe. Nah. Prolly not. You got carried away and fell off your bike. The law of averages caught up to you. Forty-plus years of riding, probably 40-plus years of getting inspired and carried away, yet this is the first time you’ve broken a bone. Actually, that’s pretty good. You hope you learned something. Maybe, that it’s good to be inspired—fired up, even—by the actions of others. But if your inspiration happens to be a professional athlete two decades younger than you, it’s probably not best to go out and pretend that you’re him.

Or at least wear shoulder pads next time.



John Clark and I.

And when that distinctive French siren heralds the riders’ arrival, and big Tom Boonen wearing the black, yellow, and red of Belgium’s champion, powers past—like a locomotive pulling a train of the best cyclists in the world— you, like the thousands of the beer-fueled fanatics around you, erupt in absolute cycle-craziness. An arm’s-length away, the riders’ bikes rattle and shake over the rough and tumble pavé, like they’re being pedaled down the middle of the railroad tracks on that last annoying section of the Ski to Sea mountain bike course. On their sleek, elegant, featherweight road bikes—bikes not at all built to take this kind of pounding—these pros pedal past with such speed, power and grace that the rush of wind makes your eyes blink.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES



Samish Island, Mount Erie and Samish Bay from about the 1,000-foot level of Burnout Rd.

I wanted to get in more climbing so 24 hours after my Mount Baker repeats, I pulled out the 29er and headed up Cleator Road for a sustained 45-minute climb. Followed that up with Burnout Road, off the south side of Fragrance Lake Road. Along with probably the best unobstructed water views (see above and below) around, it's got four crazy-steep pitches that thankfully, aren't super long.

Burnout Road tops out at about 1,800 feet or so and in the old days, before last fall's logging, you could find the So Easy Trail that dropped down beyond Lost Lake, pass behind Samish Lake and then climb up out of the basin to Pine and Cedar Lakes. And maybe you still can, I just need to take the time and make the effort to find it. Today, I wanted to see if I could connect the Burnout Road with the Dictionary Trail and thus Lost Lake. And as I found out you can. Yipee!

At the top of Burnout--which, like Cleator, tops out at about 1,800 feet--just head through the clearing, look north toward B'ham and Chuckanut Mountain and follow the above road to that point right there. Just before you reach the end, there's a semblance of a trail off to the right. Pop down there and in two or three overgrown trail-riding moments, you'll be at the Dictionary. Very cool. This should make for some epically fun, scenic-as-heck loops.

In all, I got in 31 miles with 3,700 feet of elevation gain. Not sure how mountain bike miles and climbing feet translate to road-riding units. I'd think it'd count for more since my mountain bike is much heavier than my road bike and mountain climbs sometimes reach pitches of 25 to 30 percent. Whatevuh--I've got close to 11,000 feet of climbing in two days. (Which is still 5,000 feet less than the Mount Shasta Summit Century.)



MOUNT BAKER HIGHWAY REPEATS

Second time up.

I'm getting ever closer to maybe, possibly, I just might consider thinking about doing next month's Mount Shasta Summit Century , the idea of which sorta scares me half-to-death while also intriguing the heck out of me. It's 140 miles long, climbs 16,000 feet, most of that up four mega climbs. A 3,800-footer, a 3,300-footer, a (mere) 2,200-footer and a (gulp) 4,200-footer.

Bizarre, weird dirty sun cups. Like a snowfield of mini-pyramids.

For those of you who know what we've got here in B'ham and Whatcom County, the road to Artist Point (when it's open all the way) climbs just about 3,000 feet. According to my calculations and analysis that means that three of Shasta's four climbs are bigger than the Baker climb. One of them significantly bigger. So that means I gotta do VOLUME! VOLUME! VOLUME! (I mean, if I'm gonna consider possibly thinking about maybe signing up for it 'n all ...)

So that's what I did today. Three rides from the D.O.T. shed at the bottom of the hill to just past the upper Heather Meadows ski lodge and the Road Closed sign seen in the top pic. It's about an 8-mile climb that gains 2,200 feet. I rode it three times which means ... I was still about 10,000 feet shy of the Shasta ride. (Have I made it clear that I'm only thinking about signing up for it?)

I do love this ride. Even on days like this when the weather was getting progressively worse. Each time up I found myself pulling up the arm warmers and zipping my shirt all the way up lower and lower on the mountain. By the last time up, I climbed the last couple miles in a whiteout fog which soon became spritzing showers. In the past week or so, summer has finally come to Bellingham but it was definitely chilly up at 4,200 feet. An typical March day in the Whatcom lowlands, it was. I can't say that descending in rainy conditions was the funnest thing I'd ever done but soon enough I was lower down on the mountain where it hadn't yet begun to rain.  

Foggy rainish with hardly any visibility.

Climbwise, I felt pretty darn good. Probably because I knew I was in it for the long haul and never once turned the pedals in anger, as it were. The repeats were for climbing endurance, not speed. Heartrate was pretty darn pedestrian. Nearing the D.O.T. shed on my last trip down, I realized I'd end up with about 51 miles and 6,700 feet of climbing. So I turned around and climbed back up for another mile to get over 7,000 feet of climbing. That felt like something. An accomplishment with a nice round number. That's still 9,000 feet less than the Shasta ride ...

Area man holding up three fingers all Europe-style.