Mary’s Peak – a preview
I grew up in the shadow of the highest peak in Oregon’s Coast range. As a high schooler, back when I still rode one of those mountainbike thingies, I would drive to the top with my friend Gabe and we would drop down the single track on the north side, which eventually led to some gravel roads that ran pretty much to his front door. We would then take a second car and drive back to the top to retrieve the first. I think I probably considered riding up the paved road once or twice, but assume that I quickly thought better of it.
In 2006 or 2007, I can’t remember now, I rode Mary’s Peak for the first time. I parked at the turnoff from highway 34 and rode the nine, painful miles to the parking lot. That year, it nearly broke me. I flatted once and was overjoyed at the excuse to get off my bike and rest. I did make it to the top eventually, but it hurt. It hurt a lot, and I stopped more than the one time I flatted to catch my breath. I took a photo of my bike at the top that I kept as the wallpaper on my cellphone for a long time. It was the biggest climb I’d ever done.
Since then, I’ve ridden many longer climbs in Oregon, Colorado and Washington. Still, I’ve also made it a point to ride Mary’s Peak at least once a season. Like no other climb I’ve ridden, it both tests and rewards you in equal measure. There is only one paved way up and you take the same road down. The views are expansive at many points on the ride, and since it’s a protected park, the natural surroundings take away whatever breath you can spare. On the climb up, I can’t ever spare much.
Last season, I rode it with Jason Freed and we started in Corvallis and did it as an out and back of about 50 or 60 miles. It was the first time I’d climbed the whole thing from either side. Starting at the true bottom on the west side, it’s twelve miles to the top and the first three before the turnoff from highway 34 twist and climb so serenely, that it lulls you into a belief in your own rhythm. But the broken ramps of the park road that begin after, well, they destroy any attempt at a steady tempo you might try and make. One minute you are cruising along in the big ring on a gradient of four or five percent, and then the road suddenly heaves up into the high teens through a switch back leaving you gritting your teeth and leaving your legs feeling like lead.
A small group of us have discussed riding a century that climbs Mary’s Peak towards the end of the route, and so today I rode it partly as a preview, partly as training. I wanted to remind myself of the road and judge whether, in planning a century, a climb like that should come in the beginning, middle or end. The route I have in mind is essentially a big loop, so the mountain could come at any point. I’m not sure that I decided today what would be best.
What I did do was start from the parking lot of a country church just a few miles from the beginning of the full climb on the west side. And when I hit the first turn of the climb, I started an interval timer on my bike’s computer. I turned it off when I hit the top and then started a second interval on it when I headed down. In hard numbers, this, for me at least, is Mary’s Peak.
interval #1 – 1:18:44, 12.06 miles, average speed 9.1mph, average HR 158.
interval #2 – 28:19, 12.05 miles, average speed 25.4, average HR 124
I'm blocking the view of the willamette valley to the west.
It wasn't the Gavia today, but I did find the snowline
Almost a good image, and then my bike fell over.
the routes:
Stottlemeyer 60
I had originally planned on racing round 4 of the Oregon XC series this weekend, but work, life and a serious lack of motivation had me deciding early on that I was going to look for some high mileage instead to try to get ready for next weeks Chainbreaker in Bend. About the same time; our newly transplanted Seattle teammates James and Heather Westfall (mostly James) started pestering and cajoling me to come up to Port Gamble, a small town near Bremerton Washington, and race the first addition of the Stottlemeyer 60, a 60 mile mtb race. I was able to refuse James advances until Friday morning at which point I thought that this race could be just what my under trained mind and body needed.
Port Gamble is a good 3+ hour drive from Portland, which meant to get up there in time to register and warm up I would need to leave town by 5am at the latest, so with a 4am wakeup call, I managed to hit the hwy by 4:30am and made great time arriving by about 8:15am. This gave me plenty of time to change, catch up with James (and secretly curse him for talking me into coming up for this) before the start of the race.
The race had a field limit of 60 riders, which gave it a real “homey” feel and race organizer Kevin Reinkensmeyer was thrilled at everyone had showed up and very excited to put everybody through the torture that was to come. After a quick riders meeting the race got underway with a 2.5 mile drag race up a gravel road climb to the first section of singletrack. A fair sized group of leaders led the way with James and I heading up a much larger group behind; I should note that OBRA’s own Omer Kem was the primary instigator of that lead group.
Lap 1 was a real eye opener to what the next 3 laps would entail, a good portion of the singeltrack was new, as in freshly cut, soft and chock full of slippery roots, wheel eating holes and a fair number of log crossings; all of this added up to a serious inability to get any kind of rhythm, there was however two fantastic sections of buttery smooth singletrack that you could absolutely rail through. I had a decent pace through the first half of lap 1 until some torn down course markings led the leaders and my chase group on a 1/2 mile detour, once we correct our mistake and got back to the race, I found tha James was just ahead of me and for the next lap and a half we were able to ride and commiserate together.
Both James and I suffered through the last half of lap 2 and into lap 3 with aching backs, and the initial onset of lag cramps, I was also dealing with some stomach cramps that may have been the result of a bad batch of Gu that I had mixed up the night before. It was somewhere during these laps that James and I came unhitched from each other as James had to stop and stretch his back and take full advantage of the aid stations.
Lap 4 started much like the previous 3 with the exception that I could now smell the barn and was ready to be off the bike. I kept an easy pace for the first quarter of the lap, but got a second wind and really powered through the rest of the course finding a great source of energy and a verse from the last song I had listened to was on replay and stuck in my head, “Advantages and taken, not handed out”.
I finished strong with the initial results looking like 13th overall and maybe 7th in class, but we’ll see when the official results are posted. I think that Kevin did a great job with his first endeavour into race promotion; his course was a real test for everyone and I for one greatly appreciate the work that went into this one. I’ll also note that even with the 1/2 mile detour Omer absolutely stomped the field winning easily, so congratulations to Omer.
L-B-L
A little piece of me died today….unrepentant dopers should not be allowed back into the sport, should not race and most certainly shouldn’t win; Vino and Ricco should especially just disappear.
It’s on….Part Deux
Read it here, De Ronde is on!!
Horning’s
After a dry Saturday, overnight rains soaked the course out at Horning’s and turned the tacky soil into a bit of a goopy, slippery mess, thus marking the start of the second mountain bike race of the season. Will and I had pre-rode the course on Saturday noting all the various bumps and lumps, but all that changed with the overnight rain; so our warmup was more to check conditions than anything else and that ended up paying dividends. I knew this was going to be a tough day as I sat on the starting line because all the tree pollen was making it tough to breath.
The race started as they all do, with a huge sprint….uphill….until you hit the first bits of singletrack. Riders started to sort themselves out as we came of the gravel road climb and started the first descent down into the canyon bottom. The first lap was fast with a lot of passing (mainly me getting passed) but I was able to make some positions back on the nasty, slippery descents. In the mean time, I could look back through the string of riders and was already starting to get glimpses of Will charging through his field. (Will’s class started approx. 30 seconds after mine)
As the laps went on a lot of the goop started to dry out and the course became even faster, with the exception of a couple of the descent/climb sections, but even these improved considerably. By the end of lap three, Will was very close to catching me and my breathing had only shown marginal improvement since the start. (it’s hard to go fast when you just can’t breath. Shortly after passing through the start/finish line for my fourth lap I was able to expel a bunch of crud which made an immediate improvement in my breathing, the problem was the race was basically over.
Horning’s had what looked like a good turnout of riders and the course prep and flagging was excellent; a big thanks to all of the volunteers, organiser, OBRA officials and the folks who own the land at Horning’s.
As of now it looks like Will finished 2nd in the Men’s Cat 2 44+ and I finished 13th in the Cat 1 35-44 group (although I’m disputing that, as I think I finished 10th and I know I rode 4 complete laps)
It’s on!
Confirmations have been confirmed, dates are set; in July Will and I will be in Oakridge to challange the Cascade Cream Puff (100 mile mtb race) and a month later in August we will be heading to Bend for the High Cascades (another 100 mile mtb race)
Game on kids!
VRV miles
A few fortified VRV-ers put in the hours/miles today, braving some wind, some rain, a few hills and an occasional close call with rednecks driving giant 4×4.
The team headed up 219 towards Bald Peak and then out Valley Rd, ending up with a little out and back on Dairy Creek and then meeting up with another VRV-er for the final jaunt back in towards Beaverton.
With everyone taking strong pulls along the way, the miles cruised by without much concern, not even a flat (although we did have a couple of moments of chain suck, but nothing serious)
A great day on the bike.
This might hurt a little
The dirt riders of the team gathered out at Scappose yesterday for a little singletrack exploration and early season leg stretching. For some of us this was our first trip out to this area and after riding the trails for a bit I can say this surely won’t be the last.
Anyway, the group of us headed out from the cars at the first pull out as you head up the hill and warmed up by climbing the gravel road to the first singletrack trail that we came too. Now you should know that the gravel roads acts as the glue to this entire network as all of the trials launch off of it; either to one side of the road or the other. Certainly one of the best features to this area is how well the trails stay dry even when it’s been downpouring in PDX like it has for much of the previous week.
Along with the trails being in great shape they are full of fun, swoopy, fast sections and short punchy climbs, although some of the climbs are certainly longer that others, none of them are too bad. These trails are also full of fun little technical sections such as log ramps and rooted out areas that require a nice bit of balance and finesse to get over without getting off the bike.
After criss-crossing the road a few times and working our way through several of the trail networks we ended up back on the road and a couple of the guys who’d been out here before thought it would be a good idea if we kept going out until we hit the next network; it was here that a bad thing happened. Along the ride we came to a downed tree and after working our way around it and in the midst of everyone regrouping, I decided that since I am such a “master” of the bike I would ride a little wheelie, which started out just fine, however the little wheelie quikly went horribly wrong as I began tipping over backwards. the tipping over backwards in itself should not have been a terrible thing, but couple the tipping with not being able to get my feet out of the pedals and you quickly see the problem; I took this little wheelie and rode it to it’s conclusion which constituted pile driving my a** into the ground and bringing me to that wonderful place of pain where your body isn’t quite sure whether it should throw up or soil your britches. It goes without saying that my day was prematurely brought to an end by this mishap.
I would like to thank my teammates who quickly rallied around and began divying up my gear as they came to the immediate conclusion that I should be “put down” to end my misery.
Tour de L.O.
Yesterday, Earl, Varner and I set out to get in some miles before the torrential rains and expected high winds came; for the most part it worked out quite well.
Varner and I met up at Salmon Springs and began the journey out to Lake O to meet up with Earl; after cresting Terwilliger we shot past Lewis and Clark college dropping down into town. From here Earl led us out around the lake and off in the general direction of Wisteria Rd. (which is a fantastic little climb) and then back in through West Linn. The weather cooperated nicely throughout, at least until V and I departed Earl and then it decided to mist and sprinkle for the remaining jaunt back into PDX.
A good ride and the three hours in the saddle weren’t to bad either.
NYDR 2010
As is standard tradition for Vista Ridge Velo, today was the annual New Year’s Day Ride. Starting out at the top of Hwy 26 in the midst of downpour #1; Jeff, Varner, Earl, my brother and I all headed out Skyline to work out our indulgences from the night before.
Not long after hitting the road, flat tire #1 struck (not more than a few miles out) after the fix we set out again only to get hit by another flat after only a couple of more miles and downpour #2. Flats and downpours just seem to suck the life out of a group in short order, but we forged on and decided to make a turn around at Newberry and head back before more ill mechanical luck should hit us in the face again.
Overall the ride was short, but still a great way to start the new year/decade; Happy New Year everyone, 2010 is showing promise…..it sure can’t be much worse than 2009!