Sean’s Blog

True Love Health documents Brian Davidson’s vegan fueled ass kicking of the 2011 Death Valley Double Century course. (via Urban Velo)

This past weekend I rode the Death Valley Double Century and completed my first California Triple Crown. It was a pretty exhausting weekend (Fri-Sun) with over 1,000 miles driven and 195 miles on the bike. We were really fortunate to have highs in the mid-80s and, aside from one 25 miles stretch, favorable wind conditions.

The course was really exposed to the sun and wind since there is very little vegetation. And a majority of the roads are straight. It was really interesting to ride in a straight line seeing your next destination miles and miles ahead. Additionally, the climbs were very gradual with most of it coming in under 5%. There was a stretch of around 20 miles where it seemed the gradient was less than 2%.

On the drive down, we joked that we would be sick of the landscape come the following day. It turns out though that the views are always good from a bicycle.

Oh, and we burned through the course in under 13 hours. Super stoked about that!

Strava Upload
Flickr Set

This ride was actually a week ago, but I’m finally getting around to posting some notes today. Super busy week.

I signed up for my first dart with the Santa Cruz Randonneurs. The format was to ride in teams of three to five and converge on a single destination at once. There were 11 or 12 teams riding from all around the Bay Area to the final destination, a brewery in Palo Alto. There were time restrictions placed on the teams so that teams would ride at a leisurely pace and arrive all at the same time. Oh, and the distance was a 200k or longer.

Our route started in San Francisco, meandered down the coastline, over Skyline, out to Pescadero, and through the hills again to Palo Alto. The weather was ideal and the climbing was brutal. There was one climb, Purisima Creek, that was about 1,500 feet in elevation gain on gravel and dirt pack with slopes of 11+ degrees. I had to get off of my bike twice just to catch my breath. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to do that. The total climbing for the day was close to 12,000 feet with a respectable portion of it off road.

The nature of the ride allows teams plenty of time to regroup at controls or so we thought. The dirt sections had slowed us down more than we anticipated. At our second to last control in Big Basin, we did a time calculation and figured we would have to hustle to our final control just so we didn’t miss our time cutoff.

Memorable quote: “We can make it. We’re randonneurs!” – Carlos

Strava Deets

To date this has been my hardest ride in terms of elevation gain. 15,000 feet of elevation was covered over 196 miles on the Mt. Tam Double Century course. I was a little anxious going into this ride, but I had picked up a new 13-29 cassette the week before and had realized that I should have done this a long time ago. I had been riding a 12-25 with a standard crank on my Serotta for about six months and it was brutal. Although, I think this forced me to become a stronger rider.

All in all, I think this ride was very successful. Despite being the most I’ve climbed in one day, I only briefly felt tired and feel I rode strong almost all day. And on a lot of distance rides I usually get in a bad mood at some point from the fatigue, but this is how I felt almost all day.

Here are the Strava deets: Mt. Tam Double