The date is finally here. August 17, 2008 - the day of my first century.
I've been wanting to do a century for some time, but the scheduled centuries at the beginning of the season were too soon for me (and my physical ability), didn't work with my schedule, random excuse here. Whatever. About six weeks ago I heard about this century - The Tour of Napa Valley and decided it might just be for me. I was already playing with the idea of riding the Auburn Century, and because I like pain, I might still. Anyway, the Napa Century looked easier - it was shorter by about 10 miles, and had about half the climbing (6000 ft vs 11000 ft). I started doing longer and longer rides, and adding in some big climbs as well. A few weeks ago, I realized I was definitely ready. They say if you can ride 60 miles and still be comfortable, you should be able to complete a century as well. I was completing 60 miles with 5,000 ft of climbing and having no issues.
100.3 miles, 6 hours 15 minutes, 16mph average, 41.9mph max
So, here is the route:
And the elevation profile:
We started out to the Southwest out of Yountville. I decided that I was going to ride at my own pace today and not get drawn in to any races or stupid stuff that might make me fail to complete the ride. So there I was, cruising along at about 16mph, just enjoying the scenery, when a tandem goes by. They say hello - very friendly, and have a guy on their wheel that is a friend of theirs. As they pass he says "Come on, man, ride the train!!" So I did. It was pretty slick actually. The couple on the tandem told me later that they used to suck tandem wheels all the time when they rode single, so now they love pulling people when they're on the tandem. And pull they did - they cruised me along to Mt. Vedeer road at about 20mph, just humming down the road. We turned on to Mt. Vedeer, and I decided to le them go ahead as I was still wanting to manage my pace. I also knew that Mt. Vedeer Rd. is a nice big climb.
Here's a picture on the road out of Yountville. Blurry since the sun wasn't up and I took it from the bike:
As you can see by the elevation profile, there's a 1,300 ft or so climb starting at about mile seven. That would be Mt. Vedeer road. It actually was pretty smooth going at first. The incline was pretty gentle, it kind of stepped up the hill. The roadside was beautiful - lush greens, some small vineyards, etc. Additionally, traffic was pretty light due to the fact that it was so early. I cruised up the climb until we got near the top. You can see on the elevation profile that suddenly the climb gets much steeper for a few miles. This was pretty challenging but I kept the pedals turning and crested the top. At the top there was an older gentlemen playing bagpipes for the riders. I thought this was very cool. The music gave me a break for singing songs over and over in my head to get me up the hill :).
A picture from the climb:
One from the top:
Once at the top, I had a quick snack, some water and started heading down the other side. There was a short downhill, followed by a small climb, then it was dooooowwwwwwnnnn for quite a bit. Nice and fast, twisty, etc. We hit some pretty good speeds. I think I topped at about 37mph down this hill. The most "interesting" part of this descent was when a Golden Retriever comes flying out of a residence driveway. It was barking and running and, if it hadn't stopped at the road side, only a few feet from where I was anyway, I likely would have hit it. I don't know if I've ever come that close to literally (not figuratively) shitting my pants before. 35mph in to a dog = a trip to the hospital and I knew it. My heart rate graph actually shows a spike from where I was, at about 130bpm to 170bpm at this point in the descent.
After the hill, it was a nice long cruise down Dry Creek Rd. I really like this road - it's pretty rolly and mostly downhill, so you can sit back and enjoy the morning. I caught up to a nice woman towards the end of this section, so we talked a bit and it was nice to have some company for a few minutes. At this point, we were already 30 miles in and at the first rest stop. I stopped and had a quick break. I noticed my water bottle was sitting a bit low, and thought maybe it had popped out. Nope, the bottom tab of my new carbon bottle cage had broken :(.
Lame bottle cage:
Following the first rest, we headed out towards the second rest area, which was at the base of a climb leading to Hennessy Lake. This was a fairly uneventful stretch, until my tandem friends from earlier passed by. Oh, and they had about 30 people stuck on their wheel. After about 30 seconds, they all had passed me, so I sprinted up on to the last guys wheel and we flew in to the rest area at about 25mph. Coolest. Tandem Riders. Ever. At the rest area, there was an equipment check where people could shed their arm warmers or jackets, and check them for picking up at the finish. I decided to check my second water bottle - I was afraid I'd lose it on a hill and either cause myself to crash, or worse, cause someone else to go down. It wasn't a big deal - I use 24oz insulated water bottles (standard is 16 oz - wonder if that helped my carbon cage to fail hmmm) so I had more than enough water to get me to the next stop. Well, would have if I wasn't a bone head and forgot to top it off. Also, later I forgot to pick up my bottle at the end of the ride - well I remembered but when I did remember it wasn't worth it to go back. I was ready to jam. We'll see if I get the bottle back. I'm not going to pay for them to ship it to me and I certainly don't expect them to pay for it, so probably not.
One of the pacelines:
Following the rest stop was the nice climb up past Lake Hennessy and in to Pope Valley. Pretty nice climb really. It wasn't too steep or difficult. I had a nice chat with a guy from San Diego who had come all the way up here just for this century, which I thought was cool. He had some good stories to tell about a friend whose father used to be a criterium racer in Britain, so it made the miles go by pretty quick. On the way up, I started noticing I was running low on water, and this area had a sign a ways back that said "limited water availability" so houses with spigots were non-existant. I decided to start conserving, which wasn't a big deal, but I was feeling pretty dead by the lunch stop (at mile 65). On Pope Valley Rd. we past a state "landmark" - Litto's Hubcap Ranch. It was a barbed wire fence with a bunch of hubcaps tied to it. Thrilling. BUT, now you don't need to go see it, because I have pics of it and the pics really show exactly what it is.
Wow. Hubcaps. On a Fence:
At the lunch stop, I was feeling pretty sluggish, so I decided to take a bit longer rest. I had a peanut butter sandwich and ham sandwich half (I think it was ham, I couldn't really tell - that's how I was feeling, but I didn't really care either), some watermelon and some honeydew. I also put on some more sunscreen, had a nice blg cup of cytomax and refilled my bottle. Getting back on to the road after about 20 minutes with some food in me really made the difference. I was feeling pretty great, and that was good as we were ready to start the second big climb of the day: Ink Grade. Going up Ink, it starts out pretty steep. I was pretty worried at first. If it were that steep for the entire four miles, I was going to be in trouble. Thankfully it backed off after about 3/4 mile, and was pretty smooth for a mile. Then it got steep again, and didn't let up until the top. The cool thing was, by the time we hit the second steep section, my lunch was really kicking in, my legs were warm and I was able to get a sweet pace going. I was jamming up the hill, passing people left and right and really enjoying it, all the way to the top. I think that was the first hill where I've ever had fun.
After Ink Grade, we got to descend. At first it was a bit disapointing - for all the up, and the effort, we had just done, I expected a more exciting down hill. It was sort of flat, with some rollers in the way. Pretty quickly though it gave way to a monster downhill. The road was nice and wide, smooth, the turns were smooth and long, and you could really open it up. I just let gravity do work, keeping speeds around 40 (my comfort level) and had a lot of fun dropping down from Ink. The hill was so long, I was actually wishing it would flatten out by the time we hit the bottom. Riding in a tuck for 4 miles or so made my shoulder muscles pretty tired. Guess I need to work on those.
After the long descent, we had one more rest stop and about 20 miles to the finish. On the way to the rest stop I got passed by another paceline, so I stuck on to their wheels and rode in with them. Just before the stop, we saw a cyclist (a rider in the century) getting a ticket from CHP for running a stoplight (I'm assuming that's what it was anyway - we had just passed a four way intersection with a stoplight). The organizers said it would happen, and I wondered if I'd get to see it. She looked pissed. Should have stopped I guess. At the rest stop, I had some fig newtons and refilled my bottle for the last 15 miles to the end. Once we left the rest area, I was feeling great, so I decided to finish as fast as I could. There was a bit of climbing left, which I didn't expect but the hill was just long and very gentle. I was pulling up the hill at about 20 mph, jamming to the finish. When we got back to the start, my GPS registered only 97 miles, so I rode up in to the Chandon winery, looped their parking lot, then came back down in to the finish area and looped until I hit 100 miles. Finished with 100.3!
What a great ride! Thanks for reading.
