Ambition Run Amok

Today, we did our traditional ride up to Bogus and had a grand time… I also got a new personal best of 1:19:55 for the climb :).

Sarah took some video with her flip video thing and we played around with the Vista movie maker and came up with this…

A few other details about the ride…
I did a little repeating, going back and riding up with others, that kind of thing:
Total ascent: ~5,500 feet
Total miles: 48.9

One of the scenes in the video shows me riding behind a car, I was in my biggest gear and pushing a cadence of ~125 at some points trying to keep up. I can out corner most drivers on Bogus Basin road, but I don’t weight near enough to keep up on the straight stretches. My max speed was just under 40mph.

If you’ve seen the show “The Office” you might have seen an episode where the cool guy gut the dorky guy a bobble head of himself. Well I made some comment that it was kinda cool and … Sarah got creative and had a custom made bobble head of me created… It turned out pretty well and is a little creepy.

I was curious how fast I go on my skis so I took my GPS up to Bogus on a weekday afternoon instead of working (my boss ditched work too).

And according to the GPS I hit 44.6Mph, it normalizes quite a bit for the max speed number so I think it’s accurate. I found a cool website that let me get a speed profile http://motionbased.com. I think the speed file is accurate aside from the spikes here and there, namely the one saying I went 200 Mph…

I have an older GPS that has a little trouble holding on to signals sometimes, so if you want to buy me an upgrade I’ll post more data :).

We’ve gotten some snow today that was great for snowman making :)…

I made a snowman… or mutant

As some of you know, last summer I popped a few spokes on my MTB wheels. This is not a big deal as they were about the appropriate age to be dying. I went to replace the third spoke that broke and just by checking the tension on the surrounding spokes another one broke in my hands… I thought this seemed like a sign that either the wheels needed rebuilt or replaced. So I went into the bike shop and got talked into a much more expensive set of wheels that should last longer, go faster, weigh less, etc…

I asked them to move the cassette (the thing with all the gears) to the new wheel. No problem right, it takes 2 tools a chain whip and a lockring remover. Well, they tried and the lockring was seized on the cassette something fierce. The guy actually bent one of their tools trying to get it loose. The end result was I upgraded to the XT cassette and took my old wheel home with a partially worn cassette.

Recently I ordered some more specialized bike tools (the Park AK-37 tool kit) and started trying to take the seized lockring off myself. I made little progress, so I started with the basics.

1. Soak it in WD-40 every time I’m in the garage for a few weeks.
result: nothing

2. I realized I had an impact wrench and could probably get more break loose force with it, so I tried it.
result: a slightly scratched lockring tool

3. While putting the snow tires on our car I discovered that the regulator on the air compressor was still set to 60 PSI from blowing out the sprinklers… there is hope I thought, maybe the full 105 PSI will be enough.
result: nothing

4. I bought a propane torch at Wal-Mart for $12.
result: a torch sitting in the garage waiting for sometime when I wanted to smoke up the garage.

5. I finally got around to trying the torch a few weeks later and heating the seized bolt up hot and then hit it with the full 100PSI of the impact wrench (it’s a cheap tool that probably puts out about 100ft-lbs of torque).
result: lots of smoke from the WD-40 that was all over the cassette

Disclaimer: don’t do this it’s probably dangerous…
6. One final tip from one site… heat the thing up as hot as you can get it (it’s steel so no fear of doing any real damage with a propane torch) and then hit it with WD-40 to see if the cooling process will suck the oil into the threads.
result: lots and lots of smoke and flash boiling WD-40. I do not recommend anyone trying this, it was probably dangerous and toxic. Furthermore as the smoke from the flash boiling WD-40 passed over the torch some of it caused nifty looking orange flames around the blue flame. I should have been further away from the torch. If I do this again I’ll wear safety googles and be more conscious of open flames.

7. Shortly after filling the garage with smoke (yes the big door was open) I put the impact wrench to the very hot cassette and the lockring came loose!!! Success, the seized nut came loose!

Next step, rebuild the wheel… this will require a dishing tool, a truing stand, new spokes, and a lot of patience

Well, my sister did the race up Mt. Evans a few weeks back and has a report for us…

Ok, I am finally feeling stable enough to give a race report:) We started out fast. I was staying in the pack, feeling good, and hiding well. Then at 5.56 miles, just a little before the curve where more noticeable climbing starts, there was a crash right in front of me. There were bikes and girls flying all over the place. It was very unnerving. It looked like a wave coming at me. I know one girl lost a tooth. I don’t know the outcome of the rest of the heap. I got gapped from the pack by the crash. It took about 10 minutes to catch back up. By then the pack had split. I never did catch the front pack. About four more miles up the road I started to feel some asthma pain. I tried to get my inhaler from my pocket. It had fallen apart. I thought it was back together but was wrong. I tried to use it as it fell apart and fell to the ground. It would have taken so long to retrieve all the pieces that I decided to just leave it and do my best on my own. I wasn’t climbing as fast as I wanted to but was doing ok until about timberline. A couple of my friends from the JDS team, Eric and Jeff flew by at Echo. I found some inspiration from watching those guys go! Wow!

So… Just a little before Summit Lake I realized I was in worse shape than I thought. The chest cold I was fighting and altitude were taking a toll. I may have overestimated my ability to be ok without inhaler. I felt like I was breathing through a soda straw and each breath was more painful than the last. I tried to focus my thoughts on my pedal strokes, the next curve, and the pretty scenery, anything else besides the pain. The positive thinking held out until the parking lot was in sight. 2 or 3 switchbacks from the top I felt my windpipe constrict and started to lose periphery vision. I was starting to get scared. I hedged my bets that there would be some medically inclined folks at the top, dug deep, and got there as quickly as possible. My time was 15 minutes off of my goal. It was my second best time for the four times I did the climb this year.

I crossed the finish line with a feeling like I was falling. I don’t think I fell but don’t entirely know either. Fortunately my JDS friends were at the top. One of them helped me get to the medical people and the other grabbed my bike, then they found my clothes. Those guys are awesome!!! I thought I was home free, but the medical car only had oxygen, no inhaler and no good way to force an airway open. Oxygen is great if you can get it in otherwise it doesn’t help a lot. I sat there for a while trying to suck in some O2. After about 20 minutes I started feeling extremely claustrophobic. It is a strange feeling to be on top of the world yet having such limited escape options. I was panicking and felt I had to get down immediately so I pronounced myself ok(ish) and took off with the guys (who waited for me, I love those guys!). It started to rain/hail a little, the clouds turned dark and ominous, and we got to watch some lighting beside us. I still couldn’t breathe too well and was still extremely dizzy. I have truly never been more thankful to see timberline!

I learned a lot from this race. I need to carry extra inhaler! I learned I have a very hard time backing off of my goals, even when they are somewhat arbitrary and only really matter in my own head. At the top while I was fighting to stay conscious I reflected on how exactly I came to be in that condition and wondered if the risks I took were worth it. I never feel more alive than when I try things that are very challenging and don’t have a sure outcome. Given that, the risk was worth it but I need to be better prepared to deal with the consequences if/when things don’t work out flawlessly. Things change quickly up there; one minute you can be on top of the world and the next on your knees. Even after all that happened during the race I can’t wait to do that epic climb again!!! What a place! I have never experienced beauty, serenity, and freedom as I have on this climb!

….

So if you liked the story and would like to support more craziness and pain feel free to donate for the MS Global
http://www.tylerhamiltonfoundation.org/tammylucas112.html

Just in case any one is curious here are my miles so far this year…

MTB - 644
Road - 767
Tandem - 252

Total - 1,663

Maybe I’ll get to 3k this summer… :).

Back on Memorial Day weekend while we were packing up Monday morning, some guys came up to us and asked if we’d drive their car the 30 miles back to McCall and drop it at a restaurant so they could kayak the river and not have to drive back just to pick up the car.

I said sure and then went to look at the car / get the keys and stuff. It was a little Subaru Outback 5 speed manual. The road had about 10 miles of rutted / washboard / potholed dirt before we hit pavement. Our Ranger did pretty well on it in 4 high, but the suspension is pretty stiff and we got bounced around and floated on the corners, not a big deal just give it gas and go, but I had to keep it around 30 or less. The little outback kicked butt though, I was holding 40 on the potholes / washboards and not feeling like I was at all pushing what the car could do. The AWD had excellent control in the corners on the washboards, the suspension gave a much more controlled ride (than the Ranger) on the potholes.

The Outback impressed me, when it comes time to replace our plastic car, I’ll definitely be looking at Subarus. It was good to get a real test drive.

So, I met a guy at work doing a presentation about stuff to do outside to some interns. We both got volunteered to talk to the interns, and I was listening to him talking and came to the conclusion that he was pretty serious.

Right now, he is working on training for “The Death Ride” (which ya gotta ask yourself … “Self, does that sound appealing… Well yes self it sounds painful, difficult and would probably involve nausea, sounds like fun). The death ride is a 130 mile road ride with 15,000 feet of climbing down in the Reno / Tahoe area. It climbs both sides of Monitor and Ebbetts passes and one side of Carson pass. So, I talked to P. about riding sometime and I hooked up to do the second half of his weekend training ride (Bogus Basin via the road). earlier in the day he road Deer Point which is a straight 4,000 in altitude with about 1,000 feet of re-climbing.

Anyway we headed off up Bogus (which is the first time I’ve climbed it on a road bike this year). I held it close to the redline (170-174 heart rate) for the first half and then backed off a little due to the nausea (and weak legs). Made it up to the main lodge with is 3,200 feet in altitude probably 3,400 in climbing in an 1:27 which is 6 minutes better than my personal best. I’m totally stoked, I figured I’d be down at 1:45 for the first time of the year. I’m guessing all the bike commuting has paid off.

After the main parking lot we did the bonus climb up to Pioneer lodges (another 800 feet in altitude) and then went back down. I passed a big old (well actually new) SUV coming down. I don’t think the driver was too thrilled to be passed by a geek in spandex shorts, but hey I though it was funny and he had no chance of keeping up on the turns.

So P. did like 10k of climbing today and still worked my butt of climbing, I’m sure we’ll ride again and I’ll just have to hold it at the red line to have a chance of keeping up.