The Think Tank

Joel and I decided to ride in the Pioneer Century in Canby last Saturday.  We figured it would be good training for Seattle To Portland.

This ride is an annual event put on by the Portland Wheelmen Touring Club.  Without a doubt this was the best value of any organized ride we’ve been on yet.  There was cold and hot cereal in the morning for all of the riders, along with coffee, hot cocoa, and coffeecake.  Each rider also received a couple small tubes of sun screen, a mini flat-repair kit, granola bars and some other swag that I can’t remember.  On the trail we were met with fully stocked rest stops every 20 miles or so, each with Gatorade, granola bars, oranges, bananas, fresh strawberries and blue berries, pineapples, cookies, crackers, juices, trail mix…  And if that weren’t enough, our registration also bought us lunch at the halfway point.  There was even a masseuse at the fairgrounds, which was also included in our whopping $25 dollar entry fee.

It was quite impressive.

Thankfully the Weather Gods smiled upon us, granting us bright blue skies, warm sun and scattered clouds.  We could not have asked for better riding weather.

There were three different loops to chose from, 32, 45 & 55 miles respectively, which could be combined for the 77 and 100 mile options.  Each loop began and ended at the Fairgrounds.

The course officially opened at 7:00AM, but true to form, Joel and I didn’t head out until about 7:30.  The first 12-15 miles were pretty flat, though we were trending up and gained about 400 feet.  Then it was time to start the only prolonged climbing we would be doing, about 8 miles and 2,000 feet in all.  Most of the time the hills weren’t incredibly steep, but it was unrelenting and definitely made me tired.  Joel’s knee was hurting him the whole way, which made it not very much fun for him.  Around about 25 miles in we came to our first rest stop in the parking lot of the volunteer fire department, very near the top of the main hill.  We stopped for about 10 minutes, ate some fruit and refilled our water bottles, and we took a few minutes to tell Joel’s sister, Teri, how to install an air conditioner in her apartment.

We had about 1/4 mile of flat road to get us back in the groove, then it was several miles of rolling hills before we hit one last big hill and started down the other side.

That was fun.  About five miles of steep downhill roads with long, gentle curves so we barely even had to touch our brakes on the descent.  I set a new personal top speed of 47MPH on the way down.

The next 15 miles were mostly rolling hills separated by stretches of fairly flat land, mostly running alongside berry farms and hops fields.  I don’t think we saw a single car on any of the roads the whole morning.

Due to Joel’s sore knee and lower gears on his bike, I tended to go uphill a little faster (a truly rare experience for me) so I would stop here and there and wait for him to catch up.  During one of those stops I was waiting under the shade of a nice big tree in front of a farm house, when I heard a muffled growl and the sound of running paws.  I looked up to see a big brown dog barreling down on me.  I’m not sure what kind of dog it was because mostly all I saw was brown fur and big teeth, but that was more than sufficient to motivate me.  I took off and discovered that my new bike can get up to speed in a hurry.  Still, I was doing 25mph when I finally started to pull away from the damn dog, which was only about three feet off my left leg.

We hit the next rest stop around about 11:30AM and we stayed there for about 20 minutes this time, letting our legs rest a little and enjoying the sunshine, then we set off for the midway point at the Fairgrounds.  The sun was high in the sky and the mercury was rising up over 70 degrees for the first time in recent memory.  Despite the flat-but-slightly-downhill elevation profile I had looked at prior to departing, the road continued to be made up of rolling hills, short 1/4 mile downhills followed up by short but steep climbs.  Adding insult to injury, the 55 mile route turned out to be almost exactly 60 miles, which matched my longest single-day ride ever.  Difference was, I had climbed almost 3,000 total feet so far today (just slightly less than the whole 200 mile STP route), while my previous 60-mile adventure had been almost perfectly flat.  I was feeling a little bit tired, but all in all I felt pretty good.

We spent about 30-40 minutes eating lunch, which as you can see from the pics was very tasty!  Apparently one of the main sponsors of this ride makes high quality bicycle components by day and plays at being a chef by night.  Which turned out really well for the 1,000+ riders, because we got some sweet food.

Most of those 1,000 people called it quits after lunch, including Joel.  He had to be in Seattle that evening for a soccer game with some friends, so he wished me luck for the second half of the day and we set off on separate paths.

My headphones had died early in the morning, which hadn’t really been a big deal so far because Joel and I were keeping each other company, but now I was on my own and not having anything to distract myself made the first 10-15 miles boring and therefore difficult.  The energy I had felt I had in reserve when I reached the half quickly faded and for a little while I wasn’t even sure I was going to finish.  My neck was sore, my butt was sore, my feet were sore in their new clipless shoes and all in all I was getting a little whiny.  The only thing that kept me going was sheer determination.

There were no other riders behind me that I could see and only one couple in green shirts up ahead of me, and being that I was really quite bored I started singing songs to myself to pass the time, which worked a real treat.  The first 10 or 11 miles went by one agonizing tenth of a mile at a time, but after I started singing several miles would pass without me noticing it.  Pretty soon I had surpassed the 75 mile mark and while I was definitely tired, I was cruising along pretty well and feeling confident, passing Champoeg Park and the field where we picked our pumpkins last fall.

The last rest stop was around the 83 mile mark at the St. Paul high school.  Mom and I had been to St. Paul last summer for their annual fireworks display, so it was kind of nice to be somewhere I recognized.  I had fallen a little behind the couple I had been keeping pace with earlier, but not by much apparently because they were just getting to the snack table when I arrived.

I rested for about 10 minutes or so and ate some fruit and refilled my waterbottle with Gatorade.  While I was there one of the sag wagons showed up and told the people at the rest stop that there were only 10 riders still out on the road, so they would keep the stop open a little longer to accommodate them.  When the couple in the green shirts set out, I followed suit and continued to use them to keep my pace, staying about 1/4 of a mile behind them.

Around about mile 93 I came around a corner to find a very disturbing sight: the girl in the green shirt was laid out flat in the road, face down, her bike in a heap at her feet.  She wasn’t moving at all.

I picked up the pace to close the distance, but it still took me the better part of a minute to get there.  I hopped off my bike and came over to offer whatever help I could.  Very shortly after I arrived, one of the sag wagons happened by and the guy stopped and came to help as well.  The girl was completely unresponsive for approximately 2-3 minutes after I got there.  She was breathing heavily, and her eyelids would flutter open every now and then, but she was out cold.

The sag wagon guy was trying to call 911 but could not get a good signal when she finally came around.  We told her to stay put and not to move until she had confirmed that she did not have any neck pain or back pain, then we carefully helped her roll over on her back and eventually she sat up.  Her boyfriend or husband or whoever he was said that his parents lived about a mile away and did not want us to call an ambulance.  Both myself and the sag wagon guy said she needed to at least go to a hospital, but the boyfriend/husband did not sound convinced.

We went through the regular questions and procedures, making sure her pupils were equal and reactive, that she could track our finger with her eyes, that she remembered her name, etc.  She was able to follow our finger and count how many fingers we held up, and eventually she remembered the name of the President, but she never remembered what happened or what day it was, even when we prompted her by saying “Friday?  Saturday?  Sunday?”  I hung around until the guy’s parents showed up which took about 15 or 20 minutes, during which we discovered that the girls helmet was cracked in two places, and then I helped get their bikes in the truck.  Both the sag wagon guy and myself urged them again to take her to the hospital, but no one ever actually agreed.  I sure hope they did, though.  That is not the sort of thing you should be cavalier about.

After that I set out again and rode through Donald, over the freeway and then down the homestretch.  The last hill I had to climb was at 99.6 miles and while it was quite short, it was about a 7-8% grade, which I thought was completely inappropriate.

I finished up at 104.7 miles total, meeting up with my own personal sag wagon which was piloted by Mom and Mo.  I was very glad to be able to hop in the back and not have to peddle in order to propel myself forward.

Even though this was a pretty easy ride as centuries go, it was the first 100+ mile trip I had ever taken, and the 4,300 feet of climbing was more than we will be doing on the whole STP, which makes me feel a little better about the big one in July.  That being said, I was very happy that I didn’t have to do it all over again on Sunday.