| Quick Stats Ride Distance: 100 miles Elevation Gain: 5,491 feet Average Moving Speed: 14.39 mph |
The day started out in the 50's. Originally I was going to bring a jacket, but not wanting to lug it around all day after wearing it for the first few minutes I decided to leave it at home. Amy wore her standard orange over-jersey. The risk was that I might need it on the Larch Mountain descent. However, after the trick we learned on this ride I decided to bring a little plastic bag instead. Worked like a charm!
Since we started right at about 8 a.m. there was a lot of commuter traffic right out of the gate. But they were well-behaved and we did have a bike lane so no it wasn't a problem, just a little odd to experience lines of cars on "our" roads.
On the first 25 miles to Troutdale I could tell this ride wasn't going to be easy (our last full century was two months ago, afterall). So I uncharacteristically paced myself during the early miles. Once the climbing began my this-is-going-to-be-a-tough-ride suspicions were further confirmed. And this is when Amy started riding away from me.
She was feeling great so we eventually employed our old tactic: she rode ahead to the top and turned right around, knowing that I would likely catch her on the descent. I got around the final hair-pin corner almost to the parking lot at the top and met her descending at 12:02 p.m. I took a little break and started my own descent at 12:12 p.m.
I did not catch her.
I believe there are two reasons for this. First, I was whipped. I put no extra effort into the descent whatsoever. I let gravity do its thing, knowing I would need to extract every ounce of oomph from my legs on that last 25 miles from Troutdale back to Vancouver. Second, Amy was cold on the descent, so she pedaled to stay warm.
So it was with a sense of disappointment when I rolled up to the Troutdale Depot Museum, our pre-determined join-up spot, and found Amy already basking in the sun on a nice picnic table by the road. I asked how long she had been waiting and from the hesitation in her response I could tell it had been more than the 1 or 2 minute hoped-for answer.
To make matters worse she was feeling great. That is clearly not a bad thing at all. But when your wife suggests you can draft behind her on the way back (and she won't tell anyone) you know you must really looked whipped!
I did not take her up on her offer. In fact, all of my "taking it easy" and "pacing myself" tactics worked fairly well. The headwind, though not strong, was more of an annoyance than an actual hindrance. For me. Headwinds are much more of a factor for Amy, so it was during this stretch that she began to feel it. I figured as much since I was able to keep up with her without too much trouble. No, I did not draft. Plus I had been planning on dealing with this end-of-ride headwind from the moment we started: It wouldn't be a Larch Mountain ride without a headwind.
Once we got into Vancouver we started noticing how we had only been hitting red lights, and couldn't remember riding up to a single green light. At the end of a very long bicycle ride the last thing you want to do is stop, because you then have to start again. Starting again takes more energy than simply continuing. This only red phenomenon held true for the entire remainder of the ride, consisting of probably 8 or 10 more red lights. By the time we were done it felt like we managed to hit every red light in both states. For full disclosure the last light of the ride was technically green. For really absolutely complete disclosure it was red up until we had lost all forward momentum. The one saving grace was that, even though we did click out of the pedals, we didn't have to put our feet down. At the time this was seen as a great victory, worthy of much celebrating and whooping and hollering.
Yes, we were deliriously exhausted.
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