The Central Coast Double is the most difficult ride that I try to do each year. It's a little over 200 miles, and features head winds and over 13K feet of climbing. One year it was 113 degrees. You get the idea; I really don't care how long it takes me, just finishing this one is a big deal for me, particularly with an El Nino modified training schedule. (I don't know how Bonnie gets herself out on the road in this weather - missable meetings become essential attendance meetings on a rainy day for me.) It starts in Paso Robles, and goes North to the Coast, south of Big Sur, then returns through the Salinas Valley (I think) foothills.

I was as well prepared as I could be, and even got an unanticipated boost - Margaret, who has ridden these things in the past, called me Friday AM and asked if I wanted her to come along and drive me home. The answer was an emphatic "Yes!!" We took off for Paso Robles about 4:30 and arrived about 9:30, got a great room at a motel 100 yards from the start/finish and I got a good night's sleep. The only fly in the ointment was that at check in, I found out that the ride wouldn't go over to, and up the coast as in previous years. Due to road damage, we would go inland and up the valley. There was another detour to get back into town. The combined effect was a 214 mile ride instead of a 209 mile ride. That didn't seem too bad - the headwinds on the coast are horrible, so I actually thought I might have gotten a lucky break.

This is a mass start event, so at 5:30 all 150 of us were bunched up in the middle of the road waiting to go. Brian Stark, the ride organizer, gave us a few last minute instructions, and off we went. About a block into the ride I got my first clue that all was not well. In the past, I've been able to hang with the group for the first couple of miles, until the first small climb. This year I started dropping the minute we started - it was really depressing!

The only good thing that happened while the field was sliding past, was I heard a voice say "Is that Donna? I'm Dick!" That was really cool - I had ridden the last 30 miles of the 1996 Hemet Double with Dick (in the dark), then last year, at this ride, we had joined up for the last 40 miles, and it took us about 20 miles to figure out that we had ridden together before. So, anyhow, I finally got to see Dick in daylight. For the curious, I thought he was an attractive, clean cut young man and I was proud to have ridden with him :).

After about five miles, after the first climb had started, I was sort of figuring out exactly how much trouble I was in. If I really concentrated, I could keep my cadence up to 70. Now I'm no spinner, but I ride a lot, and I can sit and grind out hours at 75-85 rpm. I couldn't have turned those cranks at 75 to save my soul. And I started rehearsing every argument I've been in since grade school, and remembering every slight administered to me, and who did it, too. I also started running through all the thousands of reasons, mostly other people's faults, that I hadn't been able to train as much as I should have. I was truly ugly. Anyhow, Margaret had said that she would go to the lunch stop and help out there and see how I was doing, so I decided I would ride until lunch (111 miles), then quit. So I ground on.

The ride was even more beautiful than usual, I think, even though we missed the ride up the coast from Cambria to Naciemento-Ferguson Road (about 70 miles. The ride goes through absolutely deserted parts of California - some of the roads don't have intersections for 20 miles at a time, and there are pastures, vineyards and hills on the road sides. The coast is gorgeous, but, due to the late rains, all the wildflowers were still blooming in the valley and it was wonderful, too- there were orange, red, purple, blue, white and pale pink flowers in huge swatches across the pastures and hills. It didn't rain, so there were a few places that you could smell the flowers as you rode through - what a wonderful sensation!

Actually, that may be the only good excuse for a headwind that I've run into. And there was a headwind. I was in my aero bars steaming along at a cool 12.5 mph. Whew! Two guys passed me slowly and I hooked up with them and we traded pulls into the second rest stop. One of the guys was a grey hound looking fellow named Larry. He was an ultramarathon runner who did just a couple of cycling events a year. (I gotta say he really knows how to pick 'em.) The other guy was Tony, and he was built on the professional football defensive lineman plan. Drafting on him was like being behind a county transit bus, without the fumes. More on Tony later.

Anyhow, the miles with them weren't too bad - actually, Larry and I started an interesting conversation: he was about my age and a very successful ultra race runner, but here we were riding bikes together at the same pace, and I've never been accused of doing anything quickly. So how DO you predict speed in a sport? Anyhow, it seemed to shorten the miles.

We were among the last to get into the second rest stop, and we took off quickly. This is where the change of route began to really show. In the original route, after the trip up the coast, you do a six mile, steep climb, then drop down into Fort Hunter Ligget. This year, the second rest stop was on Hunter-Ligget, and we rode up the hill from the inland side, dropped over to the coast to check in, then did the original climb back out and continued on the traditional route. The climb to the coast really took it out of me. It was about 16 or 17 miles, about 12 miles of 2 - 3%, followed by 4 or 5 miles of maybe 8-10%. Whew! There was the added piquancy of having the fast riders bombing down the hill toward you at 30+ mph, and having to avoid being T-boned. During this time, our three rider pack broke up - Larry took off up the hill, and Tony fell off the back, so I was alone. And cranky. Did I mention that I was cranky?

The descent was no relief, either. The wind was so strong that every turn was sort of a learning experience, and I really had to pay attention. That said, the views were incredible. The hill is really steep, so as we popped over the crest, it looked like there was nothing below us, just ocean stretching to the horizon and coast line left and right. The sky was clear, so near the coast the ocean was that combination of varied greens and blues you see in aerial photos of Hawaii. As you got closer to the bottom, you could see more details of the coast, but the view was blocked off by the sides of the canyon we were riding down - sort of like riding through a fractal!

I finally got to the top (ahead of the tandem. Ha!) and headed down. The tandem passed me after the descent had sort of flattened out, going about 30 mph. The wind was a slight tail wind, so the 18 miles into lunch were not too bad. When I got to lunch, Margaret was there. I was going to quit, but she was busy at the rest stop so wouldn't have wanted to leave, and, besides, she said the wind had stayed steady from the North West in the valley, so it would be a tail wind back. So off I took.

The next 10 miles or so are on a slightly uphill, unmaintained military road. In previous years, it had large cracks and some potholes, but this year it had serious obstacles, like sand drifts, and logs. At one point, a whole cluster of oak trees had blown over the road, and they had just cut a hole through them, so there was a group of oak trees stretched over the road, twenty feet high, with a cyclist sized passage cut through the them. It was like riding through a short, green tunnel. I finally finished that stretch and came down to an intersection with the "real world." My two friends on the tandem were lounging by the side of the road waiting for a sag home - it was too cold and too late for them. After chatting with them I decided to quit at the next rest stop.

I took off on a minor highway into the teeth of a huge headwind. My attitude had not improved over the course of the day, so I concentrated on abusing Margaret for telling me I would have tail winds. It was truly awful. The road may go up a little, but not much, and I was in my 26 x 23 working to go 8.5 mph. I got passed by a paceline of 3 guys wearing Terrible Two jerseys, which is a clue that they at least think they're strong. The three of them went by me, but only about a mile an hour faster than me. That made me feel a little better, since I could see that they were getting clobbered by the wind, too.

Finally, the road turned and started downhill. It was a scary descent: there was a sidewind, so wind was getting under my glasses and my eyes were tearing up, then there were piles of sand in the bike/breakdown lane that I couldn't see to avoid. Boy, am I thankful for all the mountain bike balancing this winter; every time my rear wheel would start to slide out my mantra was "Relax. Center your weight. Chin up." And I made it.

We finally got off the highway and back onto the minor roads, where I didn't see a soul for 15 miles. The route was gorgeous, winding through the vineyards and farms and up a canyon next to a creek, but I was feeling so unmotivated it seemed to take forever. I finally got to the rest stop at 141 miles where I was going to quit, but they gave me a Popsicle to have while I was waiting for a ride and it made me too cold to sit, so I took off again. The first cut off time for the ride was at the next rest stop, 40 miles away. It was 7:00 when I left the rest stop, so I was pretty sure that I wouldn't make the 9:45 cut off at the next rest area, and I could gracefully retire.

The tail wind finally kicked in. For the first 8 miles out of the rest area, I was cruising at over 20 mph. At about the 10 mile point, Tony from the morning caught up with me and we decided to work together to the next rest stop. I warned him that I was wimpy and testy, but he figured that riding with someone nasty was better than riding with no one, so we stuck together. We were actually working together until we started the climb out of Lake Naciemento. It's one of those Corps of Engineers roads, not too long, but the way they checked to see if it was too steep was to drive a tank over it, and if it didn't fall off, the road was okay. It's about 2 miles long with two turns. I knew from previous years that we went right by the hilltop antennas, so I kept my eye on the red light on the top of the mast and kept climbing.

Tony and I each had to stop once, but just as we were approaching the top, Margaret pulled into a wide spot in the road just in front of us. She had tools to adjust our lights with, an Illuminate jacket for me and Baby Ruths and Mars Bars for both of us. So we took off again. It was a full moon, which was sort of an advantage because everything was, on average, lighter; but it was so bright that the trees were casting shadows across the road, and it was difficult to tell if the big dark spot was a shadow or a pothole. We got confused a couple of times and paid, so we ended up being really cautious.

We were about 5 miles from the rest stop, and Tony asked me if I was going to finish. I said something about not meeting the deadline and he said that they couldn't stop us, they just didn't have to support us, and that he was prepared to go on, he had everything he needed in his bike bag. As so often happens with me, I spoke before I thought and what came out was "I don't have a bike bag, but I've got Margaret and a pick up truck. Of course I'll finish!" Yikes, what had I done???!!!

So we pedaled on. We made it to the rest stop at 9:29:30 by the rest stop leader's watch. We left at 9:45 for what I considered to be the final leg. Although there is another rest stop at 20 miles out, if I got that far, I was going to finish. We both had (no kidding) hot dogs. We had been through all the rest stops near the end of the crowd all day, so there had been very little salty stuff left at any of them. The hot dogs were the only thing that were salty and hot at the rest stop, so I had one with mayo and it was delicious. Oh yeah, I saw Larry, the ultra guy, at the stop, he was leaving as we eating our hot dogs, so he hadn't made up that much time on us.

We took off at 9:45, agreeing to take it easy in the interests of keeping our hot dogs down. The first thing you do at this point is climb Hare Canyon Road. It's a four mile climb, and was actually very pleasant, but far, far away from civilization. There was no artificial light except from our lighting systems, the coyotes were howling around us, and every once in a while, a curious horse would snort from the darkness. It was nice not to be alone. We finished Hare Canyon and did the descent into the final rest stop, where we stopped for soup. Margaret was there again, but we were cruising now.

The next 20 miles was the longest of the ride, I think. Tony had some digestive problems, and the route had been changed from last year, to avoid a washed out bridge. One of the things that happens to me on these long rides is that I get really stupid, so we were ultra cautious at all opportunities to turn. Even though we were being really careful, we made one wrong turn, but discovered our error after only about a quarter mile, so we recovered gracefully. We finished about 12:30, I think, maybe a little later. But we finished.

Observations, Conclusions and Lessons Learned. (1) Being unmotivated makes things really hard. If you think you're having a bad time, you'll continue to have a bad time. (2) Guys named Tony are good to cycle with. I know three and they are all wonderful and supportive. If it's not too late, go find yourself a Tony. (3) My feet didn't hurt at all on the ride, and they usually do. Maybe just reading about the metatarsal pads helped. (4) My hands killed me, which they never do. I mounted my lights on the right side of my handlebars, so maybe I introduced some asymmetry into the system which caused them to hurt. (5) Not all hot dogs are bad. (6) There was significant climbing added to the ride as a result of the route change: one number I heard was 14.2K feet. So that means that Bonnie climbed Mt. Whitney when she did the Devil Mountain Double (about 18K feet), and I did Mt. Shasta on the Central Coast. That's significant, I'm sure.

Wanna ride?