This Space for Rent

Climb 15000 feet and, surprise!, the next 7000 feet will be much slower

Swooping down towards Eagle Creek

Last week, before I rode up to Mount Hood, I made plans with my friend Theo to ride the Hills to the Yeah! permanent yesterday. So, despite unhappy sounds from my legs, Theo and I rolled out the door (of Marsee Baking, which makes a lovely starting control for a loop) at 7:40am for a run up and down the hills south & east of Portland.

Unlike Saturday, it was cloudy. And unlike Saturday, I had already been out climbing (on a route I’d love to do again soon, but first I’ve got to massage the cuesheet and submit it to RUSA) for a while, so the loop consisted of Theo and I rocketing along on the flats (Theo is really fast, and when I’m having a good day I can just keep up with him. On an ordinary day, about the only way I can keep up with him is by aggressively tagging along in his slipstream. Today was an ordinary day) and then my slowing to a glacial crawl every time we hit a hill, while he zipped up and out of sight, only to cool his heels for 5-10 minutes until I staggered into sight at the top of the ramp.

Some notable things about this loop were

  1. We moved along quickly enough to make it into the Canby control about 10 minutes after it opened, but then the hills between there and Sandy ate away so much time that we made it into Joe’s Donuts about 45 minutes before that control closed.
  2. Rain and chain waxing does not mix and I spent the last 40 miles of the loop going squeaky-squeaky along in Theo’s wake.
  3. Marine Drive can be pretty horrible when there’s a headwind. When there’s a tailwind, it’s not horrible in the least; Theo and I made the 21 miles from Troutdale to Kelley Point in just a hair over a hour (my best solitary time along there was about 1h15, but it’s easier to move right along when you’re in a paceline.)
  4. I’ve ridden Bull Run Road/Trout Creek Road enough now so I pretty much know where all the curves are on the descent down to just before the hairpins at Oxbow Park. On this loop, this meant that I could descend down that ramp at full speed, including taking at least one steep curve at 40mph (the pavement on these curves is not the best, and I get the weirdest-feeling floaty chattery vibration when I hit some of those sections at line speed.)
  5. The climbing around the Buckner Creek watershed is still the nastiest sustained climb I’ve ridden. The only one that’s comparable is Slab Creek Road (north of Lincoln) and some of the awfulness of that may be the combination of rain+night+bad pavement.
  6. When my legs are tired I can’t bounce rollers faster than Theo does. Of the six nice parabolic rollers up near Sandy, I think I only made it to the top of one of them first.
  7. When I reached the top of the Bull Run ramp, my brevet average was down to 9.6mph. When we reached the end of the line in Sellwood, our brevet average was up to 11.1mph (13.2mph moving average; faster for Theo, of course, because he spent half an hour or so waiting for me at the top of various inclines.)

Alas, there are not very many pictures this time around; it was drizzling most of the way across the ridge near Sandy, and then by the time the sun finally broke through I was too busy pacelining along Marine Drive to slow down and pull out the camera.

One strange thing is that despite my legs being so tired I still managed to get in the ballpark of my other times around the loop (yesterday was 11h17, and the previous loops were 11h03, 11h10, and 11h55.) It’s all about the climbing, I guess, and I need to keep doing more of it to get to the point where I can be not quite so embarrassingly slow winching my way uphill. Maybe I’ll try the loop on my trek next time around?