HOW MUCH ABUSE CAN YOUR ARSE TAKE?

Sarah says I'm obsessive. I don't know that I could disagree. When we met I climbed all the time, then kayaking was something I couldn't live without, now I seem to love my bikes. I think I would make a superb retiree. My current accomplishment was the 2009 RAMROD (Ride Around Mt Rainier In One Day). This ride entails 159 miles and 10,000' of elevation gain (and obviously loss.) The ride starts and ends in Enumclaw, WA. I stayed at my friends house the night before and awoke at 3am in order to get to the start, register, eat breakfast, meet some friends, and begin the longest day ride of my life to this point.(I seem to suck at making captions, if you know how to do that in blogger, email me.) Here I am at the start of RAMROD 2009 approximately 4:30am.

I've known I wanted to ride RAMROD since I found the description on the internet one day when looking for challenging things to do on my bike. I registered (it's a lottery system as the Natn'l Park only allows 800 participants) and was lucky enough to be allowed to ride as part of the supported event. The support was great as this would be a very hard ride to do solo. I rode with a few friends and we made short work of the first 80 or so miles. Here I am at approximately mile 50, feeling great! Below is the typical view of the aid stations, lots of people wanting food and drink!

The fun really started when we left the trees and headed up Cayuse Pass. This was a really long climb, the rolling uphill lasted probably 10 miles before the real climbing began. I stopped to take one quick picture as I entered the park and immediately lost my friend. I quickly caught my group, passed them and made catching Scott my goal. After 5 miles of fast climbing I realized he must have been pushing just as hard as I was because around each turn I would search for him and he was never there. I finally caught him at a water stop and sure enough we had maintained almost a minute distance as we both pushed hard up the hill. Interesting that one little picture can really change your place in a group. We weren't racing, but it's interesting to see how everyone performs when compared to each other. As we left the water stop I was delighted to learn the top was a mere 4 miles away, a cinch. Below is me experiencing the "cinch" of a climb while the heat continued to push toward another record high! Cayuse is big, 2688' of elevation gain over 11 miles with the last 4 being the steepest. The top of Cayuse Pass marked 102 on the mileage for the day. Great, that was a nice century, now let's get to those remaining 58 miles.

Rainier, what a great mountain!

All in all I am super stoked to have completed RAMROD. It's been a goal since early spring and much of the riding I've done since then has been training for the big day. Who knew the big day would be during the hottest weather on record for the PNW!

I would definitely do RAMROD again, not so much as a personal goal, but to do it with friends. I would also like to do a lot more riding in the Rainier area, it's beautiful. I think the ride itself wasn't amazingly notable, rather it was the sheer mileage and the scale of the mountain we were circumnavigating. Rainier dominates in a way few other mountains do, that's it's mystique! It was great to ride with so many other people, all sharing one common goal of completing this epic ride for one reason or another. I had never ridden more than 102 miles in one day up until RAMROD, it hurt my arse. It also made me second guess my dream of one day being able to hang with the randonneuring crowd. They ride amazingly far, 400k, 600k, 1000k, for those not in the know that's between 250 and 650 miles, roughly, in one stretch, with minimal rest, it's seriously cool. A day later I was feeling better and two days later I was on Mapquest dialing in directions for long rides this fall. RAMROD is the beginning, not the culmination. What is possible for me as an individual is always the question.

Get out there, surprise yourself!