You can’t teach an old dog new tricks but you can grab a beer and watch that old dog do the same stupid thing over and over again, which is almost the same as a doing trick. On an unrelated note, I find myself, for the third year running, staring down the business end of the week approaching the Climb4Cancer time trial up Zoo Hill in Issaquah, Washington.
Zoo Hill is perhaps the most diabolical climb I know of, and I include in that statement the various cobbled bergs we tackled in Belgium this year, as well as the considerable heap of climbs around the US and Europe that I’ve had the great pleasure of hauling my too fat to climb carcass up. The trouble with this particular climb is the ferocity of the lower pitches which give way to a dead-straight final section of road consisting of ever-steepening rollers.
There is no keeping the powder dry on the ramps that litter the bottom half of the climb; this is an á bloc, stay-alive effort which serves to mop up speed and morale in equal measure. By the time you make the right-hand turn onto the sinister second half of the climb, your guns are fried and lungs hemorrhaging V resin. This section of road is nearly straight (which Science has proven is the most annoying kind of road to climb) and consists of a series of rollers which gain in gradient and culminate with the longest and steepest of them. This section is made physically daunting by the already-blown guns at your disposal, and mentally devastating by the fact that even if you could remember how many rollers there are in total, there is no way you can remember how many you’ve already sorted. (The answers are always “too many” and “not enough”, respectively.)
Riding this section during recon, it’s tempting to imagine moving Sur La Plaque and using the momentum from the short descents to fly up the next roller and thus dispatching with this comparatively easier section without much ado. Arriving here during the race, however, one faces an alternate reality consisting of legs reduced to quivering lumps of useless flesh, and rather than slipping into the big ring, ghost-shifting into a non-existent lower gear.
I look forward to my next attempt at bettering my time up Haleakala in Hawaii, which represents an unrelenting 60km ride from sea level to 3,000 meters, dished out in a massive four-hour helping of serial suffering. But I find nothing but dread in my heart when I cast my mind to the quarter of an hour of comprehensive pain I will endure on Saturday.
Donations Update
This event is organized to support cancer research with donations going to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The Climb4Cancer Charity has arranged for donation-matching; for those of you who donated prior to the event, your contributions were given in the name of the Velominati Community. Thanks to you all for your support.
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Good luck guys! Sounds like a beastly climb. I can only imagine the pain involved in racing hills like these. May your reserves of V be plentiful.
@ Frank. Yes, over-exuberance is surely the name of the game. Reining oneself in seems so hard to do as thoughts of losing time and under-performing run constantly through the mind and force you to try to maintain what amounts to an unsustainable pace. It's amazing how a climb like this changes when you ride it as part of an event and you really give it your all.
@mcsqueak
I'm running 23km in a stupid 24 hour relay race.
Then I'm permanently retiring from recreational group running races so I don't miss important events like the Zoo Hill Time Trial.
@G'rilla
But you still did your hill repeats like a good little boy, didn't you?
@G'rilla
What. I didn't quite read that right. I think my monitor may be on the fritz.
You're skipping a bike race to go RUNNING?
Oi. Maybe I should take your place at the Keepers Tour next year. Not sure you deserve to go again! Emoticon here.
@James
I can't decide what the best tactic is for this climb. Hit the bottom hard and survive the top, or ride conservatively on the bottom and hit the top (slightly) harder? Its hard to say, because the first time I was shot by the time I hit the top and just limped in. The second time, I rode the bottom a little more carefully but was still fucked for the top.
I wonder where you lose more time, sucking on the steeps or sucking on the rollers. Ideally, one wouldn't suck on any of it and I suppose that's what the kid who keeps setting new records keeps doing, but that's not my bag, baby.
@mcsqueak this is the second time I have heard of people skipping a bike event for a running event in Seattle. wtf is going on up there? shit better be squared away by the time I move up that way.
@RedRanger
I don't know. Frank is losing control.
@Frank here's my strategy: take it relatively easy the first few minutes up to the straight before that steepest corner on which the paparazzi snapped you, then just go for it. You get a slight reprieve on the straight before the right hander leading into the rollers, at which point you're over half way there and can begin to think about all those celebratory beers.
Frank it's the warm up you have to nail, to much and your jello to little and your molasas, just right and you can follow Eddies dictum...
Good luck, fly the freakin big V flag!