Aug 4, 01:19 AM by Steve | Windmill Century
Posted in Cycling & Ride-Report
One of my goals has been to do a century in under 5 hours. I had never attempted it, it was just something to try to do some day. I can easily do under 6, and do it regularly. Even solo. With lots of climbing.
Enter the Windmill Century. Local. Flat. There were rumblings from a good number of other Echelon members about going up there and making a day of it. That sounded like a recipie for a fast ride.
“If we get enough people we could get a good paceline going and try to do it under 5 hours.”
After the dust settled from the flurry of emails and message board postings, it appeared that I was going to drive up with Bill Lupo, Steve Nelson, and Mark Luke early in the morning. Denise and Ed were driving up on their own, as was Fran, Jurij, and several others.
Meeting at 6 at Steve’s meant leaving my house at 5:45, which meant waking up at 4:30, to give myself time to eat and clean the bike. I hadn’t thought about it earlier, but upon waking up realized that it was dark. Duh. I hoped it would be light enough by the time I had to leave, and fortunately it was. The drive up was uneventful, save for a few minutes of passing through a random fog bank that covered Buelton. Arriving in Los Alamos, I saw Jurij at his van as we were driving up the road to park. At registration we found Ed, Denise, and Jonathan, and also saw Wendy and Bill. The 7 of us rolled out together around 7:15.
We got a little surprise right away while riding along a frontage road; they were watering the fields and the sprinklers were overshooting by quite a bit. I tried to time it to go in the gaps between the arcs, but getting wet was inevitable. Lots of sighs of “I just cleaned my bike” were had by all. At some point we turned down a private winery road to head over to Alisos and toward Foxen. That brought us to the first of the only two real climbs we had for the day, and it was fun streaming past all the more casual riders as we charged up the hills. I think I recall coming across Wendy somewhere around there. There was a photographer at the intersection of Alisos and Foxen that took the above picture. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was Mike Bouffard, who sometimes rides with us (but I haven’t seem him around for a while).
Once on Foxen, with the steady shallow descent, we were flying down the road. I think that was the point that we lost Denise. Jonathan kept telling us to slow down because she was off, but eventually Ed went back to her and we just kept on. We kept the pace up and by the time we reached Sisquoc our average speed was about 22mph. None of us needed anything so we skipped the first rest stop and continued on, turning up Palmer road. I was told this was part of the Sisquoc Road Race course, and I was glad I was able to get a little preview of the road before the race. The hill didn’t seem so bad but I’m sure after charging up it 4 times at race pace, I’ll be changing my tune.
We kinda wound around for a while after that—I don’t remember exactly were we went but there were a lot of turns. We passed through a big group of riders, I think I remember a bunch of Amgen jerseys but nobody was able to hold onto us for very long. I think that we skirted the edge of Santa Maria and then turned back and passed through Orcutt on our way to the lunch stop. We weren’t sure exactly where we were going, so we just cruised easy through Orcutt and found our way to the lunch stop at Pioneer Park. It appeared that it had just opened as there weren’t very many people and they didn’t seem very prepared yet. Just before we stopped I noticed that we had an extra passenger on our train; he had apparently hooked on around Orcutt and managed to stick with us because of all of the stops through town.
Lunch was a typical SAG stop—bananas, gatorade, PB&J, some fruit and cookies. Lots of food around, very easy to overeat and have to slog through the rest of the ride. I had a cookie, several strawberries, some trail mix with M&Ms and split a banana with Bill. I’d been munching on Clif bars so I wasn’t really hungry. I met the guy that had come in with us and realized I knew him as Dante on bikeforums.net. I had actually never met him, just knew him from online. He did the Grand Tour triple century last month, and I only did the double! While at the stop we saw Denise and Ed come in, and Jurij, Wendy, Bill and others. Ed said he was having trouble with his foot and was just going to head straight back; Denise would cotinue on with Wendy and Bill.
Ok, so now I’ve started and stopped writing thing so many times… now its been two weeks and I’ve forgotten a lot of the details for the remainder of the ride. Somewhere along the way Jonathan realized that his brake was rubbing and was finally able to pull after the problem was corrected. Dante left ahead of us from the lunch stop and we caught up with him a few miles down the road. We all did a fairly quickly rotating paceline into the wind on the way to Guadalupe and passed several groups of riders. We all took pulls including Dante. When we reached the rest stop, we elected to continue on, but he pulled off.
Cruising the 1 we had a brutal crosswind, and Bill started to cramp up so we slowed up a bit and regrouped a few times. At one point I was pulling and a bee flew into my leg and stung me. Hurt like a &*^%$#. Felt like somebody shoved a dagger in my leg. I shouted an explicative I’m sure, then pulled off and motioned for someone else to come up to the front while I went to the back and worked the stinger out. The pain persisted for a while but there wasn’t much I could do so I just rode on.
Fortunately, we eventually turned out of the crosswind. Unfortunately, it was into a headwind, and a climb to boot. It was a steady grind to the top where we regrouped before a short descent and another, longer, climb. On the second climb I was feeling pretty good and could almost keep up with Mark. I recognized a guy from the Grand Tour—he was kind of hard to miss with his funky bike setup, crappy old shirt and really dirty shorts. We stopped briefly to regroup at the top and that guy passed by and started the descent shortly before we did. He was all over the road and got in the way as we went down, making it generally difficult to get by.
The next rest stop was at Casmalia. We were among the first to arrive (they said only 3 had arrived before us), and hung out for a bit. I had a lot of Gatorade and sampled some of the treats and goodies they had for us. The stop lasted a bit long, but once we were all rested up, we headed out again for the final leg. We picked up several people at the last stop and had a pretty good sized group for a while.
With all the climbing and stops and wind and cramping and bee stings and whatnot, our pace had dropped and my average was showing 20.0. I’d probably still make 5 hours, or very close, but I didn’t like that margin and wanted to beat the clock by a good amount, not just eek by. So, I picked up the pace, and we ended up shelling off all the hangers-on. We passed by the final stop about 10 miles out and turned away from the wind for a change. That was beautiful. And what a tailwind… Bill’s cramping had returned and told us to go ahead so I went all out and took Mark with me. We were cruising in the high 20s, and I was going over 30 for a while. I finished in 4:49, Mark came in a minute later, followed closely by Steve, and Bill and Jonathan a few minutes later. I’m sure I didn’t have to drill it so hard the last 10 miles, but it was fun. And that’s what this is all about.
