Another way to satisfy that impulse to scale the Sierras is on a bike.  Unlike mountain biking, all-day schleps on a road bike just don’t provide many thrills for me unless there are some big-ass hills involved.  Still, I laughed when my friend, Emilie, threw out the idea of signing up for the Ebbetts Pass century.

I’d owned a road bike for only a few months (a Giant OCR compact double), and had never done a century before, so why not start with one that entails climbing nearly 9,000 foot mountain passes?  This part of the Sierras south of Lake Tahoe is also the home of the Death Ride, the mother of alpine centuries in the West, and Emilie pointed out that completing the Ebbetts Pass century would guarantee us a spot in the 2010 Death Ride.  I agreed, thinking it’s good to have friends who think difficult is synonymous with worth doing, even if we sometimes curse those same friends as we’re slogging through whatever painful experience they’ve talked us into…

The first thing we had to do was figure out how to train.  We ordered copies of Dr. Arnie Baker’s ACE: Altitude Climbing Endurance Training for Cyclists, which I would highly recommend for it’s comprehensive coverage of nutrition, altitude, form, training and recovery topics.  I knew I wouldn’t have time to do all of the recommended distance and climbing for the ride, so was grateful that Arnie provided a shortcut:  at a minimum, do at least 60% of the event day climbing in a single day three times before the event.

I did several training rides with Velo Girls and friends who were training for big rides over the summer, and it was fantastic to have each other’s support.  We speculated about the 24% Pacific Grade section of the century. A cyclist friend warned that I’d likely be walking this grade, and I didn’t want to find out if it was rideable on the day of the event.  So, I did a mondo training ride over Monitor Pass and back, over Ebbetts Pass, up to the top of the Pacific Grade, and back down Ebbetts.  It’s rideable.  I was standing at times, but I stayed on the bike – barely.  I was completely wiped out after over 11k feet of climbing in 80 miles.  The ride took me 10 hours and 40 minutes and at the end, I didn’t feel like I had it in me to go another 20 miles.  The event was only two weeks away, and it was time to taper down my training.

When the day of the ride came, I still felt the suspense of not knowing whether I had trained enough to be successful.  I had pestered Bear Valley Adventure Sports Festival Director Aaron Johnson with questions about cut-off times and early starts before the event, and he was very helpful with information and tips.  Aaron and his wife did a great job organizing, providing good maps and well-located rest stops stocked with lots of quick-energy, high-sodium food options like V-8, boiled potatoes with salt, pretzels and bagels with PB&J.  It was great to have alternatives to workout foods where the first ingredient is some form of sugar that leaves your GI tract feeling like you’ve been eating rust.

Here’s how the day broke down:

Mile 1-20: A chilly start from Bear Valley Adventure Company down to Dorrington, which has to be one of the coolest century rest stops ever.  If it weren’t 7:30 in the morning, I would’ve been tempted to get a beer at the funky old Hotel Dorrington saloon where the sweet woman handing out checkpoint stickers called everyone “hon”.

Mile 20-50: Riding out to beautiful Spicer Reservoir, and I was reminded again how lucky we are to have the Sierras as our playground.

Mile 50-60: A good climb out of Spicer toward a tasty lunch of veggie burritos back at Bear Valley. I was feeling great so far, but although I had done over half of the miles, the big climbs still lay ahead.

Mile 60-70: Bear Valley to the cool green forests and tranquil meadows of Hermit Valley, where a strategically placed rest stop just before the ascent gave me one last chance to contemplate what I was in for.  Mainly I was wondering how the guys from the Stockton Fire Department cycling team could possibly be passing me again.  Were they doing laps?

Mile 70-80: On the long, slow slog to the top of Ebbetts, I searched in vain for a non-existent lower gear.  When I finally slapped my hands on the Ebbetts Pass sign, the joy and relief at reaching the highest point of the century were tempered only by the knowledge that the climb back up the 24% Pacific Grade was coming next.

Mile 80-90: I savored the spectacular glacier-sculpted views more coming back down Ebbetts Pass than going up.  After cruising back through Hermit Valley, I toiled my way up the Pacific Grade going only 4 mph at times, feeling like I was pulling my pedals through concrete.  At this point, I considered whether it might be better to get less ambitious friends – the kind who like to watch movies about people climbing mountains through wind and snow, but don’t feel compelled to do it themselves.

It was a surreal feeling when I finally crested the summit and saw serene Mosquito Lake at the top.  Like a dream.  Or more likely I was just loopy from all that grueling pedaling.

Mile 90-97: The dreaded last climb to the top of Bear Valley ski resort was almost anti-climactic (so to speak).  As I searched for the last checkpoint sticker, I was stunned that all of the tough climbing was over.  Was this really it?  It was hard to believe only downhill and flat remained.

Mile 97-101: With no traffic on this section, I tore down the hill from the ski resort practicing the new counter-steering technique I’d learned so I could corner faster.  This, I thought, was almost as fun as mountain biking.

Back at Bear Valley Adventure Company, we hugged, high-fived, and ate a fabulous BBQ dinner prepared by the organizers.  I burned nearly 6k calories, and according to my Garmin Edge 705, climbed just over 10k feet.  That was less than the 12k+ I was expecting from the initial estimates based on elevation charts, but it was plenty for me.  I was grateful to Emilie for once again getting me to do something I wouldn’t have been crazy enough to do on my own.

Next year, Death Ride…

Guest Post by Sonja Velez