This was a pretty good race – The Mt. Baker Hill Climb
I’ve learned a new tactic for completely devastating the confidence of the cyclist racing in front of me. I was riding hard in the last few miles and it was just me and this one other guy clawing our way up the mountain. I was in back and I looked down to see 1.5 water bottles worth of water. This didn’t feel right to me, so while still riding on this wheel, I sat up grabbed my bottle, unscrewed the cap, and dumped the whole thing on the pavement beside me. He looked back immediately since it sounded like I was puking all over the place, but I was not. Instead, he showed a surprised look on his face and turned around, pedaling harder than ever before. I thought about it for a bit and I really was just trying to save some weight in the end.
This was great. All I had to do was chill out back there – one water bottle lighter – and just let him hit the wall. He didn’t. We ended up sprinting our asses off in the last mile and I took it by about 10 seconds. Neat.
I really like the bike. It’s stiff and responsive. It goes downhill faster than the cars I ride alongside.
Rewind a day:
We drove up Saturday night and crashed at Chris’s house in Anacortes. We hit Haggen on the way through Burlington for some bagels and juice for breakfast. PROTIP: The number 360.867.5309 is a valid haggen card phone number. We bolted to Anacortes, with only a bagel each for dinner. After viewing Chris’s fridge STUFFED with king salmon and catching up a bit, we were in bed at a reasonable 12:30am. Yeah. Bob said it right – He’s never had a early bed time before ANY race. It just doesn’t happen.
Up at 5:30, sitting around until about 6:15 and we are on the road. It went quick. Apparently not quick enough though. We got to glacier at 8:12am and our start was at 8:30. We hopped out of the car and got rained on while we geared up. We were at the starting area at 8:29 throwing our bags in a leaving gear truck (barely made it) while getting numbers pinned on by volunteers. We waited on the side of the road while our division started, then just jumped in and started pedaling like mad. It was pouring rain, we were not warmed up, and this was not a good start.
I jumped forward to the lead pack and hung with them until the DOT building and the base of the climb. The 13 miles out there was uneventful. The climb though, that was kickass! I broke away with one guy and we rallied to the top. I thought we were in front. Nope. Apparently, there was a small group of 4 13 minutes in front of us kicking our asses.
Anyhow, I thought I won the division. Man, was I wrong!
Here’s the route, recorded on my GPS.
I ended up getting 1:28:29.
