The ride guide says 8400 feet of climbing, but my Garmin showed 7070 feet at the end, but I don't really place much stock in the accuracy of either of them, any way it was a lot of climbing. I started at 7 AM with Mike Lemberg, a fellow Cycle Folsom rider that I have ridden with three or four times and know that he is pretty strong and we would be able to ride together most of the day. We started behind about 30 or 40 people, but pretty quickly realized that they weren't going to be moving very quickly, so we passed the very large group and slowing began picking off riders that had started before 7 AM, the first rest stop was at about 15 miles and by then we had picked up a self professed "wheelsucker" who we came to find out was named Tracy. Tracy is a lapsed cyclist that just came back to riding after being a runner for 20 years. We only stopped for a few seconds at the first stop, seems kind of crazy to stop after only 15 miles unless you just happened to forget to bring anything to eat or drink. Tracy, Mike and I worked pretty well together and by the second stop were in the "lead", not that this really matters in a century event, unlike a gran fondo type of event where they actually have a mass start and everyone has timer chips. But we continued to climb and work our way to the turn around point at the Bear River campground at around mile 55 or so, in other words right at the base of a nasty little climb. We did eat some pb&j and fig newtons at that rest stop before heading back. Funny thing, the elevation map above doesn't do the climbing justice, with the max gradient shown on there of only 5 percent it doesn't seem bad, but Baxter Grade between miles 29 and 32 has pitches of 15 to 18 percent and actually averages in the 8 percent range. I don't know how mapmyride does their averages on the elevation maps, if you do a map of the climb of just Baxter Grade you can see it, but when they do it over any greater distance you don't get a good feel for the steepness of it. On the way back Tracy struggled a bit, but we waited every once in a while and he would make it back. Mike and I stayed together the whole ride practically, I would drop Mike on some climbs, but not by too much and I would wait for him at the top, but he rode strong the whole way. I pushed a bit at the end up the Folsom Crossing Road climb and rode in to the "finish" by myself. Pretty anti-climatic as there isn't a "finish-line" and no official timing. I did the ride in under 6 hours and that included some loop backs to make sure I hadn't lost Mike and Tracy on some climbs, I think it would be around 5:45 if there was an official time, but it was 5:56 with my circle backs.
Just a funny, but not so funny is this bit of cyclocross from Star-Crossed this weekend:
So Joey's o.k., but I think Joey launched! @neilroad had a rather interesting conversation with @AdamMyerson about this on @TourChats tonight, it was too funny.
Folsom Cyclebration had both road and cyclocross as part of the festivities this weekend. I didn't race in either. The reason I did race road is because I haven't raced all year and I am just too scared to ride I guess. I would have done the cyclocross after the century if the Mens' B 35+ had been later in the day, but I was still riding when my category went off. I did see a bit of the women's race, and realized I haven't practiced any dismounts, except for Wednesday. My first race is supposed to be this coming weekend, but I don't know what the family has planned. I have to travel to SoCal to look at a hydropower plant/dam this week, so I am not going to have too much time to work on the dismounts, but who knows. We'll see. Until next time!
