Scenic Route

Here’s a rough draft of my submission to the Rochester Bicycling Club’s August Newsletter.

RBC Member Rides to Top of Highest Paved Road in North America

By Bruce Wilbur

On Wednesday morning, July 30, 2008, I wore my RBC jersey to the top of the highest paved road in North America, at the summit of Mt. Evans, just west of Denver, Colorado. The mountain’s summit is 14,260 feet, but the road ends in a parking lot at 14,130 feet.

How I Trained

I started training in May. Jokes about plastic bags or using snorkels aside, there’s really no way to train for that kind of altitude around here. There were three things I targeted and trained for:

1. Hills. Most of my regular riding is flat. I had to seek out elevation.
2. Endurance. Most of my riding is commuting in stop-and-go traffic. I had to get some rural, non-stop riding in.
3. Anaerobic threshold. I had to really work the old lungs hoping to stretch their limits.

Hills

My usual riding is around the city, where it’s pretty flat. In town, I did hill repeats on Cobbs Hill, Rich’s Dugway and Browncroft Blvd, all of which have a similar grade to Mt. Evans. Mt. Evans is not steep, but it is long. I had to get out of town for longer climbs.

The RBC mapset was indispensable for this. My favorites became #74, Avon-Geneseo-Dansville, where I did the Jaslow’s Jaunt “dotted-line” extension, and a variation of #78, Canadaigua Cup Race (I substituted Rt 254 and Rt 364 on the east side of the lake) where Miller’s Hill and Rt 364 were both nice, long grades.

Endurance

When I couldn’t get a ride to an out-of-town course, I rode from home to several of the rides in Bloomfield, Honeoye, Honeoye Falls, Mendon, Ionia, Lima, and Rush, southeast of the city. These rides included longer stretches without turns or stops along with some hills.

Anaerobic Threshold

I bought a cyclometer with a Heart Rate Monitor (HRM). First I found my maximum heart rate. This is very individual, but several of the formulae get to a reasonably close starting point. It’s experimentation from there. (And my doctor’s guidance helped too.) My maximum heart rate is in the upper 170s.

From there, I worked out where my anaerobic threshold was—the point where muscle work is greater than the body’s ability to supply oxygen. For me, that’s in the mid 160s.

Then I rode at the threshold, hoping to boost it. I wasn’t really successful at that, but soon I was able to ride further and further at the max. I used this as a substitute for altitude training.

Acclimatization

I took the train to Denver. This gave me a couple of days of gradual boost to the Mile-High City. I overnighted in Denver, then rode a nice little metric on the Denver bike paths (which are wonderful and plentiful), keeping to a nice, easy recovery pace in the 120s. Then I overnighted in Denver again. All the while I worked on hydration and made sure my meals included plenty of those things known for helping build healthy blood.

The Bike

I took the same bike I use for commuting and errands around town, my beloved 2006 Trek Portland. Sold as a fast commuter, the Portland is part cyclocross racer, part touring bike, has a 52/39/30 triple and Avid’s BB7 road disk brakes. It’s a middleweight at 23 pounds, before rack, fenders, lights and whatever gear I carry. It’s the bike I ride daily, the bike I trained on, the bike I ride centuries on, and the bike I took for 367 miles of riding the Rockies.

The only thing I changed for this climb was the gearing. Around town I ride a 12-23 ten-speed cassette. For hilly riding I typically use a 12-27. On Mt. Evans I used a 16-27 because it gave me lots more choice in the low end. I had exactly the right gear for every variation in grade, making it easier to manage heart rate and cadence.

My ride partners on this ride used their favorite bikes—one a full carbon Scattante (PerformanceBikes.com) and the other a titanium and carbon fiber LeMond. Both used 50/34 compact doubles with 12-27 cassettes.

The Ride

I rode with a local and Pennsylvanian who is a frequent visitor to Colorado. We drove to the entrance at Echo Lake, at about 10,000 feet, (the altitude where pilots need oxygen masks) unloaded our bikes and rode the 14½ miles to the top from there.

From my training at home, I knew I could spin the 6%-7% average grade at around 80 RPM cadence, translating to around 7 MPH. So I planned for two hours ride time, interspersed with a hour of resting. I’d guessed that would mean riding two miles, resting, then the next two miles.

On the mountain in the thin air, that turned into riding one mile, taking a short breather, then riding to the next milepost.

My strategy also included keeping my heart rate below my anaerobic threshold. I kept under 160 on the climb itself. I monitored my recovery at the stops, and began the next mile when my heart rate dropped to 90 or so, usually after two or three minutes. These pauses meant I could also really take in some of the spectacular views along the way and bring back lots of photos.

On the climb, car traffic was amazing. People drove by, giving us plenty of clearance, mouths agape as they looked at us riding our bikes up the mountain that their cars were straining to climb. One boy, around 10 or 12, rolled down the window and gave us a thumbs-up as he went by.

At the Top

Two hours and six minutes of ride time later, I reached the top, posed for the pic in my jersey, parked my bike in the bike rack (Yes, there’s a bike rack on the top of the mountain!) then put on my jacket and walked (in my cleats) to the summit at 14,260 feet.

If the altitude isn’t breathtaking, the views down on neighboring mountains certainly are.

We were instant celebrities among the other sixty or so people enjoying the summit at the time. Interestingly, GM was altitude testing four future model sports cars at the time. They kept putting them under tarps when they parked. They didn’t need to since people ignored them, wanting to talk to the silly old idiots on bicycles instead. We couldn’t leave until everyone asked us how we did it and took our pictures.

The Descent

Coming down off the mountain wasn’t the ride I thought it would be. The road has no shoulders or guardrails. Just inches off the edge of the pavement, well, watch that first step. The winds were gusty and their direction unpredictable. Plus, the pavement itself isn’t in good shape. There are wide cracks and potholes caused by marmots (sort of like our woodchucks) burrowing under the road.

As a result, I hugged the double-yellow and rode the brakes a lot. (Thank heavens for my Trek Portland’s road disk brakes!) My typical speed coming down was about 20 MPH, although nearer the bottom I felt safe in letting it out a little to 38. Still it’s nothing near my record for a descent.

The Afterglow

I’m proud to have worn the RBC jersey, marking me as both a lowlander and flatlander, on my ride to the top of the highest paved road in North America.

My eyes still well up whenever I think about doing something most people will only ever read about (or drive their car to). That, and a century called “The Epic Century” through the mountains later in that week, have shown me that with the right training and support, I can ride my bike anywhere I point its wheel.

The only trouble is, how do I top this?

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And now, the rest of the story…

The submission is necessarily slanted towards RBC interests, and doesn’t mention Howard and Z-man by name. They’re not members.

Z-man gets cred for suggesting this silliness in the first place. Howard was there every pedal stroke of the way, making sure I didn’t topple over of hypoxia. They were as important to my effort as everything else in the piece for the club.

Also not a member, but instrumental to my success was hndlebar, who helped pick out-of-town training routes, gave me rides to them, and rode with me on them, all the while providing encouragement.

And, truth be told, I wore three jerseys on the climb. Partly because they each show one of my affiliations, and partly because it got so cold.

Howard was a real sport about waiting through my wardrobe changes and taking multiple photos at each photo op.

Here I am at the start at Echo Lake in my BikeJournal jersey.

And at Summit Lake (which is only halfway up) in my BikeForums.net 50+ jersey.

Here we all are at the start, Howard, brucew, and Z-man. (Pic stolen from Howard)

And again at the top, Z-man, brucew, and Howard

More pics will be linked here when they become available in the gallery.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 12:09 am EDT and is filed under Bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.