Team Mango

*RAMRWSTOOD

* RIDE AROUND MOUNT RAINIER WITH A SIDE TRIP TO ORTING IN ONE DAY

by popular demand… well, make that by a request from team mango’s senior advisor (my dad), herewith is my supplement to scott’s accounting of RAMROD.

whereas scott started out fine and ended up… not so fine (see his side of the story), i started out rather badly but somehow managed to finish in good fashion.

i’m not sure if it was the painfully early start of the ride (waking up at 3:00a and starting the ride at 5:30a), my meager breakfast of 1 cup of yogurt and a pint of endurox (sports drink), or maybe it was all that talk of mcdonald’s “mcgriddles” during our drive to enumclaw, but by the 50-mile mark, i was considering dropping out of the ride due to a worsening case of nausea. i managed to limp to the second food stop at kautz creek, took a tour of the port-a-johns, then did my best to try and swallow some grapes and a bagel w/ PB&J. the grapes went down ok, but i could barely stomach even half of the bagel. scott, john and the rest of the crew hung around waiting for me, but eventually left me for dead. i sat on a curb in the parking lot basically feeling bad for myself, but after about 15 minutes, managed to force myself back onto the bike.

the climb to paradise didn’t start until longmire (about 5 miles further), but by then i already had to stop for a few minutes and compose myself. as the climb began, i actually started to feel somewhat better, but still had to stop about every 15-20 minutes and rest to avoid losing what little food i had in my stomach. about halfway up the climb, a doe and her fawn ran onto the road and stopped directly in front of me. luckily i was only creeping up the hill at a meager 7mph so i managed to avoid them (it would have been tangled mess of fur, spandex and steel tubing had it happened on one of the +40mph downhills later on).

on and on like this, up 3000’ to paradise, but i finally made it. from here, dropping a couple thousand feet somehow allowed my digestive tract to right itself. by the time i reached the next food stop at box canyon, my appetite was partially back. i gorged myself on nectarines, pretzels, a couple bananas and gatorade (i was still put off by bagels, though).

for the short climb up and over backbone ridge, i was finally feeling almost 100% and managed to stick with our group for pretty much the rest of the ride.

like scott mentioned, the long, final climb up to cayuse pass was gruelling, mostly because of the intense afternoon sun. about halfway up, a truck was dispensing bottled water from an icy cooler. i gulped one bottle down and poured another one over my head. the cold shower was just the ticket to get me to the top of cayuse, where i met up with the others. john and bill had been waiting almost an hour for us. we waited a bit longer for scott, but soon left him for dead, figuring he was either slowly making his way or that he had baled.

although it was the latter, we all commend scott for the noble effort and for knowing when to stop (lest he cough up his clif bars). i believe he’s already planning for next year.

leaving the top of cayuse pass, we dropped about 3000’ to the final food stop at crystal mountain road. this time i managed 1 1/2 turkey and cheese sandwiches, a couple chocolate croissants, about 4 nectarines, pretzels and more gatorade.

the final 35 miles was essentially slightly downhill (flat) with a headwind all the way to back to the where we started in enumclaw. john, scooter and i formed a paceline and took turns drafting off of each other and managed to clip along at about 25 mph. it was the first time scooter had ridden in a paceline, so we had to give him some pointers on the fly. about halfway home, we picked up another 6 or 7 riders for our paceline, which gave us each about a 15 minute rest as we rotated positions.

we stopped once along the road to rest, each complaining of various aches and pains from our 130 mile at this point — sore asses (go figure), sore backs and necks, hands falling asleep, etc. but we plugged along and crossed the finish line about 13.5 hours after we started (roughly 9.5 hours of actual rolling time).

showers at enumclaw high school were in order, followed by burgers, fries and shakes at wally’s drive-in in buckley. arriving at home, i spent some time icing my knees and my achilles tendon, ate more food and passed out.

kudos to mr. john methot for talking us into doing this gruelling, yet fulfilling ride, a round of applause to scott for showing us that little-to-no training can still get you a 115 mile ride with 9600’ of climbing, a special nod to john tulinsky for joining us on all our training rides (while he trains for ironman canada), and a tip of the helmet to john methot’s friends bill, bis, scooter and others for cheering each other on!

now, how many of you guys have touched your bikes since RAMROD?

Posted by jason at August 14, 2003 12:08 AM