Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 00:49:31 -0600
From: "Dennis G. Allard" 
Subject: Death Valley 1999 ride report


                  Death Valley Double -- 1999

I flew back from a contract interview in San Francisco on Friday,
leaving downtown S.F. at 2:30PM -- rather easily making it via Bart to
the Oakland Airport for the 3:30 PM flight back to L.A.  BART is very
effective rapid transit.  Wish we had that in Los Angeles every time I
get on the 405 which has reached the point of being jammed about 16
hours out of every day.  But the people of Los Angeles are too dense
to realize this.  Got my gear together and left for Death Valley at
8:30PM.  This meant experiencing said 405 bottleneck, which even at
8:30PM, was keeping traffic to about 30MPH until well over the
Sepulveda pass.  Like, it is IMPOSSIBLE to ESCAPE FROM LA without
hitting traffic!  Finally got moving and onto the 14 towards Palmdale
and Lancaster, starting point of the classic Tour of Two Forests and a
tad east of the convergence of the Mojave desert, Los Padres Mountains
and the San Joquin valley at the Grape vine, a place I never tire of
pointing out is visible from outer space and any good geophysical map.
Was able to pick up Chick Hearn and the last half of the Laker Game up
to about Mojave.  Took the old Randsburg route and Searles cutoff
through Trona and Panamint Valley.  Kind of like being in a pitch
black wind tunnel cruising at 85 MPH for hours.  At one point, in
the middle of nowhere, I had to stop for a train.  Desert, pitch
black night, stars, clanging lights of a train crossing and a
BIG train moving SLOWLY by for about fifteen minutes right there
in the middle of the desert on the Randsburg road.


Got to Furnace Creek at 1AM and bedded down by the side of the road
next to a picnic table.  I was quite soon interrupted by a park ranger
who asked me to move to a campground.  I had anticipated (worried)
that a ranger might come by and see my illegal attempt to sleep by the
road side and had imagined a coy reply along the lines of: if only the
first settlers in Death Valley would have been so lucky.  But when it
actually happened, I just meekly thanked him for pointing out the DO
NOT CAMP HERE sign, twenty feet from where I was trying to sleep, and
moved to the official campground across the road from Furnace Creek.
Quite a sight, what looked like a couple hundred RVs in echelon
formation under the waxing moon.  I found a corner spot and got four
good hours of sleep.


Started the ride at 6:30AM, about an hour and half after most other
riders attempting the double had left.  The course first headed south
to Stovepipe Wells, 25 miles.  I was able to see the bulk of the other
double riders heading back North and traded hellos with many of of
them.  Having not ridden more than 54 miles in a single sitting yet
this year, and with a total base mileage of under 400 miles going into
the last weekend of February, I knew going into this ride that I would
have to pace myself, which I was consciously doing.  Whenever I was
tempted to hammer, I resisted and just spun instead. I kind of had the
goal of keeping my on-bike average speed at 18MPH on the flats and
then see what the climbs and downhills would bring.  So I pedalled
lightly to Stovepipe, appreciating the cool but not cold morning and
lack of wind.

Quick refuel at Stovepipe Wells then turn around to head 100 miles
North to the Northern turn around in Shoshone.  The conditions were
perfect.  Very minor head wind in a few spots.  But after the rest
stops back at Furnace Creek and at Bad Water, were I stopped just long
enough to refill my two of my three water bottles with Gatorade and
down a couple of orange slices, I was feeling good.  My conscious
effort to pace myself was so far paying off.  Prior to Bad Water at
mile 60 I had made the decision to do 10 miles easy/ 20 miles faster
(but not too fast) and see what that would bring.


The ride North in Death Valley is spectacular.  A series of various
colored massive cove-like outcroppings penetrate the valley from the
East.  You know there is road out there bending off into the distance
around each of the massive outcroppings and that in a half hour, or
hour, or couple of hours, you will eventually have reached the next,
the one beyond, and finally the most distant of these land marks on
the horizon before you.  My easy-pace 60-70 mile mark went fine.  I
was feeling good.  Very minor head wind was not replaced by no wind at
all.  It was getting a bit warmer but I still kept my leg warmers on.
I had removed my jacket at mile 50 though.  Mile 70 to about mile 90
is flat to slightly climbing.  Feeling good, I put a bit more pressure
on the pedals and found myself passing many people although I was by
no means going at racing speed.

The major climbs were ahead of me but I was feeling good at this
point.  The climbs in the Death Valley double are two, a long steady
climb out of the valley then after a fast steep descent into Shoshone,
the climb back up that to get back to the valley.  Between about mile
80 and 90 one sees a stretch of almost straight road disappear into
the distance every so slowly climbing, but not flat.  The first climb
then kicks in -- more straight road disappearing into the false-summit
distance but now definitely not flat.  The climb is in two parts --
beginning with six or so miles of steady climbing, in the one digit
per hour speed range for most people.  Even though I have done this
ride at least three times before, the part of the first climb seemed a
bit harder and longer than I had remembered.  But I also remembered
that the climb would be interrupted by a small fast dip followed by a
short fast and sweet finish to the top.

I had misremembered.  Or perhaps my low base miles were starting to
have their say.  The first part of the climb went fine and when I
crested I was looking forward to the small fast dip and the short
finishing part of the first climb.  It turns out that the finish to
the climb is nine miles long.  I had climbed at normal climbing speed
or so during the first part and I had remembered one year practically
sprinting up this second part.  Not today.  I knew I didn't have it in
me to go fast, but I could not believe how time after time I would
crest ever so slowly to a distant bend only to see road disappearing
further and ever-so-slowly up into the distance with riders small dots
at the limit of human vision still climbing on the road up ahead.
Again and again the scenario repeated itself.  The term false-summit
was being redefined.  My feeling of wellness was slowly being replaced
by a feeling of burning in the legs.  I was trying to still go easy.
I looked down at my odometer.  96 miles slowly became 98, then 99,
then 99.1, 99.2 ...  Around mile 106 or 107, I was really wondering
when the thing would be over.  This is when I began learning, again,
that no matter how easy one takes it, there is no substitute for
training miles.  On a climb which would be a cake-walk on a training
ride, this long subtle series of false-summits was getting the better
of me and there was nothing I could do about it.  One rider came by me
-- first time I had been passed, a sign I had caught up with the tail
end of the non-slow riders.  I got on his wheel.  He was holding
10MPH.  That's about right.  I think I did this thing at 12-14 MPH one
year.  But I knew I could not nor did not want to hold onto his wheel.
Was just curious.  So I let him go.  No, my goal was now just to get
to the top so I could descend and then after the short steep climb
back up, enjoy what must have been the most ideal conditions in years
for a hammer session back to the end of the Death Valley Double.

It was not to be.  About three miles shy of the summit, my right knee
started bothering me.  The acute pain style where it helps only a
little to stand up on the pedals.  It was not critical in that I was
able to stop for a minute and stretch then keep going at an even
slower pace and stay below pain threshold.  But I was also starting to
feel like shit.  Like, this climb just simply would not end.  I
crested, for lack of a better term, yet another ever-so-subtle false
summit and could see nearly infinitely away what I joked to myself
might be the real summit, believing that really the road must turn
into a valley off to the side before then.  It didn't.  The distant
thing was the summit and it took forever to get there but I got there.

I stopped to put on my jacket, something most people were not doing
before plummeting down towards Shoshone.  I knew I was fried now.  In
theory I could do the steep climb back up, which I measured at four
miles on the way down so I would know how long it is.  And the ride in
the valley would be warm and have minor tail wind.  But I just didn't
have it in me and the risk to my knee was not worth it at this early
stage of the year.  I had had my workout.  It was time to run my DNF
streak to three in a row (Central Coast and Terrible Two last year).

I was at mile 114 and now on the final flats to Shoshone when Lee and
his burgundy van with the music PA system and enough rack space for a
Tour de France team came driving up the hill.  I signalled him and was
soon commiserating with a couple of fellow wimps.

By the way, Lee, who also supports on the Heart Break and other
doubles has done Team-RAAM in the over 60 category.  So on the drive
back, various stories were shared.

Anyway, I am still planning to do PBP 1999, so I'll have to finish a
double at some point this year.  I have a feeling that won't be too
long from now.