Mount Washington - Newton's Revenge Bike Race

I got up at 3:30AM on Saturday morning, July 7th 2012, along with my friend and driver, Greg (a NH resident).  We headed up to the White Mtns of NH and were at the base of Mt. Washington by 6:45AM.  Despite all the warning signs, we saw no moose, crossing the road or otherwise.  When the sun finally rose, I was in awe of the countryside.  Absolutely gorgeous views of the hills and mountains.  We were soon encountering mist-enshrouded peaks and a few rain showers as well, but they tended to be brief and intermittent.  When we finally got to Mt. Washington, the peak was hidden by the clouds, but would briefly poke its head out to glare at me in defiance.  Temps at the base were in the mid-sixties when we arrived and when combined with the light patches of rain, I was a bit chilly at first.

Mount Washington is, as it happens is known as "home of the world's worst weather".  For years, Mt. Washington stood as the location in which the highest wind velocity had been recorded (231 MPH).  For weeks before the race, I habitually looked at the weather day by day - it was not unusual to see wind velocities in the fourties or fifties of miles per hour.  I learned (during and after the race), that they typically don't bother showing the peak wind speeds there, but tend to show the average, by fifteen minute blocks.  On the morning of our race, there was a measured gust in the mid-sixties, with a sustained average in the low-mid fourties of miles per hour.  Fortunately for us, the temperatures were out of the thirties as well.

This hillclimb race, as it also happens, is billed as " The Toughest Hillclimb in the World ^TM".  When I researched it on ClimbbyBike.com, it shows up as #4 in the US and #28 in  the world.  The top three in the US are all in Hawaii, where they have some serious climbs up a couple of volcanoes.  Our little hill, while not being that tall overall, has a pretty serious gradient to it, with less than eight miles to climb all that distance.  Unlike many bike races, shorter does not necessarily mean easier!  Oddly, despite this fact, there are two races a year up Mt. Washington - the first, and most prestigious, sells out of its 600 slots in the first ten minutes of open registration.  My race only sold around 300 slots this year.

Registration went smoothly and I soon completed my prerequisites of bike prep, feeding, hydration, and stowing a small energy gel pack for the trip.  I decided to go with only 1/3 of a bottle of fluid (Cytomax is my preference), as I knew that I would be unlikely to get much of it in my mouth anyway, given the expected syndrome of hanging-out-tongue accompanied by its friend, gasping-for-breath.  I left a full bottle in the truck so I would have some recovery drink at the top, but not have to carry it up with human power.

It was not without some anxiety that I decided to go with no patch kit and no pump, but I threw that in the truck with Greg, figuring that it really wouldn’t matter if I flatted out – I was unlikely to complete with or without a patch kit.  He took off for the summit along with the rest of the drivers.  Mt. Washington does not allow descent on a bike, so each racer had to have a confirmed ride back down.  Oh – did I mention that Greg is 7’3” tall?!  He barely fit in my compact pickup, with the seat all the way reclined and his head at the top back of the ceiling.  His knees stuck up a bit more than halfway up the steering wheel.  While the manual shift was great for the descent down the peak, the shifting and clutching was a bit tough on him.  I wished I had cut a skylight in the roof for him – the Flintstones comes to mind with that visual.

I headed out with the other 200+ racers for my warm-ups and found a nice sunny patch alongside the road where there was a nice pool of warm air.  I pulled off and basked like a snake for a bit.  A few small hills at a nearby hotel were a busy, well-used venue for many racers who were also warming up.  I struck up a nice conversation with a 61-yr old man who had a pair of lightweight shoes stuffed into his biking jersey – that’s not a normal sight for a bike race, but he explained that if he had to dismount, he would swap into those and hoof the remainder.  I later noted that he did complete the race, but his time makes me think he probably hoofed some of it.  Speaking of unusual gear, the most common gearing ratio appeared to be a 30-36 (this gives less than a 1:1 pedaling to revolution ratio).  I’ve never seen a racer with a 30-36 before.  Normal road racing is done with a ratio of 39-25 or thereabouts.  I had swapped out my front crank to an old triple ring crank that I had lying around and was all set up with my 30-26 ratio.  It made me wonder when I saw so many 36-ers, but I was pretty confident that I would have no issues with completion – just not sure if the 26 turned out to be sub-optimal for my time.  It’s ghastly to see the number of $5K+ racing bikes that folks were riding.  Mine is a nice carbon-fiber Trek, nicely equipped with Ultegra gear.  Lots of carbon fiber and platinum on it but I still keep with the hollow aluminum crank, despite the weight.  I don’t use carbon fiber wheels as those can run $2K a pair for just a wheel set.

I’ve never been a fanatic about my race day routine, so cut short the warm-ups and found a group of guys basking on some large rocks and joined them.  They were from all over the place, mostly in the northeast, but one from Virginia, and one 18-yr old from California.  We chatted amicably and joked about the coming pain.  I raced in the “45 to ancient” category, which was a mixture of juniors (13-19), and us ancient ones, both male and female.  The eldest rider of the day was 74 – he was amazing!  The categories were arranged into four heats and mine was the last one to start.  I commented to another racer on the fact that I was shocked at how many of our age bracket there were – the largest heat of them all.  Without even a pause, he said “yeah, mid-life crisis.”  I don’t think I’m in a mid-life crisis, but I get his point.  There were folks talking about “doing it this last time”, and “bucket list” and other expressions to indicate that this was abnormal behavior for them.  After 11 years of doing these mountain races, despite my latest, 7-year hiatus from racing, I like to think of this as more of a lifestyle for me, but … time will tell.

We lined up by heat along the road and the “top-notchers” went off with the sound of the cannon – not a starting gun, but a cannon.  All of the rest of us jumped every time the canon went off as we couldn’t hear the countdown that preceded it for the prior heat.  At the sound of our canon, I spent several seconds pushing along with one foot, waiting for the road to clear enough to mount and go.  I quickly moved to the front of the pack as we started off.  The front mile of the course ranged from 11-14% grade.  Overall, this race does a vertical gain of 4811 feet, in 7.6 miles, so if you do the math, that’s rougly 0.91miles up, in 7.6 miles, or 12% grade average.  I watched my heart rate closely and pushed it to 158 (nowhere near my max heart rate of 194).  I was averaging a nice 7-ish MPH during this stretch.  It was tough to get my rhythm of breathing and pedaling as the hills kicked in so quickly.  After about a mile, I eased off a bit, just sitting it while the pack surged up.  I was passed by eight or ten folks, including a junior, who looked to be about 14, but was riding very strong and aggressively.  I thought about my 14-yr old son, Ian, who wants to race Whiteface with me next year (he says he’s not quite ready to try Mt. Washington yet).

When we hit the first set of 14-16% grades, I had to alternate sitting and standing.  I found that my power could out gun most of the riders around me when I stood, but it’s so much harder on the heart rate that I tried not to make it my regular style.  I really didn’t know where my heart rate would begin to max, and I didn’t want to push it too early.  I hit 163 at one point during this stretch.  Each time I would seat myself again, the legs felt dead after those pushes and my speed had to roll back significantly.  I was in good placement in the pack when we began to pass riders from the heat that left five minutes ahead of us, then the heat that left ten minutes ahead of us began to drift back as well.  Each bike tag had a “bib number” on it and the tags were colored by heat, so you could tell when you were catching the other heats (if you were coherent enough to look at the colors, that is).  When I went past the guy that was racing his unicycle, I croaked out an encouragement to him, “you-huffpuff-are-huff-a-huffpuff-mazing!”.  Truly he was amazing!  What a feat to do that rock on a uni!  I also passed the dual amputee that I had met before the race.  He was racing with two hooks on the bars – simply incredible and very inspiring.  He ended up finishing second to last, but he made it!

The terrain changed as we climbed through 2000 then 3000 feet altitude.  The scenery was breathtaking (except that I had no more breath, so I didn’t allow it to take much).  I love the smells of plants, pines and mosses baking in the sun on the side of a mountain.  I was aware of the Indian Cucumbers, Bunchberries, Reindeer and Sphagnum mosses along the way.  We lost the aspens, maples, and white pine trees, to be replaced with the black and red spruces.  The freshness of the air was wonderful and when I went by the waterfalls I actually did give them a partial second’s attention.  I became aware of the huge drop-offs on my right and was thankful that the winds were still calm there.  When we got to 4000 feet of altitude, the spruce were quite stunted, but the road went around a left-handed hairpin turn and dropped in below a sheltering cliff of rock.  The drop-offs on the left were pretty sheer, so I tucked in near the rocks on the right, being careful not to miss the surface and slam into the ditch beside them.  Upon looking up, I could see a steady line of bikers ascending into the sky ahead of me with the cliff on their right and the drop-off to the left of them.  Inspiring, but quite daunting too.  I continued to pick off other racers from the prior heats and occasionally was passed by from folks in my heat too.  After another set of hairpin turns, the winds occasionally popped over the edge of the precipice on my right and hit me from the right front quarter so I tried to tuck in behind another rider whenever I could, but their force was enough to knock us all out of line, making it nearly impossible to draft off anyone else.

As we ascending through about 4800 feet, the road changed to hard packed gravel/dirt.  This was the section that I had been told to fear – I chose not to fear, but was aware that the real pain was about to begin.  When chugging along up 14-16% grade on gravel, the rear tire spits out the gravel and slips on most every crank.  The hard effort of a crank is wasted and the speed drops significantly.  This is also the region where the flats are most likely to occur, so I tried hard to keep my wheels on the hard-packed, smoother areas.  The little rivulets of loose sand and gravel in between the hard pack were always a challenge, with a tendency to grab at the front tire and unseat me with a face plant.  “Not too bad, just keep on cranking” I thought while trying not to look ahead as view can be demotivating.  As the height of the rock cliff lessened to my right, I got my first real taste of the winds!  We hit a hard hairpin turn to the right and came full force into a 35MPH wind.  I struggled up the 18% gravel portion at 3.5MPH, trying hard not to focus on my stomach cramps, but seriously fighting against the desire to just dismount and walk.  NO, I decided!  I thought about my family and the sacrifices they were making to have me gone for a weekend, as well as all of the nights when I was out for my solo training rides.  “I will do this for them”, I thought and kept on cranking.  The pain in my gut was pretty intense, but I didn’t have much time to think about it as the challenge of the wind was a far greater one.  The road bent back to the left and the wind was now on my front quarter then my right side.  At one point, a huge gust smacked me and I found myself struggling to just stay upright.  It was tough to not over steer into wind at the right, but the thought of it dying off and the sight of the cliff on the right was just enough to make me take the alternative: bunny-hopping to the left.  I did a few side winders to the left and almost went into the left ditch at one point.  Standing was required for a while as my speed was low enough that it was really hard to just keep it shiny-side-up.  When I stood, I became a pretty good sail for that wind, but I did a few jerky change overs between sit and stand anyway.

After that pain, the sight of paving was a welcome one.  The road had a sheer drop to the right, with grand views of the Presidential range to my right – wow!  The wind was still on my right quarter, pushing me all over the road, but with a bit better traction on my part.  I was hit with another gail-force gust and almost went down again.  The next hairpin bent to the left and as I rounded the bend, the “official photographer” of the event was lying in the road, getting each of us in a maximum pain pose:

For the first time, the wind was briefly at my back and I flew up the next stretch with a mixed set of passing and being passed by others.  Now we came to the foggy and cloudy regions of the mountain.  At around 5800 feet altitude, the road leveled out to 5% grade and I was flying along through the fog.  We began to see spectators, many were ringing cow bells and shouting out encouragements, but all bundled up in their fleece and down coats.  Gloves and mittens had become common as well.  I didn’t notice that the temps had dropped into the forties as I was still working pretty hard and putting out like I had never done in my life.  There was another brief respite with the wind at my back, then a sheer cliff on the right cut off the wind.  I came out at a right hand hairpin turn and saw the summit before me about a quarter mile up.  The polite race director had strategically placed the finish at the physical summit – a neat little 22% grade section with two switch backs over ¼ mile was all that was left to climb.  I couldn’t tell you for sure whether I was sitting or standing the final 22, but I know I flew up it with ease.  The pictures that Greg took seem to indicate that I was sitting the whole slope.

I popped over the timing treadle and heard the final beep as my e-tag snapped my time into the computers.

There were friendly arms and hands around me, helping me to stop without crashing – all were bundled up like Eskimos and as they threw the polar fleece blanket over me and hung the medal on me, I thought “this is excessive”.  I soon learned that the blanket was probably all that would keep me from going into hypothermia and, despite my prior heat, I was shaking within a minute.  I had gone from an engine of warmth to being numbed with the cold.  Greg hugged me and grabbed the bike while I pulled my blanket around tighter and slumped down behind a rock to shelter for warmth.  He had my wind breaker with him and I pulled it on as well.  I was quite a mess, but was semi-conscious that I had done it!  I made it up to the top, didn’t stop, and put in a fair showing as well.

Overall, I was 67^th of the 201 finishers, and 13^th in my age group.  I missed my 1:20 goal by 3 minutes and 45 seconds, but think that a 1:23:45 was pretty respectable.  After a brief nap in the truck, Greg drove us down to the base and we had a great, catered turkey dinner with all the fixings from Hart's Turkey Farm.  That hit the spot!

Thanks for reading!