Go West Young Man

Well... I'll be hopping on the airplane for Cycle Oregon next Thursday. I'm thinking that I'm good to go. I've packed everything with the exception of things that I can't until it's time to head for the airport. I think I'm there fitness wise, but it's always an unknown for me when I start doing real™ climbs. Not the faux ones we have here.

You know, like 10 mile long ones. Like on Day Three, Happy Camp to Lake Selmac. A nice little 54 mile ride with 5200 feet of climbing.


The only wild card in the whole deal is the weather. They've had an odd summer out there. More like the summer that Iowa normally gets, but didn't this year. That bit of weirdness makes trying to pack interesting™.

For example, there was the "epic" day on Cycle Oregon 10 when they went up Mc Kenzie pass. It managed to snow that day. They were busing people off the mountain. I wasn't there for that bit of "fun". The image to the left is of me when we went over it on CO20 in 2007. So, it boils down to bring lots of stuff that you hope you don't need to use.

My biggest challenge is going to be trying to ride well within my limits. It's going to be hard to dial everything back several notches. But if I can manage that, it should be fun and not a bunch of extreme suffering. I'll be riding with my friend Steve who lives out there. There is also a friend of a friend that I'm hoping to get a chance to talk to. This year, we are also going to be hanging with Camp Aloha. It's an informal bike club, but it should help to simplify the daily camp logistics. So... I should have a good little group of people to hang with.

Note From Steve: Oregon sucks... don't move here.

Yoga Notes: My practice won't go into complete hiatus with this trip. CO does daily yoga classes that are tailored to cycling. I've done these on my past trips there and it helps. Here's a link to the newsletter story about it. I figure on bending the instructors ear some given his cycling background.

In other yoga news, a few of us did a "semi-private" lesson to review jumping up/back last Friday. I have a few new things to try. I did try to work a number of them in during the class at the Shala. It's going to be a very long journey to get to the land of "magically float". I'm hoping that I'm not too sore tomorrow. But, if I am, I'm probably doing it right.

Cycle Oregon 2009

Well... I sent a note to a friend of mine asking if he's going on Cycle Oregon this year. I'd ridden it with him in 2005 and 2007. They announced the route on the 7th and the ride has already sold almost all of it's 2000 slots. Steve said that he was going and so... I'm now "all in".

At the moment, I am in the throws of complete self doubt. It's a very different sort of riding that I do here in Fly Over, aka Iowa. For example, the total distance of RAGBRAI this year is 442 miles and about 22.8k feet of climbing. I'm thinking nothing about this, *yawn*. In contrast, CO 2009, is 437 miles and by my estimate, just about the same amount of climbing. Nothing on that route is at altitude. So why the self doubt? Maybe it's a day like this:

By eyeball, my "guess-ti-mate" of the climbing for the day is about 5500 feet. The real difference, in riding here vs. riding there, is that it done in two climbs, the first being something on the order of 9 to 10 miles long. Then there is that descending stuff. In Fly Over, it's up and down, sapta again, rinse and repeat, ad nauseam, until your legs have been properly tenderized and morphed into useless stumps of quivering jello.

Well... I now have the proper motivation for cranking up the training this year. I'll be hoping for 20 mph winds out of the west now and then so I can simulate the climbs... Just ride straight into it for two or three hours. Now... Where did I leave that 27 tooth cog?