I last wrote something on this blog in 2019, over seven years ago. That seems f*cking crazy – the passage of time part seems crazy – but not the fact that I haven’t had anything memorable to write about. As I drove to the Kearsarge toll gate this morning, I reminded myself that even though it has been nearly ten years since I put a bike on the hill I’m heading for today, it’s not like I have nothing to show for it.
I’m now working on my 3rd degree black belt in Kenpo, as is my daughter. That’s exactly where the time has gone. I was in the karate studio four nights last week, teaching on two, training three. That’s time I never put into cycling – let me rephrase that – that is consistency I never put into cycling. And I have been doing that for nearly a decade now without interruption. And I am content with that, but I will be honest with you – the world is mystical.
It’s mystical and weird, and somehow through the remaining scraps of social media I’m still connected to avid cyclists, and it’s of course July, and a few days ago I realized I get Peacock for free by virtue of paying for the cheapest cable internet connection they sell, and so now I can watch the tour, and so there I was on Saturday morning tuning into this bike race for the first time in I truly do not remember how long, and of course it’s stage 20 – the big one – the biggest one – the one full of climbs they name bikes after – and so before long I was downstairs in the basement, charging batteries and topping up sealant and making preparations for a grand return to one of my favorite places – Mount Kearsarge.
As it turns out, we are days away from the exact date twenty years ago I first summited that mountain on a bike, riding my Trek 5200, 39t small ring up front, I’m guessing a 27t out back. The climb nestled in the center of a 40 mile out and back, it was an effort that unlocked a door that had been closed for a very long time, and would serve as the catalyst for 50 more ascents of that mountain, and a bunch of others, including 13 trips up the Mount Washington auto road. Anyway it’s apparently a powerful anniversary because Sunday morning I was up at 5:30am doing some kind of proper fueling exercise and was out the door in under an hour. I had my bike on the Kearsarge toll road by ten past seven, and we were really doing this.
These days, I still own two road bikes. My single-geared Langster, which although I have actually taken it up this mountain before (November 2009) – that’s certainly not the choice. I rode it for an hour locally two weeks ago – the first ride I’d been on in a year – and I nearly cracked.
My other bike – my geared bike – a Kona Super Jake I bought five years ago. This bike has never been on any kind of respectable ride. It has certainly never been on a mountain. I have more time and miles on this thing in Zwift than I do in real life by orders of magnitude. For reasons unknown, Zwift is something I do actually try to keep up with during the winters. I like keeping up with FTP tests, even though the numbers are nothing at all what they were before. I just want that full gas, empty the tank experience with my music blasting, and that is not exactly something we get on the karate mat.
I bought wonderful wheels from Jerry, five years ago. I had a professional fit on this bike a year and a half ago. I geared it with a 1:1. Added a power meter. What the hell am I doing with these things. Nothing. I am doing f*cking nothing with all of it, except hanging it from a hook in the basement. I built this contingency bike for a cross race that will never happen and a hill climb I’m never entering because I quit racing bikes and won’t let go.
July 29, 2006 was my first ever trip up Kearsarge on a bike, and it was a torturous grind on what we refer to as conventional gearing, although my meticulous riding log for that year demonstrates I went right back to the mountain two days later to do it again. And then I went a week later and did it twice, and then went a few weeks after that. I’ve had an attachment to this place, it has long served as my Mt. Washington training partner, and I’ve done repeats on it many times, once as many as five times, which was regrettable but on brand. Today, my intention, after not having ridden a mountain in nearly a decade, riding on average one time per year outdoors over that same span of time, was to summit two times back-to-back.
Kearsarge I divide into three sections.
The first mile or so is the hardest. It is the most consistent in terms of gradient, and most closely resembles Washington. When you come here to practice for that event, this is the section that matters the most. How you feel on the first mile, how your bike feels, your cadence, you multiply all of that out over 7x and that’s MWARBH.
The second and third miles are not like the first, not exactly, they contain some brief reprieves, so psychologically they have these little carrots to look forward to. That said, those sections still contain double digit grades because they have to because we’re gaining over 1400ft of elevation in the span of about 3 miles. Washington gains about 600 feet per mile, this road, about 400 feet.
You might lazily consider Kearsarge as “half of Washington” based purely on mileage but in truth it’s not close – Ascutney is a far more accurate representation of Wash if you do it twice. Except for the gigantic rest you get in the middle of that repeat effort.
I remember, at a macro-level, all of the sections of the Kearsarge toll road and the details they contain, forever. I’ve spent so much time here over the years, and so having that advantage of knowing how and when things are going to suck is enormous. There is nothing worse than being on a climb you’ve never seen before if you’re trying to out-suffer it. If you’re just there for the experience, you just take it in and enjoy the sensation of motion as we like to say in the karate studio – that was exactly my very first experience on Mt. Wash. But if you’re there to put a beating on yourself, and you don’t know how things are going to unfold as the road pitches up, the unknown is your enemy and actively works against you by locking away your potential because your brain knows it can’t give everything in case there’s something truly awful lurking around that next corner, which is something you experience on Hurricane Mountain or Lincoln Gap.
One time I rode my Langster up Hurricane, it was the only time I have ever stopped on a climb. I really thought I was going to have a heart attack pushing that gear up that road. I stopped, it turns out I was only moments away from the top, I finished the ascent, tried to feel some regret about stopping, but I honestly thought I might die that day and so the regret really has never felt like regret. Anyway – had I known the road, that may have been a small edge that day (or maybe I’d have simply not done it all, knowing it was a murder mission).
I wasn’t more than a few minutes up the toll road on Sunday when I realized I don’t have hamstrings anymore. These are apparently highly important cycling related muscles, and mine were on fire. All I could do is sit there and keep grinding and say to myself, yes, this makes sense.
Years ago, I had selected some Conti GP5K (or whatever “K” they’re on these days) 30mm tubeless tires for this day, which were out to about 32mm on my rims. 64psi in the back, 60 in the front, these rolled nicely, I was happy with the way the wheel tire interface was working out, particularly when I stood up.
I spent most of my time in my 40t/40t combination, which is more than enough to get an untrained 200 pound person up this hill, but it’s largely a 50rpm grind through the hardest parts. On the first trip up, I was distracting myself by trying to remember to look around and take it in. I ended up fixating on beetles on the pavement, wondering if they were invasive. A tiny acorn cap rolled in front of me and for a moment I wondered if it was a microscopic rabbit. Okay, it’s a little early to be going crazy and we have a lot of work ahead of us. I am not necessarily concerned about having to do this again yet, but I’m definitely wondering if that was a great expectation to set. My man, you don’t ride anymore. Why did you wake up today thinking you could do this.
I reach the top, and wow has it come a long way. It’s now fully paved, and there are legitimate bathrooms up there, it’s a whole new place. I do the bike leaning on thing, as is custom.
I take an honest rest – let’s review the data – ten minutes anyway, and head back down. I’m going to trust there’s enough in my tank to do this again. There’s no expectation I go any harder or do anything other than finish, which is helpful. Toward the bottom, I turn off, peel off my vest and arm warmers, and put in my airpods. They are on noise cancellation, which immediately turns off the wilderness and makes everything silent and creepy and I turn that right off. Also, it’s probably getting near 9am at this point and if a car comes up the road behind me, I want to hear it. I dial up a Mt. Washington playlist from 2016, Battery by Metallica starts, and I roll down a few hundred feet to the gate, loop around, here we go.
CRUSHING ALL DECEIVERS MASHING NON-BELIEVERS NEVER-ENDING POTENCY
I am doing 300W+ right away and after 30 seconds of that I remind myself DON’T DO THAT or this is going to end real quick and I end up settling into this rhythm, this rhythm of concentrated unfitness which is something like working hard but vastly below anything I used to do up here but it’s truly effort above just survival. By the numbers on the first mile, two minutes faster and 30w more effort. It would go okay, then I would just fizzle like those guys from the tour Saturday who pulled their guy to the hill and then paid the price and popped. I think Bob said of one of them, they pulled the plug in the bathtub and all the water drained out.
I did better for sure, about five minutes faster than my first trip of the day. Casual by any of my recorded standards, which are documented between Strava and an ancient spreadsheet. 39 minutes. Not my slowest time, definitely in that part of town, but not the worst. About level with the fifth run on five timer’s day, when I would have eaten my own shoes I was so hungry. And my slowest time ever – 44 minutes – the speed of my first run of the day – I last did that in 2012, sixty something miles into an absolutely stupid idea to summit this mountain starting from the front door of my house.
I’m writing most of this the day after, and I’ll be honest with you – I feel far better today than I would have thought or what that little computer above might think. In fact I feel dangerously better than that. I now understand why, twenty years ago, I went back up the mountain two days later. There is some genetic wiring.
Also, I eat about 200g of protein a day, I take vitamins and probiotics and fish oil, which must be helping – that is something I never did before, never had any real clue about before, and something I have used AI extensively to help out with over the past few years. With respect to AI and nutrition, it’s usually right, or it’s making me fat. We’re really not sure. But my clothes no longer fit the same, in positive and negative ways, so that is a work in progress.
I also used AI to advise on fueling for this ride, and it mostly worked out, considering I don’t compete in endurance events anymore and don’t have sporty food products in my pantry. To that, I asked about ideal hydration for such an effort, and forced it to pick between two of my former-life favorites, Skratch is the choice of a new AI generation. Although I just seem to have a seasonal preference for Untapped once it starts getting cold outside.
I think I’m willing to ride my bike more often. I’m afraid of cars, but when I can make arrangements to rule them out, being on a road bicycle is alright, even if it’s veiled in unreasonable suffering.
There will be more to write about. I am going to have my VO2max tested next week for the first time in twelve years.
Hard to tell what I am chasing at this point, but it’s still something.
-cp
chasing 1:20 