This blog entry has a lot of technical details so to to keep the reader from getting bored, I added some music tracks. Leading up the the Solvang Double I just didn’t feel I was in the same shape as last year, considering I announced to my buddies I was going to break 10:30. I kind of felt like I was “Over My Head”. The fast peleton train at the beginning reminding me of my favorite train song, “The City of New Orleans”, but keeping up with the fast pace often left me “Breathless”. The rough roads were not exactly “Good Vibrations”. Click the play button if you don’t like the music.

I guess I was in better shape than I thought because I ended up finishing with my best time ever for a Double Century. It was my third time to do the Solvang Spring Double. I did reasonably well last year and had been looking at my data to see how I might improve this year. I wrote about my strategy in a prior blog entry . My cycling training this year has been better than last year because I did not have a spring marathon to also train for. But I was concerned I had not done enough speed workouts, something I was doing last year while training to run the Boston Marathon, which was only 2 weeks after the Solvang Double Century.Joe Farinha, Gary Franck and I decided to start the day off with a nice breakfast at Paula’s Pancake House, which opened at 6:00. That was enough time to get a big breakfast and still have it somewhat digested before we started to hammer. Just as we did last year, we started with the 7:30 am group, the ones that wanted to be timed. Joining us was. This 7:30 start group is made up of mostly fast riders. We had a large gathering of 47 riders. Unlikely last year they did not do a roll call.

The whole group stayed together for many miles in a large peleton. The pace was brisk but I didn’t feel over taxed, around 21-24 mph. After 20 miles we turned to head up Foxen Canyon. This has two moderate climbs and after the second one there is a longer descent. It was on this second descent that I lost the group last year and never was able to catch back on.My strategy this year was to stay right near the front of the pack for the second climb so I had a better chance to stay connected. It may be the fact that this year there were no tandems to chase down the hill, or that I had been working on descending down faster, but in any event this time I was able to stay connected to the front pack, something only about half the group were able to do. We lost the other half on either the climb or the descent and I knew that they would never be able to catch back on.We stretched out to a single pace line. Except for a few wheel suckers at the back, everyone was taking a turn pulling, some longer pulls than other, which was okay. One guy, who was particularly strong, would ramp up the pace every-time he pulled. I found myself right behind him on a couple of rotations which meant I had to drive hard to hang on his wheel, then do a pull and still keep enough left to rotate to the back.

I had already planned to skip the first rest stop and sure enough this group went right by it. We made one wrong turn which costs us an extra 2 miles and some lost time trying to get back on course. There were some rollers right before the 2nd rest stop (our first one) that proved a bit difficult due to the pace. I was glad when we finally stopped with a total of 84.8 miles averaging 22.0 mph. My heart rate for that stretch averaged 149.

Some of the group had a very quick stop, just enough to fill water bottles. I needed a bit more time but was was able to get back on the bike in less than 6 minutes. There was only one other fellow from the 7:30 group who started with me by the name of John who was from Nevada. He and I biked together for awhile. We were soon joined by others from the 7:30 group that had taken a little longer at the rest stop. But there was a couple of young guys who were driving the pace too high for me, so I eventually dropped off the back. I slowed down to wait for John who had fallen off earlier. We biked together, taking turns pulling until we hit the check point at Morro Bay. We had to wait 1 minute there to get the dot to prove we had gone to the turn around point.

While riding through Morro Bay I hit a bad bump and came down on the back of my saddle, which tipped up the nose. I couldn’t get it to move back level. Although it was quite awkward to ride like that I decided I could not afford to stop so I rode that way until the lunch stop, which was another 14 miles from Morro Bay. That section was done at an average speed of 20.1 mph and an average heart rate of 145.

It took me about a minute to fix my saddle and then another 6 to 7 minutes to get some food. We saw some of the 7:30 riders leaving, so John and I jumped on our bikes and caught them.

We started to form a pace line behind a tandem and rode with that group for awhile but eventually some of us moved out ahead and we never saw the tandem again. Soon it was just John and I again as we pulled into our third rest stop with an average speed of the last section of 19.5 mph. The pace was clearly slower while we kept behind the tandem for those miles.

After a 5 minute stop John and I took off, again just the two of us. I hit another bump and my seat got tipped once again with the nose pointing up. I didn’t want to take the time to fix it again so I decided to just keep riding that way. It made it hard to use the aero bars but I felt maybe I could just wait until the next stop.

We were taking turns pulling but on one uphill grade on Highway 1, where I was pulling, I notice that John had fallen way off the back. I had been doing some calculations in my head and figured at this point I had some slight chance to finish under 10 hours so I made the decision to ride on solo, which I did for the last 50 miles. I had a thought of skipping the last rest stop completely but was down to a half of water bottle so I made a 1 minute stop for water. Fatigue was setting in so I was having a hard time keeping my heart rate up. Fortunately we had a tail wind now. There were several club members at that stop who had started earlier. One told me that Gary was about 10 minutes ahead of me, so I jumped on the bike to chase after him. I noticed at that point I had averaged 20.6 mph rolling from the start.

On the way up Drum Canyon, I heard a popping noise so I stopped to check my bike, only to find I had broken a spoke. That was so unexpected for a light guy like me. I wrapped the broken spoke around another spoke, opened up the brake, then jumped back on the bike and started to climb. I had yet to fix my saddle and wondered if I had time. I decided to stop again and to level the seat. As I started to climb again I kept worrying about breaking another spoke and was not sure how hard I should be torquing the pedals as I climbed. I decided to climb carefully, but steady. I was getting very tired and found it hard to do the math in my head to see if I could still finish under 10 hours. My rolling average speed had now dropped to 20.1. When I made it to the summit, I was wondering how fast I should go down, considering it is a rough road. I decided to ride down fast, just hoping no more spokes broke.

Periodically I would calculate again how much further I had to go and how much time I had left. It seemed to be an impossible task and I was about ready to give up trying to make it under 10 hours. I felt lucky to make all the traffic lights in Beulton, thinking one single stop was more than I could afford. That final uphill as you are entering Solvang was just about enough to kill my chance. I then started to hit the traffic in the town of Solvang so I turned right one block early to take a back street.

I finally made it to the end and clicked the split button on my Polar Heart Rate Monitor just as I came to a stop. I was almost afraid to look down but when I did it read 9 hours, 59 minutes and 51 seconds. Ann was there, a bit surprised I finished so fast. She watched my bike as I ran to check in. I had finished 20th place of the 47 riders who were riding for time. See the posted results here. I had averaged 20.3 mph moving for the entire ride and had a total stopping time of less than 23 minutes. Funny thing was that I felt better than I did last year after finishing 43 minutes slower. I believe this was due to the better training this year.

After taking a shower, we went to eat. I had not eaten much on the ride because of the short stops and was ready for a big meal. Sometimes I wonder why I do this, but the sense of accomplishment makes it all worth the effort.

Over the total of 194.3 miles, I averaged 20.3 mph with a maximum speed of 46.3 mph. My average heart rate was 145, peaking to 173. The total ascent was 7,400 feet.

I took a look at the data for both this year and last year for the first 36 miles. As I mentioned before it was around mile 30 that I lost contact with the lead pack but was able to stay connected this year. Click the graph to enlarge.

You can see from the above graph on the descent at mile 25 my heart rate was much lower than last year and I had considerable margin left. This may be due to better training, allowing me to kept a lower heart rate while climbing the second hill at mile 21.

This graph shows my heart rate and altitude plotted against distance. Click to enlarge.

Here are the splits. Click to enlarge.

The route started from the Royal Scandinavian where we were staying. We did a short warm-up in the eastern Santa Ynez Valley, then heads up world famous Foxen Canyon. We essentially bypass Santa Maria by jogging around that town on dead quiet Bull Canyon to Hwy 166. Next we more or less parallel Hyw 101 as we headed north. After some really neat back roads, the route skirted the edge of San Luis Obispo, then went all the way into scenic Morro Bay, right to the waterfront and a dramatic view of “the rock.” Next we rolled through some of the prettiest state park miles anywhere, then head south on PCH along the coast through Pismo Beach, and such. After Guadalupe, we stayed southbound on this desolate and beautiful stretch of Hwy 1, bypassing the whole Lompoc area, and then continuing onto Hwy 135 to the neat little western antique haven of Los Alamos, site of the final checkpoint. From Los Alamos, we encounter what is essentially the only real climb of the entire day, up and over Drum Canyon, a quiet, twisty, 800 foot, 3.4 mile ascent. It’s had a gnarly downhill. On the other side, we hop onto Hwy 246 back to Solvang, with a big shoulder all the way to town!

Categories: Ultra Cycling Events