Humble Pie
The weather forecast is crap for the weekend here. Today was the only day with even a chance of sunshine and bike-rideable temperatures within any reasonable driving distance of Tahoe. Thusly, Greg and I shifted our training schedules around a bit and headed down to Colfax (about 20 miles from Auburn) today for this weekend's long ride.
The planned route took us from Colfax on Iowa Hill Road, which is a beautiful and very lightly travelled road that crosses the American River and then climbs and climbs and climbs up to the Forest Hill Divide, at which point I was going to turn onto Foresthill Divide Road (the nice remote end, opposite of what I did last week) until I hit 2 hours of ride time and then turn around and ride back the way I came. Elevation of this route was something like 2200' at start to 1000' at river to 2800' at Iowa Hill to 4500' at the divide and then 3200' at Foresthill. It was supposed to be a 4 hr ride.
I totally didn't make it. At first just usual "toughen up" sort of complaints were getting in my way - I was cold, the 2 miles of solid 15% uphill grade sucked, there was more and more snow and slush on the road the further I got, I was all by myself, I had forgotten my pain-numbing iPod, etc. I finally decided to call it quits and turn around at 3100' or so because the road was more than half covered with snow and ice. This was only an hour or so into the ride (and only 10 miles! ugh steep climbs!), so I was reluctant to make this call, but similar to a ride from last year, I had to tell my "you are not a quitter" self to shove it in the name of reason.
The way back was basically fine for a while, I rode hard whenever the road was mostly flat and decended carefully whenever there was slush, and made it to the start of the really steep part without being cold or miserable.
Now for the embarassing part... I couldn't deal with the 15% downhill. At all. I walked for half of it, maybe more. I got off my bike and took baby steps down the road, gingerly hugging the hillside as if I were on an actual cliff, sobbing and sniffling all over the place. One car passed me while I was walking, some lady who looked at me and waved - I can't figure out why she didn't stop for someone in obvious distress?! Anyhow after around 25 or 30 minutes I finally made it to the bottom. I think it took me less time to climb that thing!
I have had problems with steep descents that have sharp dropoffs in the past, but never this bad. I really expected to be able to ride down it but when the time came, no way. (Although, I have only attempted a 2 mile 15% mountainside decent in my nightmares, never in real life!) I guess I have diagnosed myself with vertigo: in these situations, I get so paralyzed with fear by what's in my field of vision that I just can't function. It's actually the reason why I sold my mountain bike, why I have never been all the way to the top of Mt. Tam, and why I was one of the few San Francisco cyclists who hated the Marin Headlands loop.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Anyhow, tomorrow it's back to my good friend, The Trainer!
The planned route took us from Colfax on Iowa Hill Road, which is a beautiful and very lightly travelled road that crosses the American River and then climbs and climbs and climbs up to the Forest Hill Divide, at which point I was going to turn onto Foresthill Divide Road (the nice remote end, opposite of what I did last week) until I hit 2 hours of ride time and then turn around and ride back the way I came. Elevation of this route was something like 2200' at start to 1000' at river to 2800' at Iowa Hill to 4500' at the divide and then 3200' at Foresthill. It was supposed to be a 4 hr ride.
I totally didn't make it. At first just usual "toughen up" sort of complaints were getting in my way - I was cold, the 2 miles of solid 15% uphill grade sucked, there was more and more snow and slush on the road the further I got, I was all by myself, I had forgotten my pain-numbing iPod, etc. I finally decided to call it quits and turn around at 3100' or so because the road was more than half covered with snow and ice. This was only an hour or so into the ride (and only 10 miles! ugh steep climbs!), so I was reluctant to make this call, but similar to a ride from last year, I had to tell my "you are not a quitter" self to shove it in the name of reason.
The way back was basically fine for a while, I rode hard whenever the road was mostly flat and decended carefully whenever there was slush, and made it to the start of the really steep part without being cold or miserable.
Now for the embarassing part... I couldn't deal with the 15% downhill. At all. I walked for half of it, maybe more. I got off my bike and took baby steps down the road, gingerly hugging the hillside as if I were on an actual cliff, sobbing and sniffling all over the place. One car passed me while I was walking, some lady who looked at me and waved - I can't figure out why she didn't stop for someone in obvious distress?! Anyhow after around 25 or 30 minutes I finally made it to the bottom. I think it took me less time to climb that thing!
I have had problems with steep descents that have sharp dropoffs in the past, but never this bad. I really expected to be able to ride down it but when the time came, no way. (Although, I have only attempted a 2 mile 15% mountainside decent in my nightmares, never in real life!) I guess I have diagnosed myself with vertigo: in these situations, I get so paralyzed with fear by what's in my field of vision that I just can't function. It's actually the reason why I sold my mountain bike, why I have never been all the way to the top of Mt. Tam, and why I was one of the few San Francisco cyclists who hated the Marin Headlands loop.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Anyhow, tomorrow it's back to my good friend, The Trainer!
Labels: bikes, enjoy the blog, freakout
posted by Courtenay at 2/01/2008
7 Comments:
You are incredible. Think of what an amazing piece of information you learned today: that you KNOW when and how to push your limits. We all have a breaking point - what happens and what we do WHEN we hit that point are true testaments to who we are. It took guts for you to stop and walk. It took a lot of courage to admit your fear. In my book, you're even tougher for gutting out the hard stuff. It would have been easy to keep going, to swallow the pain. But you didn't - you totally emraced it, realized it, and are in the process of moving on.
Having never lived in the mountains I can't speak of descending fears. I'm too afraid of mountain biking because half of the race photos I see people in - they're bloodied and bruised (or broken). Or else their BIKE is broken... and me, not being all that great with bike repairs, wouldn't be a happy camper.
You did good today. Chin up!
and you will do even better when this happens again and you walk it without crying..........accept it, or you will go off "the edge".
em
p.s. that headlands descent gets my heart in my throat all the time. :)
Courtenay - you're not alone in the vertigo situation. I've got it as well! It only affects me on SUPER steep descents on the road (not tam, diablo, and not even most of the descent up and around Tahoe. The worst for me? The "corkscrew" descent at Laguna Seca! Seriously, I used to sweat, feel dizzy, freak out and go from the front of the field to the back on every lap of that damn circuit race!
Oh, and I have some amazing routes for you to ride up there. And it's much better when the snow has melted!!
Huntress
Courtenay- you are the best blogger ever. Real, funny, cool. You're all that and a bag o' chips girl!
I completely understand! This fear is the reason I don't ski! I am often reduced to getting off and walking around here... but it is not the climbs, it is the descents. A steep downhill completely terrifies me. I panic and can't figure out how to get myself out of it. I feel like I am stuck! And if there is any drop-off on my right-- forget it. I feel like I am going to die of a heart-attack.
(I won't go up Old La Honda because I would have to come down. But I have never told anyone that, I just claim that I am scared of the difficulty of the ascent.)
I am impressed by all that you do on a bike and I don't think that a fear of steep descents detracts from that in the least!
I frigging HATE steep descents. I figured the problem is that I'm a wussy triathlete and not a real cyclist or whatever, but maybe there's more to it. The worst is when your hands cramp up from squeezing your brakes so hard and still feeling out of control, like it was at Iron Cross IV right before I did a bail-out crash to avoid something more catastrophic. I really don't like taking a turn on a descent aggressively and not know what's beyond it, so I never do it, which isn't real helpful for my bike split in mountainous races. I don't know how many people passed me going down the big descent that year I did World's Toughest Half. It was a lot. Man, it's beautiful out that way.
i know how you feel for sure!
good luck
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