Finally: The Temecula Challenge

My mom mentioned the other day that it had been MONTHS since I updated my blog. Well, not exactly months, but yeah, it's been awhile. I was basically pointlessly waiting for the organizers of the Temecula Challenge to post the results so I could prove the post I'm about to write - but hell might freeze over first, or we might find a new house to rent, I might become an optimist - or I might, for once in my life, say something that isn't at least 25% sarcasm.

So what is this Temecula Challenge anyway?

Well, interestingly, the last time I posted was about my experience picking strawberries in Pauma Valley - still a seminal event of this spring. This day, along with the Carbon Connection Sunday bike rides through Valley Center, made me particularly susceptible to suggestion by my instant-a-friend - random guy in the ViaSat jersey - who I ended up riding back from Oceanside with me one day and told me all about this ride. He completely convinced me (I just met him - my only other interaction with him was passing he and his team one day on the PCH having asked, "Hey - are you guys going to start going faster anytime soon?") that I was trained and ready for this event. Since I seem to take the advice of strangers much more seriously than the advice of those I know and love, and since I am completely driven by my sense of smell (for good or evil), I decided to sign up for this race.

Why do I mention my sense of smell (I have been told I am the queen of random references I never explain)? If you have ever been to Valley Center or Pauma Valley, you know what I am talking about. This is the land of orange groves and strawberry fields (and other things I know nothing about - this is all I notice). During this time frame, the fields were laden with delicious smelling strawberries (still are), and the orange and tangerine trees were (are) in bloom. I have never smelled anything so heavenly. I am a simple person in that way, and despite the threat of 100 miles and 10,000 feet of climbing, my mind said, "I want to smell that.... for 100 miles."

What's funny about this ride/race is that the website they posted is truly threatening - and I quote, "This is an extremely tough century. Do not attempt it unless you are a well conditioned cyclist with previous successful experience in mountainous centuries." It goes on, blah blah blah, the course will close, you'll be stranded in the dark in a strange land with strange people, blah blah blah, doom and gloom will rain upon you if you do this without having done a century before, blah blah blah.

Take note: I had not done a century before. For those readers who do not already know, a century is 100 miles. The closest I came was 80 miles along the Oregon Coast summer of 2010, and multiple 75 mile rides to Victor from Idaho Falls 2009-2010. The longest ride I did this year was about 70 miles to San Clemente and back - but that's a coastal ride and as I've been warned while riding in the century's general vicinity, "Dorothy, you're not on the Pacific Coast Highway anymore."

But random ViaSat guy thought I was totally ready, so you know, I was ready. That didn't keep me from fretting for days before and pretty much lying awake panicked and sleepless the night before. A tiny bit paralyzed, you know, with mind numbing fear - mostly of the Palomar Mountain descent and whether or not I could actually NOT DIE while going down a hill that large.

So what's this Palomar Mountain deal. Well, being most recently from Idaho, I feel a little bit snobbyish about mountains. Even though I never actually climbed Teton Pass, I did some decent climbing in Idaho and felt that with no peaks over like 6000 ft. in this part of SoCal, honestly, how hard could climbs around here be? Of course, I've biked around here long enough already to know that is ridiculous STUPID, because when you start at THE OCEAN, 6000 feet is HUGE.

So the greatest part of this ride ("ride" because the century itself is not a race), was best stated by the organizers: "An “HC” climb, Mt. Palomar is very similar statistically to the Galibier in France. By itself, Mt. Palomar is a leg-burning, lung-busting climb. Just summitting is an accomplishment for most cyclists. Putting it in the middle of an 10,000’ century is sick. Putting a stop watch on it is sadistic. Those who make it to the top of Mt. Palomar still have Cole Grade, Couzer Canyon, and Rice Canyon to wring whatever strength is left in their bodies. Those who return to the finish line will have met the “Temecula Challenge.” This is not a century for beginners."

Since I don't know what "the Galibier" is, and since I am a "century beginner", that right there should've been enough to scare me away. I did take their advice and watched the "Tour of California summit on Mt. Palomar" on YouTube "for inspiration", but lots of cowbell sounds and the sight of the occasional ridiculously skinny professional cyclist blowing by really didn't... inspire me.

Ok. So that's enough build up already, right? Right. So, we of course did not start the ride with everyone else. David kind of poked around and putzed and did whatever it is that David does (apparently, I found out later, intentionally delaying us)... We started around 7:15 am, with me already a little short-tempered (read: scary thing that rhymes with "witch") - thinking that that was 15 minutes less I'd have to finish this thing before they chased my sorry sore butt off the course for being a loser. Because that's the kind of positive thinking I engage in. Regularly.

David's thinking in starting late is that we'd spend the entire ride passing people, and that this would be a great inspiration to me, as I am essentially overly-competitive to the point of madness.

Well, I suppose he was right. And we did pass people the entire way - that is, when we were finding our way. They gave us a little card that described the course, and it took me a good 4-5 turns to learn how to interpret the thing, but then I kept forgetting. Fortunately, everyone was in front of us, which was also his plan, as David and navigation are not good friends. He relies on "way points", like his robots, which in this case, are essentially "other riders". That David. Always thinking ahead. We managed to not get lost at all - another big fear of mine, as making 100 miles EVEN LONGER was not in my plan.

We had agreed to "take it easy" on the way to Palomar Mountain (about 40 miles or so away from Temecula) - which could mean anything to David, including a speed which I cannot maintain without literally dying. But today it was actually o.k., probably due to the fact that we were blessed with a "Weather Alert" level wind at our backs on the way out - which was just amazingly fortunate (for the ride out). We had also agreed to stop at each rest stop - because one of my biggest problems with long bike rides is running out of fuel. I usually refuse to eat like I'm some sort of bird-like delicate eater (which I am clearly NOT), and then end up cramping and crazed by about 50 miles. So my plan was to eat something of whatever it was they were offering at each stop. Yum. Valley Center oranges. Real food! Who knew... I had expected some chemically-substance to be offered as "what you crazy endurance people like to consume" at each stop - but no, these are real people, offering actual food, not something with "gu" or "gel" or "uum" in the name. Something that does NOT contain soy protein isolate. But how I do love some good soy protein isolate!

My sister is right now most likely saying that this post is going on entirely too long, and on top of that, there are no pictures. Well, cyclists don't carry cameras. Or at least, that's what I'm told. The weight, you know. Like the 5 extra pounds on my midsection matter so much less than that tiny camera. But anyway. And I looked through every single picture posted on their website and facebook and found none of me. I will definitely post one if I ever get one.

And I am entitled to go on and on. The bike ride did.

So anyway, eventually we got down around the area I was familiar with from Sunday rides and that kind of made me relax somehow, like yeah, this isn't so bad. The weather was simply perfect - not too hot and not too cold, and we kept well hydrated.

Then we came to the bottom of Palomar Mountain. **Doom and gloom music plays** My God, that is a big mountain. I had read about it, so I mentally knew what was coming, but physically it's an entirely different story. The climb is quoted as anywhere from 12 to 16 miles - I think it is most accurate around 12-ish. What's odd about this time trial component is that they make you ride about half way up the hill BEFORE you start your race. Around mile 3.5 on the hill, I was like, good Lord, when am I going to get to the damned cattle grate (where the timing started)? I was so sort of numb with nerves and just generally **ugh** at this point, I just wanted to get the thing over with. There was a rest stop right before the timing started, and so we stopped - and stood around looking nervously at everyone else (at least I did - David more sort of strutted, as he pretty much knew he'd win).

My heart is starting to beat funny just remembering this. Well, anyway, so we took off. David paused behind me to fix something, I can't even remember what, and so he was behind a bit. I caught a guy in a team uniform ("Waste Management") and I thought, huh, he's all Joe Pro, maybe I should just try to trail him - except that he was going kind of damn slow. I was like, seriously? Is there something I don't know, or should I just pass this guy?

So I passed him. And then David flew by like Palomar Mountain was suddenly converted to Death Valley and he wasn't sure why the rest of us were just kind of poking along while he sprinted. Yeah, I hated him along with the rest of the plebes caught in his exhaust fumes.

And then the hill climb went on for 6.7 miles. I think from this point, the timed portion was something like 2500 ft or so. The grades are something like an average of 6%. What I was told, and what made me feel not so distressed, was that the road traveled up switchback-style. I actually really like that kind of climb, as it's not totally continuous, although it's entirely uphill and never at all downhill, it's not constant.

Well, long story short, I passed many a rider on the way up, and the only time I was passed was by David near the bottom. At one point, about halfway up, I passed a young man (younger than me, at least) who looked up, realized I was a woman, and groaned (very loudly) in ultimate agony - as if to say, I am already suffering, and then to get passed by a girl! I received several such statements of encouragement, whether they intended them to be or not. I finished the hill strong and only slightly wheezed at the top - probably mostly due to motorcycle exhaust (the hill was packed with motorcycles). I did continously wonder as I climbed, "Do all these people know something I don't? Is something coming up that is going to kill me? Are they sprinting the end? Like, what's the deal with me passing people?" But nothing really changed. It just climbed and climbed about the same. And eventually stopped. Thank God.

Ugh. The way down. The little hairs on my spine raise when I remember that experience. It's what kept me off of Teton Pass all those years, what keeps me from mountain biking, what keeps me from skiing... fear of the downhill. It's fairly paralyzing, and it took all I had to make it down. I had to just sort of blank out and survive, and yeah, occasionally shake out my hands which were numb from cold, vibrations, and squeezing the brakes like a crazy person.

But I survived. Only to be greeted by David at the bottom with, "you might have screamed uphill, but you are the slowest downhiller ever." Indeed. But I was alive and down the hill, which wass all that mattered. Aside from our times, that is. We found out our approximate times, and I was totally thrilled - I knew I had beat the previous year's woman's record.

It was enough to encourage me to finish the ride - which was no small fete. And the way these things go, you have to actually finish the ride for your time trial to count in the overall standings. So I had some real motivation while ascending Cole Grade Road, that very same road I travelled down to pick strawberries the weekend before and thought, "This might be the steepest hill ever - except for that mountain over there".

We did indeed pass the strawberry fields, numerous orange groves, the fruit stand with the "green juice", ascended Couser Canyon (steepest part of the ride), and then ended up Rice Canyon and another nameless ascent to Temecula that about did me in - what with the crazy headwinds and even more climibing around mile 93.

And now you are about as tired from reading this as I was at the end of the ride. Mission accomplished.

So where did we end up. Well, this was actually a pretty small event. You can see why - as their descriptions I included here of the ride were really quite intimidating. I don't know the number of competitors in the time trial, but it was certainly under 100. I ended up placing 1st for women overall (there were maybe like 6 women who participated), and David was 1st for men overall. My time was around 48 minutes, which beat the previous year's female record by 6 minutes. David's time was 37 minutes, which beat the men's record by 1 minute. Aside from actually finishing, what I was most proud of was (a) that I was 7th overall (i.e., including all male competitors), and (b) seeing the organizer's face when he learned I had never even done a century before.

I was a little sad that I did not get to see Floyd Landis, though, who apparently lives in Murrieta and trains on Palomar Mountain. We had thought of all kinds of silly things to say to him or silly situations to find ourselves in to entertain us on the long ride. Alas. No Floyd.

And no cowbells at the mountain top either. But I am no professional cyclist, so I will just be glad to have this memory of an accomplishment I wasn't entirely certain I could attain.