Meadow Muffins

I've heard a lot about King Ridge Road over the years. The Gran Fondo rides up it, along with some other locally known organized rides. All well and good, for by now you know my former cycling mantra: if the road name has any of the following words in it, the road shall be avoided at all costs: Ridge, mountain, grade, vista, view, hill, summit, crest, peak. Ergo, back in the days of cycling the “flats” (which didn't often seem all that flat to me), I studiously circumnavigated these roads in favor of ones named valley, reservoir, river, flat.

Alas, this week's featured destination was a trek up King Ridge Road in Cazadero to Annapolis and back out to the coast. We rode just over 80 miles (my lap-counter beeping every 5 miles became a little surreal by lap 14) and climbed around 8000 feet, depending on whose computer you believed.

The cliff notes version is this – lots of climbing up front (to the actual ridge) and then rollers at the top before plunging back down into the abyss. From which you must climb. And then plunge. And then climb. (lather, rinse, repeat). And climb and climb until the final drop to the coast where lunch happens. Then some great rollers and well banked turns on Highway 1, an extended climb and then down hill back to the start.

Cliff notes don't do the route justice. King Ridge is a pleasantly wooded road with long arduous climbs broken up with a few downhills for respite. The climbs were fairly steep in places, where a 10 percent grade seemed like a break from the 12 and 14 percent immediately preceding.

After about an hour and a half, we peeked out of the trees and reached the actual ridgeline. There, we were surrounded by rolling hills and undulating pinot noir vineyards, the naked vines staked to their trellises in neat rows creating corduroy patterns on the landscape. Cows grazed on impossibly steep hillsides. A small herd gathered under a tree, calves peering at us from the safety of their mama's flanks. Green grasses yielded to red clay and sandy loam. The late morning sun shone indiscriminately on both well maintained barns and weather beaten, listing fence boards.

These cows were all “free range.” There weren't always fences keeping the cows from the road. It was their land. We crossed over many rumbly cattle grates, rattling water bottles and jarring kidneys. And we saw many, many meadow muffins in the roadway. Gosh, they were impressive.

Just this week, I was at the Hess Collection gallery, where I saw Andy Goldsworthy's Rock Pools – chocolate brown rocks he hauled back to his studio and heated in his kiln until they cracked, broke or melted. At the time I thought they looked like chocolate crackle cookies and as light as meringues. But after Saturday's ride, I have an entirely different perspective.

After the lovely, if muffin-dappled, ride along the ridge, we had a dizzying descent to the creek. I achieved my fastest speed ever on a bicycle at 49.9mph. It was incredible. Unfortunately, just after that, there was a grueling climb that was unrelenting in its steepness.

No matter how much training one does, climbing is still hard. (In my case, it's still whine-inducing). It's still one pedal revolution after another until the top. What training provides is the ability to recover at the top of a climb. And, as rides progress, the ability to do repeated long climbs over the miles.

Yes, the climbs are hard. But the views at the top are nearly always worth it and once you begin to pedal on relatively level surfaces, your mindset improves and the difficulty of the recent climb recedes. Kinda like childbirth—you forget the pain until that acute reminder and why did I do this again?! At least with hill climbing, you don't get the teenage years.

Training began February 4^th. I've been riding every weekend since then, plus midweek commutes and extra miles when I could squeeze them in. Last week, during my commutes, I felt like I was approaching ride-burnout. Every pedal stroke was an effort. I doubted my ability to continue in the training. I felt like I was at the peak of my endurance with 70 miles and 7000 feet. I've ridden 919 miles, climbed 75,235 feet over 54 rides since the beginning of February. Others on the team have ridden more, others less.

And then I remembered: Mental Toughness.

I can't just stop mid-season, in the middle of a humongous goal after all the talk, all my weekly updates, all the people who have supported me – morally and through generous donations alike. And there are the bragging rights when I successfully complete this ride in July.