6 miles of pain

After spending most of Friday in bed I woke up Saturday feeling like I had finally kicked my cold so I headed out to Crystal Mountain for the WA State Hill Climb Championship. The course is a 6-mi, 1612-ft elevation gain pain fest up Crystal Mountain Boulevard.

The fun part was bombing down the hill to the start line. About halfway down a little chipmunk sitting in the middle of the road started to get spooked by all of the bikes and did a frantic 'which way do I go' dance. When you're flying nearly 45mph downhill on a bike on sketchy pavement an indecisive chipmunk can be a scary thing. Luckily he darted across the road just ahead of me while I closed my eyes and tried not to look. Probably not the best solution.

I wasn't sure how fast to take off from the start so I just decided to settle into a nice steady pace that I knew I could handle for 6 miles, which was about 9mph. I figured I'd err on the side of caution and save some energy for the top. Before I had even hit a mile the woman 30 seconds behind passed me, no wait, FLEW past me and was out of sight. She ended up with an amazing time of 29:19, which won the Cat 4 race.

Surprisingly enough the ride went quickly and I was more than halfway done before I knew it. Somewhere around mile 4 or 5 the course flattens out and I was able to hit 18mph but I just couldn't will myself to go much faster than that. It doesn't last long and before you know it the climbing starts again. Just when I thought I wouldn't make it much further I finally saw the 1km sign. In the distance I saw a crowd of people, assumed it was the finish line, and summoned all the energy I had to really dig. Of course when I got there I realized it wasn't the finish at all, but the 200m sign. ARGH! At that point I was ready to throw my bike across the parking lot. That last 200m was utter brutality but somehow I made it.

I hoped for better than my time of 36:20 since I figured I'm built more for hill climbing and it tends to be my forte. All in all the race was a blast and afterwards we had a great BBQ and I even won some extra tubes and tire levers from the raffle. Yeah! I turned down doing the weigh-in for the time/weight competition since at my 115 lbs I'd have to climb in about 15 minutes to win that prize.