The Baker Hill Climb

After the Zoka "Meet the Team" ride on Saturday I headed to Mt Baker for another tandem adventure with the Z-Dog. But, let's first rewind to Friday so I can tell this tale appropriately.

I decided Friday would be a great day to get started with my weight training routine at Headquarters again. I had Joe run me through an "easy" leg workout. I had no idea that a little jump roping and some calf raises would cause me so much weekend grief. I woke up Saturday completely unable to use my calves. I suffered through the entire team ride thinking for sure I'd be better by Sunday for the hill climb. As soon as Z found out what I did he yelled at me all weekend. Yeah, it was not a bright idea.

Once in Glacier we met Todd, who rode his bike 100+ miles from Seattle to Glacier and showed up looking like a rock star. (See pic of Todd at left). We also rendezvoused with Rick and his friend Brett, who both raced the Bellingham cross race that day.

One of my co-workers was kind enough to let us use his cabin for the weekend, so once we had some grub we all checked in for a Euchre match and some foosball. Party! The funniest part of the whole evening was walking into the cabin and encountering a bat flying around. Rick and JoAnne nearly had a heart attack and were cowering in the corner while we tried to shoo the bat out the door. JoAnne even had her hoodie on so it wouldn't fly in her hair. Too funny! Z has the funny pics of this incident....

The next morning I woke up and was dismayed to find my calves were in even worse shape than the day before. I seriously couldn't even put my heel on the floor when walking. Really great job with the gym thing eh? Z and I lined up for the 8:30 tandem start with three other tandems and then realized about a 1/2 mile after the start when we got dropped that we probably should have warmed up a tad :)

The weather couldn't have been better so we rode a steady pace and enjoyed the scenery. Near the top some of our teammates finally caught us, which was a bit of a bummer since we started 30 mins earlier. We finished with a time of 2:04:59. Not fabulous, but hey, I was just happy to get to ride, enjoy the views, and listen to some tunes. True to form, Z brought the iPod speakers and we rocked out the whole way up the mountain.

We took a partial team photo at the top but missed JoAnne, who was still finishing up the climb. Sorry JoAnne!!

The best part of the whole day was the descent back down. Boy was that fun! A little ways down there was a long, gently curvy stretch of road where we let the bike go and hit 40mph+. Todd had to do an all-out sprint just to catch us.

Overall, the weekend was a blast! We had a great time on the ride and had some teammates get some great finishes. I think I'd like to try this ride on my single bike to see what kind of time I could do, but being on the tandem was fun. At least you can support each other and keep the motivation going. (And the tunes definitely help!)

More pics...