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I had an old entry for the Death Ride, that I didn't use in 2003. After some negociations with the race director, I was allowed to enter the ride. 5 hours to drive 220 miles from San Jose (friday evening traffic in the Silicon Valley...), and I was in Markleeville, close to Lake Tahoe. Incredible - the ride is said to have 3000 participants, and for sure plenty of people were there, on friday night in Turtle Rock park. People sleeping in their trucks, in tents. Others testing their bikes, chatting about the ride, buying jerseys or eating a late-night dinner. A crowd was sitting in front of the ride office, waiting for 10pm in order to buy the spots of the no-shows. And riders would continue to arrive during the whole night, stop and sleep on the side of the road near the start.
All this to participate in an insane ride. 129 miles, 15000ft of climbing. 5 passes. Essentially this means spending your day suffering on climbs. While I really liked the scenery and appreciated how well the ride was organized, I'm not sure I really enjoyed the day. The climbs were hard, I climbed most of them below 5mph, as I had not trained at all. And the downhill were scary (I crashed last week, now anything scares me). Not only because of the slope, but because you always had to be careful with the cyclists climbing the other way. Good thing the road was closed to vehicles !
In the end, I completed only 4 passes and 11000ft of climbing, as I was a bit short of time for the cutoff for the last pass. This was already better than I expected considering the altitude, how little training I had done, and my crash from the previous week. Next year I'll finish.
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