From kphilbri@u.washington.edu Tue May 22 15:05:19 2001 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f4MM5H027846 for ; Tue, 22 May 2001 15:05:18 -0700 Received: from smtp06.mail.onemain.com (SMTP-OUT003.ONEMAIN.COM [63.208.208.73]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with SMTP id f4MM5Hs19143 for ; Tue, 22 May 2001 15:05:17 -0700 Received: (qmail 26581 invoked from network); 22 May 2001 22:04:51 -0000 Received: from pm3-03-44.sle.du.teleport.com (HELO spartan.u.washington.edu) ([216.26.16.236]) (envelope-sender ) by smtp06.mail.onemain.com (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 22 May 2001 22:04:51 -0000 Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.2.20010522114240.02768d10@kphilbri.deskmail.washington.edu> X-Sender: kphilbri@kphilbri.deskmail.washington.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 15:10:17 -0700 To: uwracing@u.washington.edu From: Kenneth Philbrick Subject: Davis Double! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" So did any one make it to NATS?  Dan, Jeremy?  I am looking forward to reading the post Nat write up!

Anyway, This last weekend I drove down to Davis, CA and road in the Davis Double Century (DDC).  The DDC had a staggered start much like the STP.  Riders were allowed to start anywhere between 5:15 AM and 5:45 AM.  They do limit the number of riders to at most 1,300 riders.  But this year there were only ~900 registered riders.  The bikes that people road on the Davis double were kind of amazing, it was sort like a litespeed and seven owners convention.  There were lots and lots of ti-bikes, and ti-tandems.

At 5:15 AM, the sun hadn't even come up yet.  The air was warm ~65oF and the crickets were chirping.  The first 50 miles of the ride were going to be relatively flat, then over the next 80 miles we would do a total of over 7,000 feet of climbing and finally finishing off with a slight decent for 80 miles. The whole goal early on was to find a tandem and draft, and keep the heart rate low while keeping the speed up.  Getting miles in while it was going to be cool was of the utmost importance.

I found a tandem and drafted off of them, but soon found that even with drafting, my heart rate was climbing into the 160-bpm range, too high too early. At the first stop (~23) miles out I stopped long enough to refill my two bottles with Gatorade and headed out again.  Between the first and second stop, ( 25 - 50 ), mile mark I ran into some guys who raced for Cal Berkeley.  They all looked really professional with their matching jerseys, and shorts.  In talk with them I found out that they were a bunch of B and C riders.   I had assumed that they were all A's from the way they had been riding.  I ended up riding with them for a few miles only to decide again that they were going to fast to early.  Rumor has it that the lead group at this point was four tandems that were riding together in speedy pace line (+30 mph).

Around 50 miles out the climbing started, I found that many of the people who had been speedy on the flats just couldn't spin or climb, and I passed a tones of riders. I road by the second stop part way up the first major climb, noticing at this point that I was passing some of the Berkeley riders.  By the time I had arrived at the 3rd rest stop (63.9) miles, the weather was starting to get warm.  The temperature would climb through out the day to be an all time high for Davis region for that day (+100 oF).

From this point on I stopped at every stop so I could refill my water bottles.  Eventually I arrived at the 5th stop, 95.5 miles over the next 10 miles we would do 1500 feet of climbing.  I end up hitting 100 miles some time around 10:30.  Then it was a quick decent to the lunch spot.  I ended up arriving at lunch before the main wave of riders.  After a really quick lunch it was off to climb the final big hill.  I hit the final large 1,000+-mile climb mid day.  The heat was almost unbearable.  There was a stop at the top of the climb (133 miles).  I stumbled off my bike to be greeted by the best support I have ever seen.  For every rider who came in, a volunteer would take their bike, fill their water bottles with what every they wanted.  But the killer part was that the ride organizers had small children with pots of ice water. The children would dump the water over your head.  Ohhh yeah!

Sitting in the shade drinking an icy V8 juice, the necessity to keep pushing forward swept over me and I was soon riding down the course.. With 7,000 feet of climbing total climbing you end up getting some killer descents.  A little more climbing after rest stop 7 the course turned into steep 2 mile 8% downhill grade stretch.  Yahho!

The course profile shows the course being basically all down hill after stop 7.  But a strong head wind soon was cheating me out of any of the benefits of the downhill.  At rest stop 8 (147.7) miles it was time for some caffeine power gel.  After that point the wind turned and started coming in from the side, and I hammered the rest of the way in (averaging +20 mph) for the rest of ride.  The high point of this was shelling a tandem.

I ended up finishing the ride at ~6:09 PM (200 miles), the finish would continue to remained open till a little after midnight.  I rode it in 12 hours including stops, the top tandems can do the course in 8 hours.  I estimate that over the day I drank some where around 432oz of Gatorade.


-- Kenneth .