The long road to Paradise

RAMROD [Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day] is billed as the Pacific Northwest's premiere one-day ultra-marathon cycling event. It combines the incomparable scenery of Mount Rainier National Park with a challenging course featuring 10,000 feet of climbing over 154 miles. Mt. Rainier (“Tahoma”) contains 36 miles of glaciers, the largest in the lower 48 states. From a geologic perspective, this makes it the largest remnant of the Ice Age to be found on one mountain on earth. And 800 lucky folks (nearly 2x that number enter the annual lottery) will attempt to ride a bicycle around it!

In a few hours (starting at 5am), Heather, Antone and I will be riding RAMROD again this year with a couple of notable exceptions. Unlike last year when excessive winter snowfall prompted a complete road diversion, we’ll be back on the traditional Paradise/Backbone Ridge/Cayuse Pass route. It will run right through the National Park, and is substantially more scenic with close-up views of immense glaciated slopes and crevasses. Our trio will unfortunately be without our team-mate from 2009 - Heather Andrus. Oh and last year, we had blistering hot condition on the ride. The day prior, Seattle had just smashed the record for it's highest ever temperature (103 degrees).

It prompted some to rename this HOT–ROD instead. The 2009 edition instantly became a classic that will be talked about for decades to come.

I pulled out an old Randonneuring trick and got everyone knee high tube socks. When the mercury inched up, we filled them with ice and draped around our necks. This worked marvelously to keep our core temperatures down. You can bet we were the envy of our fellow roadie denizens, most of whom were suffering miserably.

Heather, riding her second RAMROD, turned in an absolutely remarkable performance. Since it had only been 10 months since Lucca’s birth, we had to pre-arrange logistics to take care of maternal matters. Not only that, I recently calculated she attempted 150+mile RAMROD with less than 500 miles of training. And then there was the searing heat – which no one ever anticipated. While initially opting to skip the final pitch up to the Crystal Mountain Ski Resort, I talked her into “going as far as you can” – which powered her all the way to the tippy top. Yup, that’s my determined wife! I couldn’t have been more proud of her that day.

With cycling taking a back seat to parenting this year, Heather and I targeted RAMROD as our “big” event for 2010. Thanks to the graciousness of friends /babysitters, we’ve been tremendously fortunate to log some base miles together. Our soggy “Flying Wheels” century at the end of June wasn’t all that fun. We’ve also ridden on familiar roads on Mt. Rainier several times this summer. A spectacular 60+ mile loop up to Paradise from Ohanapakosh (on a perfect 80 degree blue-sky day) was followed a week later with a 50+ mile Cayuse Pass - Chinook Pass - Sunrise ascent with temperatures just above freezing. Brrrrrrrr!!!! Such a wide swing is not unusual for mountain weather around here.

While all this was going on, Antone has been spotted training intensely with Lance Armstrong at an undisclosed location. He arrived in Seattle on Tuesday looking sharp and fit as ever.

So tomorrow we shall ride together once more. Can't wait!