In 2016 McWoodie Honored the black and orange in the fabled NW classic.
This is his report:
Let the games begin!!
Following the advice of Hank “I’ve only done RAMROD
17 times and would do it again if I could use an oar” a.k.a. The Coroner.... Mike, Steve and I had a prompt (yet slightly painful)
departure at 4:15am with a goal of getting to the
start line in Enumclaw around 5:30-5:50 (“before all the fast guys have
left” said Hank). En route to Enumclaw, I shared two RAMROD rules with RAMROD
virgin Steve: “don’t have your nose in the wind for more than a minute,
and be sure to be in a large group after the last food stop.” More on
this later…
True
to Hank’s words, we rolled through the starting line at 5:45am along
with two fast looking Audi riders. Looks did not deceive, and it turns
out the Audi team has their own version of Big John. The larger of
the two guys proceeded to take 5 minute 25mph pulls and the second guy
would occasionally come around him to take his own pull. It took them
about 45 minutes to get smart and finally accept the offers from us to
do some work and the 5 of us worked well together, flying past many
groups who had rolled earlier. A good sized train eventually formed
behind us, but we kept rotating through with just the 5 of us to keep
things safe (at least for us). Right before the Eatonville food stop we
were joined by a guy named Josh who was riding strong and joined our
rotation.
At
Eatonville, the Audi guys found 7-8 of their teammates and it looked it
might be a little while before they got the group momentum to roll, so
after saying “thanks”, Steve, Mike, Josh and I got back on the road. On
the first small climb out of Eatonville, Josh and I started to pull
away from Mike and Steve. I let Josh go off ahead and drifted back to
Mike and Steve, where Mike proceeded to implore me to go off ahead.
Accepting the reality that we may actually all be happier that way, I
bridged back up to Josh and we got to chatting. I learned he had quite the road racing season this year, though he’d never
ridden RAMROD. Hmmm, this could get
interesting. Riding towards the park entrance, we wound up in a
paceline with 6 other guys. Which then became 5… then 4… then 3… and
by the time we rolled into the food stop at mile 56 it was just me and
Josh again, though we weren’t going all that hard.....
Tell me when it just starts to tickle.......
We
grabbed food and drink. Just as Josh and I were getting ready to
leave, Mike and Steve rolled in on the heels of a nice train of the Audi
guys. We chatted for a bit (they seemed to be doing well) and I headed
off towards the park with Josh to start the climb up to Paradise. We
set a pretty steady pace. Occasionally Josh was going harder than I
wanted to (I didn’t want to leave Zone 2) so I would drift back onto his
wheel for a bit before coming back for some side-by-side conversation.
It seemed like we were at the top in no time.
The descent into Box
Canyon was fun and fast. I really felt the Dolomites descending form
and was taking the sweeping turns at close to full speed and pedaling
hard on the straight aways to build max speed. Seemed like I barely
touched my brakes. Rolling into the food stop, I felt a slight cramp
twinge and thought “that’s weird, never gotten cramps before on a
descent – maybe I shouldn’t have been having quite so much fun”, so made
sure to do a little stretching while wolfing down chocolate croissants
and fruit – and pounded a teaspoon of salt that was there for the
potatoes. Couldn’t hurt. Threw an extra banana in my pocket for good
measure too.
Climb McWoodie, Climb!
I climb so well they gave me this stupid shirt....
Soon
after leaving the food stop, the trouble began. We were at mile 88 and
I started to feel cramps simultaneously in both adductors and called
out to Josh who was pulling to stop for a second. I did a bit of
stretching and pondered what the remaining 65 miles were going to be
like. We started riding again, dropping the pace, but within 5 minutes I
cramped again. Not sure what was going to be in store for me for the
rest of the day, I told him to go on ahead. Ate the extra banana and
did some more stretching, then set out at a pretty easy pace. At this
point, I was in clear violation of Rule #1: “no nose in the wind for
more than a minute”, finding myself riding solo all the way out of the
park and up towards Cayuse pass. I was able to gradually lift the pace
and went back to a Zone 2 effort up the climb. All on my own, I
eventually started to catch and pass riders, but was trying to keep
things easy to keep the cramping at bay.
Squashing Cramps is a lot like Squishing Gramps
I caught back up to Josh at
about mile 104 (right at the water stop). He was starting to feel the
distance and I left him to ride at his own pace to the top of Cayuse
feeling glad we had talked earlier about “sometimes it’s harder to ride
slower with others”. I waited for him at Cayuse for about 5-10 min.
When he still had not arrived when a strong looking group started to
descend, I elected to join them. Two cars being too cautious about
passing cyclists took a little fun out of the descent (I wound up
passing one of them on a straighter section), but the speed was fast
with no use of the brakes until hitting the deli stop at Crystal
Mountain.
The
usual deli-stop feeding frenzy ensued. Josh rejoined and we sat in the
shade with the other group eating for a while. We seemed to be out
ahead of a lot of people. I kept looking around for others to roll in
so we could have a nice big train into the headwinds along 410, but few
were arriving. After a bit too much sitting around, Josh and I decided
it was time to get moving even if it meant going out on our own (a clear
Rule #2 violation).
Fortunately, the headwinds on 410 weren’t too bad
and we had a good pace going. We caught a solo rider who joined us and
rode with him until Josh got a flat. We stopped to change the flat (the
other guy kept going), and about half way through the process,
magically as if out of the woods, a woman materialized with a floor pump
and offers of food and water. Gotta love the supportive spouses of RAMROD
riders. Just as the flat was fixed, a big train of riders came past
so we jumped on our bikes and jumped on the train. Although the train
was going a little slower than we were on our own, we were doing a ton
less work which was definitely welcome at this point.
We
turned off of 410 towards Mud Mountain road. Josh got another
well-timed flat as the large group seemed to be gearing up towards a
sketchy Cat 6 sprint to the finish. So, we stopped and patched that (as
my new spare tube had a puncture -argh!), then ripped down Mud Mountain
road and rolled into the finish. Cold drinks, ice cream, a rinse off
with a hose, and a lounge chair in the shade were perfect. Mike and
Steve rolled in about 1:45 later. As mandated by tradition, we grabbed
dinner at Hank’s favorite Enumclaw Mexican restaurant and headed home at
6pm with zero traffic.
Tourists.........
My numbers: Elapsed time: 9:05. Rolling time: 7:51. Average speed
19.5mph. Number of rules violated: 2. Max Avg Power (20 min): 244W
(low end of Zone 3). Distance 153 miles. Elevation gain 9.259. Garmin
thinks it was a 5297 calorie day. Time to start eating, again…Thanks to McWoodie for sharing. He shared an earlier ride here.
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