I wanted to share George’s Heartbreak Double Century report. As I said in the last post, despite suffering much of the day, he managed a 5th place finish! This earned him a spot on the “short list”. Only ten people completed the Planet Ultra King of the Mountains series by riding the Mulholland Double and Heartbreak Double. These are two of the toughest doubles on the calender in any given year!

Heartbreak Double Century 202 Miles and 17,000 feet. I had a bad day on the bike. It was my worst race day on the bike this year. I went out with the lead group and suffered quite a bit. By mile 25 I was dropped and 6 riders went away. It continued to get hot during the day and I knew I was going to meltdown eventually. It happened sometime before the lunch stop. I was overheating and feeling miserable. Mile 104. 6 –At the lunch stop I soaked my head twice. Once when I got in and once before I left.

I stopped consuming calories after my first century. I then started drinking sodas. I had a Mountain Dew at lunch, at Mile 119–Vanilla Cola at the base of the Heartbreak climb and then 1 bottle of water over from Mile 126.7 until Mile -171.4 where I had 1/2 an Orange Sunkist (knock-off).

The last 30 miles I hooked up with another rider who helped me get through the next 14 miles and then I helped him get to the finish. I was not feeling good all day and lost valuable time climbing Old Ridge Route –two years in a row I have faded there.

My goal was sub 14 hours I finished 13:28 for 5th place. I’m quite happy with the end result but the process to get there was one of the most challenging days on the bike in recent memory.

On Saturday, George rode the Planet Ultra Heartbreak Double Century. He went out with the lead pack and pushed a very hard pace, arriving at the 50 mile checkpoint just minutes behind the four riders who held the lead position. It was a very tough day out there, George struggled with going out so fast in the beginning, and then with the heat. Two of the doubles riders that were expected to be in the top 10 ended up DNF’ing and nearly everyone out there suffered with the high temperatures. Last year it was the opposite, extreme cold and headwinds and George had a time of 15:23. His goal this year for the 202 mile, 17,000 ft elevation gain ride was 14:00 and despite feeling awful for much of the ride, he managed a time of 13:29, which was a 5th place finish! Official results here.

Next up: Eastern Sierra Double Century on Saturday June 2nd.

With less than three weeks to the race start, I am happy to announce that our final crew has been assembled! Today we welcomed Jason, James and Paul to the crew and with that, final preparations including crew rotation and schedules along with meal planning, can commence.

Welcome to the crew, guys!

On Thursday night I took the opportunity to gather some of our crew members, along with George, Rick and his wife Terry, at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas. Reggie, one of our new crew members, was in town from Arizona and it was our first chance to meet him before we embark on this adventure. Jason also brought along Will, another new addition to our crew.

This would be the last chance to meet before the prep weekend in three weeks…did I say three weeks? Could we really be that close to RAAM? It is hard to believe that we’ll be on the road in three and a half weeks. Where has the time gone? Since both George and Rick will be riding tubulars for some of the race, George thought ahead to bring one of his tubular wheels and give the crew a lesson on changing them. I’m not sure what I expected, but the process ended up being much easier than I had envisioned. I was thankful for the instruction, though not difficult, this was definitely something that I didn’t want to have to learn on the road.

We’re up to eight crew members at this point! My goal is to have our full crew assembled in the next week, and I’m hoping to have two more for a total of ten.

Here we are in all of our glory…

Jason aka Chucklehead

Shari

Lauren

James

Herman

Phil

Brandy

not pictured…Reggie!

George Vargas, one of our RAAM riders, is off on a 63 mile night training ride. He left Huntington Beach shortly after 10:00 p.m. and will ride down the coast to Encinitas. This is the start of the sleep deprivation/ride/rest/ride/rest/ride training that he is doing in preparation for two person Race Across America. His plan is to arrive in Encinitas, get a couple of hours of sleep, train and ride with a client early Sunday morning, rest for two hours, go out for another two hour training ride, rest for two hours and then another 63 mile ride up the coast to Huntington Beach.