The Death Ride...

My son Michael on the left, and me at the top of Ebbetts Pass.

...or From Seventeen to Seventy, How I Just Can't Stay Away from Ebbetts Pass.

Full disclosure, I did not complete The Death Ride this year (or any other year for that matter). What I did do is to participate in The Death Ride by taking the opportunity to climb Ebbetts Pass, one of the five mountain passes that constitute this epic event. Yes, I was legally registered and did pay my $140, but I think the phrase "complete The Death Ride" should be reserved for those hardy souls who manage to ride all five mountain passes, all 129 miles, and all 15,000 feet of climbing of this challenging ride, a group of which I am not and never will be a member.

The Official Map of the Death Ride

Exactly what is The Death Ride? Also known as "The Tour of the California Alps", it is a group ride which has been held every year since 1981. This ride starts just outside of Markleeville, California, a town nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains at an elevation of 5,531 feet between three mountain passes, Carson Pass (8,580 feet), Monitor Pass (8,340 feet), and Ebbetts Pass (8,730 feet). The route varies a little from year to year, but this year's route was fairly typical. From the start at Turtle Rock Community Park, it goes over the western slope of Monitor Pass (pass #1), down the eastern slope, back up the eastern slope of Monitor (pass #2), back down the western slope, up the eastern slope of Ebbetts Pass (pass #3), down the western slope, back up the western slope of Ebbetts (pass #4), back to the start, then up the eastern slope of Carson pass (pass #5) and then back to the start to complete the ride. Registered riders who are not up to the full ride are given the option of doing lesser rides of four, three, two, or as in my case, one pass. The official one pass ride would have been to the top of Monitor pass and back to the start, but for a couple of reasons (listed below) I decided to ride Ebbetts Pass instead. I'm pretty sure nobody cared, the organizers are very strict about some of their rules, but this appears not to be one of them.

The crowd signing in the day before the ride. 3,500 signed up for the event. It was with some apprehension that I noticed I was the fattest guy in the room.

Why did I, a man just 14 days short of his 70th birthday, chose to attend this particular event? The main reason is that my older son Michael has been excited about this ride ever since he learned of its existence, and has wanted to attend it with me. A second reason is that there is a cycling tradition of "riding your birthday", which this year would have meant riding 70 miles on the day of my upcoming 70th birthday. I certainly could have done that, 70 miles is not that much longer than the 62 mile metric centuries which I have been riding recently, but it seemed like it would be more fun to deviate a bit from the strict interpretation of "riding my birthday", and instead acknowledge this big birthday with a much more fun (and challenging) ride, even if it was not 70 miles and not on the exact anniversary of my birth, so Death Ride it was. Finally, this ride allowed me to wallow in a bit of nostalgia. One of my earliest big rides, my first Mountain Loop back in 1966, I rode when I was seventeen years old. It went (among other places) over Monitor and Ebbetts passes, so The Death Ride gave me a chance to revisit the scene of that event at the age of seventy. One reason for riding Ebbetts Pass rather than Monitor Pass is that Ebbetts is the prettiest of the three passes in The Death Ride, but another is that I have a photograph from 1966 of my bike leaning against the sign atop Ebbetts Pass and riding it this year gave me an opportunity to recreate that photo:

On the left, the bike in front is my Peugeot PX10, at the top of Ebbetts Pass in August of 1966. On the right, the bike in front of the sign is my Bianchi Volpe in July of 2019. One obvious difference is that, in 1966, my bike was loaded down with camping gear, compared to my stripped down bike in 2019. If you look very closely, another difference is the gears. The low gear on the PX10 (if memory serves) was 47x28 for a 45" gear, compared to my Volpe with a 28x32 for a much lower 24" gear. So why was this year so much harder than 1966?

So if I didn't complete the 129 mile Death Ride, how much riding did I do? I rode 49 miles, completed 4,500 feet of climbing, and spent 5 hours doing so. Although this is a subjective estimate, I feel quite strongly that this was the second hardest ride of my life; I was so exhausted at the top, I started crying, something that has never happened to me before. In a beautiful coincidence, my guess as to the hardest ride of my life was on the same 1966 ride that went over Ebbetts Pass, but back then it wasn't the Ebbetts Pass part of the ride that was hard, it was an earlier climb up Old Priest Grade. Ebbetts Pass is both longer (6 miles vs 2 miles) and gains more elevation (2,088 feet vs 1,313 feet) but is much less steep (6% average vs 14% average) than Old Priest Grade, a climb which occurred on the first day of our five day Mountain Loop. Most of the group chose an easier, parallel route up New Priest Grade (6% average steepness) but my buddy Paul and I dared each other to ride the much steeper Old route, which left us totally exhausted. Back then, at a ripe old age of 17, I was completely recovered by the next morning after spending the night sleeping on the ground (no mattress).

The Zombie, riding up towards the pass wearing his Raulston Strokers jersey

This is the second challenge ride in a row that I found difficult to complete. What does this say about my training? Subjectively, I feel like the two experiences were very different. In the run up to my previous challenge ride, The Art of Survival, I was tired almost all of the time; I felt like I was struggling with overtraining. I certainly had tired days in the run up to The Death Ride, but they weren't unrelenting like my earlier experience, and in general, I felt I was managing my fatigue pretty well. In fact, the two training rides up Kings Mountain I did to specifically prepare for the Death Ride were the fastest of the four times I have ridden that climb. My experience preparing for and riding The Art of Survival made me feel like I had lost fitness since moving to California in 2017. My experience preparing for and riding The Death Ride, as tired as I was at the top of Ebbetts Pass, made me feel like I was as fit as I have been since that move. That said, compared to everyone else, I was pretty slow. According to Strava, my speed was in the bottom 7% of people of have climbed Ebbetts Pass. (Similarly, my best time up Kings Mountain is in the bottom 5%.) What all this says to me is that I have now reached my peak, this is good as it is going to get, with one possible exception. I am certain that if I were able to lose 40 pounds, an amount I could lose without jeopardizing my muscle mass or fitness, my time up these climbs would improve immensely. (My doctor is strongly encouraging me to do just that.)

The crowd at the top of the pass. The crowds were so great there had to be "traffic control" at the top to prevent those of us taking a break there from blocking the riders going over the top from both directions. The organizers provided chairs for the riders along with food, drink, bathrooms, and a bike repair facility. The Ebbetts Pass sign can barely be seen in the center of the picture.

How was the ride for my son? He is a much better cyclist than I, and it is a measure of his love for me that he stayed with me all the way to the top of Ebbetts Pass. Once we got there, he found me a seat in the shade, made sure I had food to eat and water to drink, and then headed down the front of Ebbetts so he could climb back up to collect his second pass. This gave me an hour and a half to recover before we headed back to the start together, where I hopped in my car to drive back to where we were staying, and he headed off to conquer Carson Pass for a grand total of three passes, 80 miles, and 9,500 feet of climbing.

A recurring theme of this blog is the important role friends play in my cycling experiences. This ride was no exception. One of my son's best friends from High School (who is also named Michael) owns a home a few miles from the start of The Death Ride, and we stayed with him. He is also a very good cyclist. He completed The Death Ride, all five passes, all 129 miles, all 15,000 feet of climbing. He started about a half an hour before we did, but because we skipped Monitor Pass, I was resting at the top when he rode over Ebbetts pass. He stopped by to see how I was doing and then headed off after my son. He and my son got back up to the top from the other side at the same time, so I got to see him again. The picture above is of Michael the first time up the pass.

Dinner at Michael's. From left to right, my granddaughter Julia, my daughter-in-law Robynn, my grandson Elliott, me, and our host Michael. My son Michael was taking the picture.

The ride was on Saturday, and Michael suggested we come up on Thursday to spend a little more time at altitude to acclimate, which we did, and then stayed through Saturday night. I left the next morning, my son, his wife, and his two children who had come along, stayed the rest of Sunday to enjoy the mountains and came home Sunday night. The time we spent with Michael would have been well worth the trip even in the absence of the ride.

Would I recommend this ride? Am I planning to go again next year? I would highly recommend this ride to anyone fit enough to do however many passes they chose to do. Back when I was describing the Eroica California ride, I commented "this is an expensive event". Actually, when I looked back, that was not true. All of the group rides I have attended have roughly the same entry fee, somewhere between $100 and $150, and The Death Ride is no exception. The organization was impeccable (especially impressive given that 3,500 riders participated), the food at the rest stops was plentiful and exactly what my body wanted, but what made this ride special was the closed roads over Ebbetts and Monitor passes. The absence of cars made the ride much more comfortable and fun. Whether I do it again has nothing to do with the ride, which could not be more attractive, but with my aging body. I barely made it up one pass this year. What will next year bring? Will I lose weight and get more fit, or will the passing of another year reduce my fitness just enough to make even one pass too much? I have no idea, I'll just have to wait and see.