Long Distance Competition/Ultracycling, Randonneuring and Endurance Cycling - Death Ride

I just found out that I "won" the lottery and I am in for the California Death Ride. I don't know how hard it really is to get in but I am excited. Does anyone have any tips on how to prepare for and execute (no pun intended) this ride and where to stay the night before? I live in Las Vegas which is 2000 feet above sea level and we have some pretty good hills.

Well, you could always take a weekend before the ride and ride some of the roads used in the Death Ride. If the snows are still deep over the passes, that could be an issue, though.

You could also head up to the Cedar Breaks/Brian Head area of Utah and try the climbs from Parowan to Brian Head, as well as the others in that area.

It is usually hard to find routes with distance, elevation gain, and high altitude to properly condition for this. In particular, try to spend time strenuously exercising above 7000 feet.

Wow!
that looks awesome! If I were a young stud I'd want to do that.

http://www.deathride.com/info.html

Is 50 too late to act or climb like a young stud?

no

No worries, I did the Death Ride when I was 56 so you should be able to hammer it!

My time was 11:45 total, and I felt pretty good at the end. It was great to get my 5-Pass Jersey and of course I kept my event number with the stickers from all the passes!

Regarding training, I live in SoCal, so I trained a lot on Glendora Mountain Road, plus climbs closer to home (Turnbull, Puente Hills, Hacienda Heights). Plus, I arrive two days early and climbed Luther Pass (right out of South Lake Tahoe) to acclimate myself to the altitude.

Rick / OCRR

No worries, I did the Death Ride when I was 56 so you should be able to hammer it!

My time was 11:45 total, and I felt pretty good at the end. It was great to get my 5-Pass Jersey and of course I kept my event number with the stickers from all the passes!

Regarding training, I live in SoCal, so I trained a lot on Glendora Mountain Road, plus climbs closer to home (Turnbull, Puente Hills, Hacienda Heights). Plus, I arrive two days early and climbed Luther Pass (right out of South Lake Tahoe) to acclimate myself to the altitude.

Rick / OCRR

Rick, Can you provide a bit more detail on your training, please? Also, anyone know the age of the oldest rider to complete this in good form? I have always wanted to do this ride but at the age of 60y am not sure how to train up for it. Thanks.

No worries, I did the Death Ride when I was 56 so you should be able to hammer it!

My time was 11:45 total, and I felt pretty good at the end. It was great to get my 5-Pass Jersey and of course I kept my event number with the stickers from all the passes!

Regarding training, I live in SoCal, so I trained a lot on Glendora Mountain Road, plus climbs closer to home (Turnbull, Puente Hills, Hacienda Heights). Plus, I arrive two days early and climbed Luther Pass (right out of South Lake Tahoe) to acclimate myself to the altitude.

Rick / OCRR

You guys are outrageous!

I don't have the opportunity to train at altitude so Death Ride is still a ways off for me... but I'm going to ride the Chelan Century Challenge this summer, which is route planned by the same guy who created Death Ride.
Not quite as tough at only 9300' of climbing, but still pretty good. I've been learning to love the hills, and I just ordered the parts to get my gearing down to a more appropriate range.

I too am starting to love climbing. To me, climbing is as much mental as physical. There is is this constant back and forth between my body and my mind. I am sure there are other parts of cycling that are equally mental but for me climbing is where I get to know myself.

Rick, Can you provide a bit more detail on your training, please? Also, anyone know the age of the oldest rider to complete this in good form? I have always wanted to do this ride but at the age of 60y am not sure how to train up for it. Thanks.

I don't know how much detail you want, so PM me if this is not enough, but:

1. Glendora Mountain Road, i.e. from the city of Glendora to Mt. Baldy Village is 44 miles (out and back) with 5,000 feet of climbing. Since Glendora is a 45 min. drive from my house (in weekend morning traffic!), I only did this on Sat. or Sun. or sometimes both. A lovely ride with lots of cyclists (some motorized, most not) in the Angeles Forest.

2. GMR Extra Credit: From Mt. Baldy Village to the Ski Lifts is 2,000 feet in 4.6 miles, so very steep with sustained 12%. I tried to do this about every other time I rode Glendora Mountain Road. Good training for the steep bits on Ebbets.

3. I live in Whittier, so I am close to two small mountain (big hill?) ranges (or more likely two parts of the same range) called Hacienda Heights and Puente Hills. These are easily accessible for after work rides, and I include Turnbull Canyon (sometimes from both directions), which is kind of like a 1/10th scale GMR. That is, about the same grade (5% - 6%) but much shorter, only 2-1/2 miles.

4. On club rides (see www.ocrebels.com (http://www.ocrebels.com)) I would always pick the route option with the most climbing, and then add "bonus climbs" to the route whenever and where ever possible.

Basically, what you want is to feel comfortable on long, sustained and (mentally at least) Never-Ending climbs. They do end, of course, but in terms of the effort you're putting out, it's like riding into a stiff headwind for hours on end. I didn't time how long it took to climb Monitor and Ebbets and Carson, but I'm sure it was well over an hour (two hours?) on the long ones, i.e. both sides of Monitor and one side of Ebbets.

Carson was into a headwind (which, I've heard, is pretty much normal), and being the last pass it was mentally pretty brutal for me. My big motivation was: This is the Last Pass. I didn't come this far and train this hard to quit now!

Re: Your area, the only climbing ride I've done there is the Mount Tam double, which had 14,600 feet of climbing over 200 miles. That took me 17 hours and 8 minutes. You can climb Mt. Tam as an equivalent of GMR; pretty much, more or less. If you can do Coleman Road (like to Tour of CA riders do) that would be even better.

Other: I climb at a heart-rate of between 155 and 165 for sustained climbs. Sure, I can go higher, but then my endurance really suffers, so I don't!

Any questions?

Rick / OCRR

Rick, thanks for the info. Somehow, though, it looks like you never trained more than about a third of the distance (which I think is about 130 miles) and at much lower altitude (which goes to 8600'). Is that right? Or did you train up by doing Doubles?

Yes Smokester,

That was 2005, and doubles-wise I had ridden Butterfield, Solvang, Hemet, Eastern Sierra and Grand Tour before the Death Ride. So those were good distance and intensity training, esp. Eastern Sierra which has three peaks over 8,000 feet.

Plus I road Breathless Agony, which is 12,000 feet of climbing in 114 miles.

Since those were events, I didn't consider them "training rides" but if you look at it from the perspective of the Death Ride, of course they were.

Rick / OCRR

I think you are supposed to "rest" on the hills - right, Rick?

I think you are supposed to "rest" on the hills - right, Rick?

Yes, that concept works well in MO and IL, but not so much here in CA :). On many rides out here, and on many doubles for that matter, there are no "flat" sections to speak of. You're either climbing or descending.

I do remember your advice from long ago, and I do use it on rollies, which is what we get on Pacific Coast Highway between Seal Beach and Dana Point, and to some extent all the way to San Diego (Torrey Pines excluded).

The first part of GMR (for example) climbs 7.6 miles before the first (short) descent. So no, I don't "rest" on the climbs out here!

Rick / OCRR