Did what has been called the "toughest local" century in my area, the Sequoia Century.
The route starts in Palo Alto, goes over the Canta Cruz Mountains, down to the coast, rips along the Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Cruz, back over the Mountains again, then a fast decent back to civilization.
I was told to reconsider using the tandem for this ride, since it was slated to be 112 miles with nearly
10,000 feet of vertical climbing. I shrugged them off, of course
I only saw two other tandems out of the nearly (maybe) 1000 riders.
Here is
someone else's Garmin output (I guess I am too cheap to buy my own
):
Here is their map:
So anyway here are our ride stats for this killer ride:
Distance = 113.5 miles
Ride Time = 7:21
Avg Speed = 15.4 mph
Max Speed = 53.5 mph (on Highway 1, AWESOME!)
The first major climb shown is Page Mill Road. We had an awesome rhythm going on this climb, passing many singles on or way up. We kept many fast riders locked in our sights. The really fast single riders passed us, but there weren't too many. Our standing climbing was working great!
The descent down was foggy but fun. We passed one of the two known other tandems just before diving into a hairpin turn... We waved
That flat part in the middle was along the coast. It was glorious! We were tearing it up at 30+ MPH for much of the way. This is where we hit 53.5 mph
We ended up picking up a contingent of around 5 or 6 Webcor (local racing club/team) guys. We pulled them the whole way down the coat. Talk about good motivation.
The big hill on the way back was a combo of a few climbs including Mt. Charlie, Summit Rd, and Skyline. Mt. Charlie was nuts!! It was a bit of a stair step climb, but with long "steps" with some really really steep sections of over 15% grade. Not to mention we were already at around mile 75+. I think we got down to below 4 mph for a few moments. Ruth (stoker/gf) couldn't do the standing for too long, because her quads were a burned out. She was fine sitting though.
The last part, decent down Hwy 9, etc was fun. I was flying down at 40+ mph
There were two short and steep bumps at the end (Pierce, and Mt. Eden)
Here's a picture of us at the end of the ride (I had already stripped my Halo, and gloves).
Here's some other pics from the ride (not taken by us, in the next post):