Road Ride Report Portland Century

My girlfriend grew up in Portland, so I've been there a couple of times in the last few years, it's a really nice city, it has a nice feel of permanence to the place, it feels like a real city rather than something that was thrown together from plywood and stucco (consider this more an indictment of LA's architecture than LA in general, I still like it down here).

So being the colossally naive and optimistic idiot I am, I signed up for this thing in the Spring, with the hope that I'd be in rather better shape than I was.

Unfortunately, I was mistaken.

So, knowing that I wasn't in anything like good enough shape, I figured I'd complete my preparations the previous day by drinking and eating anything that wasn't nailed down or welded to something.

Apparently (and I'm still not sure how) this involved drinking copious amounts of Sake, and knowing that there was a sakery out west of Portland, clearly we couldn't sully ourselves by wasting time drinking anything we could get in bulk later, so obviously we had to drink everything else;

(yes, I'm ashamed to say it, but the pink fizzy one at the far end was really rather good, yes yes, I know that the words pink and fizzy are not enjoyed by any real man, but bite me if I care ).

We stayed at The Nines hotel in downtown Portland, which was all of half a mile from the start/finish line, it's a pretty flash hotel, but we booked something like 8 months in advance and got it for half price (just a hint in case any of you feel like doing it next year). Turns out that there was a pretty nice bar on the rooftop (that nobody bothered to tell us about), with a great selection of beer & wine (hey, it's Portland) as well as a big list of robata and other snacky type things with a pretty solid view;

Turns out that our room was directly underneath the couch here, fortunately the soundproofing was up to the task (it's open until 2am with that annoying thumpy bass crap that's all the rage these days).

So, after a nice, early bedtime at about 1am, I got up at 6 and headed for the start line...

 

The start line at Portland State University presents a view that will be familiar to anyone whose done a couple of centuries, a few EZ Up tents and a bunch of half conscious people trying to figure out if they're ok to start riding before the official start time


What surprised me was the number of people wandering around downtown Portland at 6:30am, one would think that with the quality of beer up there, more people would have better things to do on a Sunday morning, like being hungover.

So, given that everyone else had decided to bugger off and start riding early, I figured I might as well join in, since I figured I'd need the extra time.

The first 20-30 miles was pretty uneventful anyway, with the exception of some fairly crappy signage and mediocre weather it all went fairly easily up until the second rest stop at Eagle Fern Park;

This was the rest stop before the first big climb up Kitzmiller road, but it's biggest issue was that the entire area was covered in bloody gravel (which screwed up my cleats, fortunately I was still able to clip in and out).

I've only done a couple of centuries before this, but none of them had Strawberries & Sponge as a mid ride snack;


Unfortunately this was the highlight of a fairly wet and miserable morning, the first big climb of the ride came up straight afterwards and it practically crippled me. Apparently I was not sufficiently hydrated and so only after the first couple hundred feet my quads started cramping up severely, I could barely stand. Fortunately, I wasn't the only unfit bastard on that hill, another guy on a fairly sexy Bianchi was having the same trouble, along with a kid who was also celebrating his birthday on the Monday, so the three of us staggered up the hill together enduring calls of "that's no way to treat a bike" and "get out of the bloody way" or words to that effect.

 

sweet! How many feet of climbing was there? And drinking before the century?! I drank 2 tall cans before a half marathon once lol

 

I remounted and rode a couple of miles but suffered another major attack of cramp before the descent to the second climb, I had to stop and stretch it out before even beginning the descent, the cramp was so bad that I could barely stand, never mind ride.

Aside from all the other bikers asking if I was ok, even a couple of random Portland residents stopped and asked if I needed a ride anywhere, which was fantastic, but I politely declined, I'd made a point of flying to Portland for this damned thing, so I was going to finish it if it killed me. With plenty of water & electrolytes, the cramp subsided and I was able to carry on to the third rest stop.

This was probably the low point of the ride for me, it was about 9am, still somewhere in the mid 60s and the food was pretty awful, cold pasta & some weird sauce that really ought to have been hot considering the weather.

Cold, wet and crampy, with the knowledge of another big ass climb I knew I wasn't prepared for ahead, I set out to drag my fat ass up the next hill.

Given that I knew any momentum I carried wouldn't get me more than 10% of the way up to Bull Run I figured I might as well take a couple of pictures on the bridge before the big climb, I know I took a few, but somehow this was the only one to survive;


This hill was almost as bad as the earlier climb, but I'd managed to rehydrate properly and was only just able to drag my ass up the hill being passed by all the people running triples and compacts I'd passed on the way down from the previous climb.

Whoever was drawing the elevation charts was clearly smoking something, since the next rest stop was supposed to be at 250' asl on the following descent when in actuality we reached it at over 800' (we also crested the second climb a good 150' earlier than the chart suggested), but it was at this point that the sun decided to make an appearance and the weather cleared up dramatically.

Unfortunately, on the following descent, we passed some poor bastard who had overrun a corner and plowed into the guard rail. I can easily see him doing 40-50mph down that hill and event support was spraying "slow down" warnings onto the road as we passed the ambulance and medics attending to the guy on the side of the road, I don't know how badly he was injured, but hopefully he makes a full recovery.

With the exception of another small climb and some pretty nice scenery, it was all pretty flat and uneventful to the fifth rest stop and the only hot food of the entire ride (with the exception of the finish) - Hot Lips Pizza were baking fresh pies on site at Blue Lake Park.

This was where the half century and full century routes came back together and was the start of the final leg, which, although flat, was into a pretty vicious headwind (although nobody from the west side will find this anything special, seems there's always a bugger of a headwind if you don't get out and ride as early as possible).

 

The antepenultimate leg was just a fairly uneventful ride along the Columbia;

People broke up into a bunch of pacelines in order to share the headwind, I had a fair amount of competition amongst people trying to hide downwind of me since I apparently make a fairly sizeable hole in the wind (I'm not a small guy).

The ride down to the last rest stop wasn't anything special besides the wind, but the ride to the finish was fairly annoying - whoever had done the road markings during the previous 60 miles had apparently given up and yielded the task to some muppet with a few placards.

We often went 1-2 miles without seeing another arrow telling us we were on the right course and the riders were fairly spread out so it wasn't a simple case of following everyone else.

Through apparently blind luck, and through sheer force of will (it was 11 miles from the last rest stop to the finish, but only 10 miles to the hotel ), I found myself making the final turn back into the University and meeting my girlfriend (who had already found a use for the free beverage tickets I had given her).

Even though we finished at 4pm, there was still plenty of decent food left and quite a few cases of beer (the event was sponsored by Widmer), the atmosphere at the finish line was nice and relaxed and it was still in full swing (unlike three harbors, where almost everyone had left along with most of the food) and when I mentioned I'd done the full century, I was given an extra beer

All in all, the ride came in at 103 miles and just over 6000' of climbing;
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/11335318

I am totally going to do it again next year, but hopefully I can get my fat ass in much better shape, and, ideally, I'll be doing it in a Planet Ultra KOM Jersey (hey, I said I was a naive optimist right in the first post ).

 

Oh, the following day (Monday the 17th) was my birthday and we headed out to Karaoke from Hell at Dante's (it's karaoke with a live band and no, I wasn't going to do any singing).

I'd already had a few IPAs in me when I decided to ask the DJ doing the intermission set if she had anything by the Dandy Warhols (hey, I was in Portland, when in Rome).

She asked me if I was being funny, which I took to mean that she didn't just look like the girl from the Dandys

Turns out it actually was Zia McCabe, which at least made it a more memorable birthday than usual.

All in all, a pretty good weekend

 

Nice man. I love Portland. Used to do weekend trips to skate Burnside, hit up the rose Festival and many other things. My GF at the time lived in Milwaukee OR. Lots of good memories.

 

I lived on the border of Portland / Milwaukee on SE83rd I believe. Then moved over to Gresham. I really loved that city but hated the freekin weather or lack of weather because you basically only have two kinds, wet and cold or wet and warm. No I really enjoyed summer both days.

Last year when I was riding down from WA I stopped at a Mom & Pop store somewhere in OR and I asked the cashier what the forecast for tomorrow was and she said, we don't look at it up here because we do the same thing weather it's raining or not. You can't let the weather dictate what you're going to be doing.