The Glorious Mt St. Helens bicycle ride!

I am alive! The ride up to Mt St. Helens was by far the hardest, best and funnest ride I have done yet. However during my 40 miles of non stop climbing I wasn't saying how fun I thought it was, I was saying what the world have I done to myself. I virtually had no training when I signed on to do this. Longest ride was in July and in Aug I think I did a 30 mile ride with several small rides. Then I decide, oh this would be great to do a 114 mile race 2 weeks to the event. Anyways lesson learned and not being able to walk on Sunday night would attribute to not training. I have never been up to Mt St. Helens before so this was a great experience. Next time I would like to drive up there and spend a day of it and take a bunch of pictures. Here is the information on the Windy Ridge lookout where we stopped to head back down the Mt.

Windy Ridge is one of the best places to get an overview of the area devastated by the 1980 eruption. The landscape is littered with sand and gray rocks from that event. Deposits of the debris avalanche are visible to the west. These include the lower parts of The Spillover, where the debris avalanche traveled up over Johnston Ridge and into the South Coldwater area. The blast stripped most of the vegetation and some soil from many of the older bedrock surfaces, revealing to geologists and visitors previously hidden chapters in the geologic history of the area. Rockfalls from the crater walls stir up ash clouds that curl over the edges of the crater rim, especially in late summer. A faint bluish-white volcanic gas plume is often visible rising from the Lava Dome, and sometimes fumaroles or clusters of fumaroles can be seen there.

I stayed at my Uncle's place in Centralia on Sat night prior to the ride on Sunday. Got up and left at 5:30 am and arrived at the parking area in Packwood at 7am. The start line opened at 7am and closed at 8am. It was pretty chilly out (50 f) and by the time I got the bike ready and myself sorted with all my food and all the little stuff it was 7:30. Of course I started all alone so that was tough to start out by myself with out a group to ride in and pace with. I was able to get up to a group of 7 riders about 2 miles down the road and latched onto them for the next 10 + miles. Then we took a turn and the fun began. These hills would range from the lowest gear on your bike sitting down to out of the saddle standing up. Very seldom was there a chance to shift up to go a little faster but when you were able to it felt like you were going down hill. It was a nice feeling but a false one at the same time. This went on for 40+ miles. It was never ending. I paced myself pretty good throughout the first half of the day. I would get passed as we would start the hill by a couple guys then end up passing them halfway up as there steam shut off. As we came out of the woods and got more in the open air we came around a bend of nice green trees to see the effects of the eruption. Trees all laid out everywhere and the area wide open looking like it was logged a few years ago. It was a pretty amazing site. Getting that close to the Mt was pretty cool and was a great experience. There were some down hills on the way up but were just rolling hills that turned into more hills.

Now the fun part of cruising down. This was so much fun. I think my top speed was in the 40 mph range. Of course wearing tights and a bike shirt going down at that speed would be fairly painful but everyone I was around rode really well. I began to pass several people on the downhill sections so I suspected the motorcycle racing was paying off in this avenue of the ride. Which gave me alot of confidence. Not to much but enough to know that both sports worked well together. Once we got to the bottom we still had 30 miles to go in order to hit the 114 miles. At this point I had been riding alone for a while. My left knee was begin to really bother me. My whole goal was to finish in the silver medal range which was by 3pm. Gold guys finished by 2pm which I will shoot for next year. Coming down the stretch I was getting worried I wasn't going to make it. I had a 15 miles to go in 30 minutes and I didn't think it was going to happen, especially riding, "all byyyy myyyself (singing the tune)". I kept looking back in hopes of a group of a couple of riders to tag along with. Then I saw them coming, it was a huge relief because everytime I looked back they kept getting closer and closer. I moved over to let them by so I could jump on at the end of the line and have them tow me to the finish but man there must have been 20+ riders in the group. So 6 hours 52 minutes and I got a hat and a silver medal. I went and set the bike down got a hotdog, chips and a beer and laid down. I don't like hotdogs much but it sure did taste good...
The fastest time of the ride was 5 hours 55 minutes. My goal next year is to finish in gold!

I wish summer was longer than 2 months here.