Panoche Valley Road Race - Sunny with a chance of heatstroke

Today was a brutal first-person experience of global warming.

Panoche Valley (located south of Hollister) started with a bang - about 80 degrees at 8 AM when Spence headed out with the Junior 13-14 riders.

It quickly escalated up past 90 and then was over 100 by about 10 AM. We had four riders - Spence, Bob, Alex (both racing Junior 15-16), and me (racing Elite 5).



Spence did very well on his 20 mile (10 miles, out and back) race, working with the breakaway group, and then coming in third on the final sprint. Fortunately for this Junior 13-14 group, they were able to turn around at the halfway point, and avoid some of the harder climbing.

Bob and Alex, went out at 8:50 AM, when it was pushing 90, and had a long, hard, hot slog up about 2500+ feet of climbing over the 20 miles to the turnaround. By the time they got to the top, where the water/feed stop was, it was 107 or thereabouts. They wisely chose to stop there for awhile, get rehydrated, and then headed back down at a reasonable rate - the main peloton had gone charging ahead. I met them at about 33 miles, and gave them a ride back in the air conditioned car, to avoid heatstroke.

I raced Elite 5, and proved that it's still a stretch to compete at that level ;-) I managed to lead the pack for the first 4 miles, and then got ceremoniously dropped on one of the hills, so rode out the remaining 36 miles in a time trail. I felt like it was an accomplishment just to finish, and not be seeing spots! Maybe one of the most grueling rides in memory, though the course itself was not particularly hard - the heat made any strong efforts very, very tough.

Here's a profile of my ride - about 2,200 feet of climbing, and it really kicked up on the second half of the climb. See http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8249095

Congratulations to Spence on his strong effort today! Let's all hope for more reasonable temperatures at the upcoming races.



Big thanks to Blair for the tent and water bucket - we would have been parched roadkill without them (speaking of roadkill, I did see a partially flattened rattlesnake on the course...)

Next week - Memorial Day Criterium - hope to see you there - pray for cool weather!