John’s Ramblings

I had my first taste of the Cascade Training Series (CTS) rides last Saturday, with a ride known as “2 Points and a Levee”. While I’ve been ride-leading informally for a year, and with Cascade since February, the format of this training ride makes it pretty unique.

The series was created in order to give cyclists a number of structured rides of increasing difficulty, with a goal of getting ready to ride in their first 100 mile ride. The riders are split into speed classifications, and each class wears a ribbon of a given color. All groups ride the same route, so if someone starts out in a fast group but needs to slow down, the next group will come along and sweep them up. As the sole ride leader of the slowest group, I would be the final sweep on the course.

It was a beautiful morning on Saturday. I snapped this shot on my way to breakfast at 6:30. We didn’t have the usual array of breakfast items at home, so I opted for the blueberry pancake at the Sunbreak Cafe in Auburn.

After going back home and loading up, I drove to the starting point at the Tukwila Community Center. I’m not a good judge of crowd numbers, but there had to be at least 100 riders at the start of the ride. I had exactly one person wanting to go in the red (11-12 mph) group, so after a short discussion we opted to start with the 12-14 mph yellow group, and then I’d slow down if my rider couldn’t sustain the pace. That ended up not being an issue, and thus I rode with the yellow group for most of the day.

The ride started with 15 miles of flat, down the Kent valley from Tukwila to Auburn via West Valley Hwy. The weather was absolutely spectacular, a little cool but clear as a bell, and a nice little tailwind on the run south. We then took a right and made the climb out of the valley on Peasley Canyon Road, a 2+ mile climb to gain the required 350′ or so of vertical. Not real steep, but a long pull up to Federal Way where the first scheduled stop was to be.

After a 15 minute break, we wound our way through Federal Way via residential streets to Marine View Drive. We stayed on this rolling road for many miles, past Dash and Browns Points before we made a short climb up to the parking lot of The Cliff House restaurant, overlooking the Commencement Bay and the Port of Tacoma. We waited another 15 minutes or so before descending to the Tacoma tideflats and the ugliest stretch of the ride past scrap metal yards.

We cut across a corner of Fife, climbed our last hill of consequence for the day, and descended into Milton on Porter Way. If you looked carefully in the window of the Milton Tavern as you went by, you could see the gleaming taps beckoning you to come and quaff. With 30 miles to go, however, this would not have been a wise moment to grab a quick pint.

From Milton we headed south to the Levee Road that runs along the Puyallup River. It was at the end of Levee Road that I ran into Steve, a rider from the very first (orange) group who had been trying to fix a flat tire for a long time, watching every other group ride past. Steve was had one tube that was split at the valve, another with a patch that would not hold, he was out of CO2 cartridges for his inflation device, and he had no pump. I stopped, and we were soon joined by Jeff and Doug, who had experienced a flat and rubbing wheel, respectively. Steve needed my spare tube and use of my pump to get rolling again after a couple more failed attempts to patch his remaining viable tube.

After that extended stop, our intrepid little gang of 4 made our way through Sumner, and then made the turn north to head back to Tukwila. The gentle tailwinds we had experienced in the morning were now 14+ mph headwinds, which made for a pretty miserable 20+ mile pull up the valley. We made one stop at a mini mart to load one rider up with Gatorade and Snickers, as he was quickly running out of gas. Steve left us at this point, needing to get back to his car and the person he had carpooled with to the start line.

We swept up one more rider in Kent, who was running on fumes and had just sat down in the grass next to the trail. I had to keep pulling him to stay will us, and toward the end I called out miles-to-go to keep him motivated to pedal. We didn’t pull in to the Tukwila Community Center until just after 4, making it a very long 6.5 hours in the saddle.

I rode the new Lemond, and I’m still quite a happy camper. The stock seat that I was concerned about gave me zero problems so I’m going to stick with it, at least for the time being. I experienced some new shifter cable stretch as the day wore on, so I had to use my right toe to shift into the smallest chainring in front whilst pedaling with the left. Hey, whatever works! I am going to schedule another bike fit appointment with the PT, as I’d like him to check my handlebar alignment to try to alleviate some hand-numbness I was experiencing.

1,235 miles year-to-date.

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