Joan's Blog

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written. Imagine that – between work and training and trying to get enough sleep to not wear down my immune system and get sick, it doesn’t leave much free time! But let me at least start to try and get you caught up on the last couple of months!

1) Red Ruby!
When I last wrote I had just gotten my new bike from Specialized – a Ruby – and was getting it set up with the right gearing, fit, etc. Let me just say that after a couple months of riding it I’m super impressed with it!! Here’s why:
a) Comfort!
The Ruby does such a better job of absorbing and dissipating the road shock – it’s a real pleasure to ride!
b) Handling!
I really like how the Ruby handles, especially cornering and on descents – it’s really responsive and smooth.
c) Color!
My Ruby is red, and I must say I love it! Being a Canadian I have an affinity for red. And with Mike’s creative genius my red Ruby is now accented with white maple leafs cut from reflective vinyl! My bike needs to be reflective for RAW, so now it’s reflective and stylin’!! Plus Jason pimped out the bars with red bar tape which goes great with the red theme!

One of my first rides with the Ruby in early February

2) Randonneuring – The Wet, The Dry, and The Beautiful!
I’ve been aware of randonneuring for a few years now, but had never tried my hand at it myself. Finally after much nagging from Jason, Mike and I signed up for some brevets. They seemed like a great (and cheap!) way to get some long rides in outside of our usual routes, and with many of our cycling friends from across the state. We did our first brevet on February 12th – the Two Rock 200k hosted by the San Francisco Randonneurs (SFR). What a gorgeous day, and a beautiful ride! The ride started in San Francisco and immediately crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and headed through Sausalito and Fairfax, then up through the lush green hillsides and farm country around Nicasio and Petaluma, then out to Valley Ford before heading south along Highway 1 and Tomales Bay to Point Reyes Station, and then back to SF. Any ride that has a mandatory stop at the Bovine Bakery in Point Reyes Stations is A+ in my books! So our first brevet was in the books as a huge success!

After finishing the Two Rock 200k on February 12th, Golden Gate Bridge in the background

The next weekend we tried our hand at the staff ride for the SFR 300k (we were volunteering the following weekend for the actual event). It poured with rain on Friday, and we almost didn’t go, but Jason (ever the nagger that he is!!) insisted that we at least show up and start and see how it went. After all, the forecast was only for “scattered showers”, so how bad could it be??? (When weather’s concerned, I’ve learned to never ask this questions – mother nature can be cruel!!) Well we headed up to SF bright and early for the 6am start, and it was in fact dry at that point. But not too long after we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and were headed through Fairfax it started to rain pretty steadily. The rain continued to get worse, and the temperature was only in the low 40s (cold for Californians!). At the secret control near the Nicasio Reservoir I could tell that Mike was pretty miserable, but I convinced him to keep heading north as far as Petaluma where there was a Peets that we could warm up in and decide from there what we wanted to do. I wanted to get at least 100 miles of riding in, but didn’t see the sense in being thoroughly miserable for 190 miles, but didn’t want to throw in the towel just yet. The rain finally eased off as we got into Petaluma, and we spent over an hour at Peets trying to warm up and dry out. We’d each brought a change of dry clothes (but only 1 change), so we changed into our dry clothes (plus our trusty garbage bag liner), and decided to make our way back to SF rather than continuing on to Healdsburg. Not knowing what the weather was going to do, we didn’t want to get caught 100 miles from our car on a no-SAG ride and have no dry/warm clothes and it be pouring rain and near freezing temperatures. So we headed back south again. The rain had stopped, and it actually looked clear out towards the coast, so we decided to take Hicks Valley Road out to the Marshall Wall and then follow Highway 1 down to Point Reyes Station. This was a beautiful stretch of road – the rain had stopped, the hills were lush and green, and the farm animals were out and talking to us (we had a gobble or two with a few turkeys, and baaa’d at some sheep!).

Mike at the top of the Marshall Wall with Tomales Bay in the background on 2/19/11

At Marshall we stopped for hot clam chowder at the Marshall Store – boy oh boy was it good! And since it wasn’t raining we even sat outside and looked over Tomales Bay as we savored our soup!

Clam Chowder stop at the Marshall Store on 2/19/11

Mike at the Marshall Store on 2/19/11

Then in Point Reyes we decided to try taking a different route back to SF by continuing down Highway 1 through Stinson Beach and following Highway 1 back over to the Golden Gate Bridge. The rain held off until we got to Stinson Beach, and then got progressively worse as we continued south – as did the wind. The climb out of Stinson Beach we’d done in the opposite direction as part of the Mt. Tam double a few times, but had never done it in this direction, and boy oh boy did it feel tougher than I’d anticipated – there were some steep pitches, and the wind, rain, and cold weren’t helping! Likewise the climb through the headlands back towards the Golden Gate Bridge was also tougher than anticipated, and there were full on streams crossing the road in several places there was so much moisture!

Climbing up Highway 1 from Muir Beach on 2/19/11 in the rain

But we made it – albeit completely soaked and cold! The only nice thing was that because of the miserable weather conditions, we had the Golden Gate Bridge to ourselves on the return trip across – unlike on the Two Rock 200k when it was almost like kamikaze cyclocross or something trying to get across and whizzing past riders going in the other direction with barely an inch or two to spare!!

Return trip across the Golden Gate Bridge on 2/19/11

Mike on the Golden Gate Bridge on 2/19/11

We ended up with 116 miles, and more climbing than on the 200k the week prior, so despite the “failure” in terms of finishing the 300k, it was still a great training day!

Next up in terms of brevets was the Waves and Wine 400k out of San Luis Obispo put on by the PCH Randonneurs on March 12th. So stay tuned for details on that and other adventures of the past 2 months!

Hello, and welcome to my blog about my endeavors as an ultra-cyclist! Over the coming months I hope to share with you the journey that I will be taking in my attempt to complete Race Across the West – an 860 mile cycling race from Oceanside, California to Durango, Colorado. To get things started though, let me provide a bit of background about myself and what lead me to the sport of ultra-cycling.

I grew up on a farm outside a small town, Rocky Mountain House, in Alberta, Canada with my parents, one sister, two brothers, and lots of farm animals! With a keen interest in science and math growing up, and always looking for a challenge in anything I did, I attended the University of Toronto in the Engineering Science program (an honors engineering program). It was my studies at UofT that lead me to California when I got a job in Sunnyvale for a work experience year in 2001. The move to California opened many doors that have since defined my life – I discovered and got involved in triathlon, which eventually lead me to ulta-cycling, and it was in California that I met my wonderful husband, Mike (who’s crazy in his own right – he’s not only interested in ultra-cycling, but also ultra-running, ultra-swimming, and even ultra-cookie-baking!!). We currently live in Sunnyvale with our two cats (Rosie and Cali), and I work as a software engineer at Apple.

Although I had been involved in team sports all through school, I didn’t become interested in endurance sports until 2000. I happened to be in Penticton, BC at the time that Ironman Canada was going on, and I spectated the event. Watching people of all ages, body types, and ability out there giving it their all as they swam 2.4 miles, cycled 112 miles, and ran 26.2 miles was extremely inspiring, and I decided that I’d like to do a triathlon one day. So In the spring of 2001 when I moved to California it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try my hand at triathlon. I was in a wonderfully warm climate that didn’t include snow and ice for a good portion of the year – woohoo! Plus I didn’t have mountains of homework to do – so I could go outside and ride my bike up mountains instead! I did my first triathlon in June of 2001, the Danskin women’s triathlon in Sacramento, and was hooked. I did my first Ironman fourteen months later in 2002 (Ironman Canada). Unfortunately I had to take a year off training to finish school (so that I could get my degree and move back to sunny California), plus I had developed an overuse injury (exertional compartment syndrome) while training for Ironman, and I needed to get that sorted out, which unfortunately meant surgery. So it was in late 2004 that I finally got back into triathlon, gravitating toward the longer distance events.

So it wasn’t all that long ago that I was oblivious to the fact that sadistic ultra-cycling events existed! I was happily training for Ironman triathlons (sadistic in their own right!) and enjoying organized century rides. Then someone told me about the crazy notion of a double century (riding 200 miles in one day). Naivety being my strong suit, and being unafraid of biting off more than I could chew (did I mention I did my first half-Ironman before I’d even done an Olympic distance triathlon?), I said “Count me in!” and signed up for my first double century – the Davis Double in 2005. The ride went well, but the curious thing was that I noticed several people wearing jerseys that said “California Triple Crown” on them. I had never heard of such madness – you mean there were OTHER double centuries out there? Well of course now that I’d heard of this challenge of riding three doubles in a single year, I immediately set out to make that my next goal. I was hooked, or should I say “infected”, with the ultra-cycling disease!

And that’s how I found myself standing in line to check-in at the Butterfield Double Century in February of 2006 – my second double, but more importantly the location and instant where I first heard about multi day ultra-cycling events. While standing there waiting to sign-in, I overheard some other women talking about something called the Furnace Creek 508. My first reaction was “Why would anyone want to do this??? Ride over 500 miles in less than 48hrs with over 35,000ft of climbing, and through places like Death Valley no less! These people must be INSANE!!!” I apparently had not completely lost my mind at this point in time, still recognizing just how ridiculous this sounded! But did I mention that this ultra-cycling disease progresses rapidly and engulfs the victim in an inexplicable urge to continue to do crazier and crazier things as the brain cells of reason and common sense are slowly (or not so slowly) devoured? Not only did I get my first California Triple Crown credit that year, but I ended up doing eight doubles, and volunteering at one double, plus I completed one Ironman and two half Ironmans.

I found I loved the challenge of pushing my limits further and further, and the freedom I felt when I was out riding my bike. In 2007 I completed my first triple century ride (the LA Grand Tour Triple), and then in 2008 I did my first 24 hour event (Davis 24 Hour). It was in 2008 that I also found myself on the start line for the Furnace Creek 508 – just a few short years from when I first heard about it! I had a great 508 experience that year, so I decided to sign up for Race Across Oregon and the Hoodoo 500 in 2009. Race Across Oregon in 2009 was my first ever DNF – extremely tough weather conditions coupled with some lower back problems forced me to withdraw after 457 miles when it became clear that I wouldn’t finish within the 48 hour cutoff. This didn’t stop me though – a few months later I finished the Hoodoo 500 race and set a course record in the women’s division. This is the event where I qualified for Race Across America (RAAM). In 2010 I went back to Race Across Oregon since I had unfinished business with the DNF from the year prior. With the assistance of an all-star support crew I finished, which was perhaps the most satisfying finish I’d experienced (although finishing Ironman Canada hand in hand with my husband a month later was pretty darned special too!). I then went back to the Furnace Creek 508 in October, and despite much tougher conditions compared to my first finish in 2008, I overcame a lot of difficulties and finished again.

With four 500+ mile event finishes under my belt at the end of 2010, I found myself looking for a new challenge in my quest to find out just how far I can go. The two obvious choices were Race Across America (RAAM) or Race Across the West (RAW). Part of me wanted to go full gusto and sign up for RAAM, but in the end common sense prevailed (shocking, I know!) and I decided to “just” sign up for RAW. It is still a huge challenge in all regards, but the logistics of a 4 day race are significantly easier than the logistics of a 12 day race. RAW is a great opportunity to experience the format of RAAM in a more manageably sized chunk. So that brings us to the present, and my 2011 journey towards RAW!