Last 5 years
So I realize thats its been 5 years since my last blog post. A lot has happened since the Chennai half iron triathlon. Did a 50 km ultra run in Pune. Got my PB of 4:52 in FM at SCMM Mumbai. Relocated back to California. Then things went downhill .. I put on close to 25 lbs of weight over 3 years since 2016 as fitness activity came to a grinding halt after relocation due to the commute, work pressure, chores etc. Got back into cycling in 2019 with help of Team Asha (Thanks Sandeep for introducing me to the group!). Did a 2 day Seattle to Vancouver ride in 2019. Still was just barely maintaining my fitness.
2020
And then the pandemic happened. Life, as we knew it, came to a halt. No getting out of the house. No commute to work with WFH. 3 additional hours to spare in a day. Good opportunity to get back the lost fitness mojo. Ashish started a challenge of 21 days daily 21 pushups. That was the trigger I needed. Started with a goal of doing 5k daily for a week to see how it feels. Good thing that I just got a treadmill in December as running outside was out of question in those times. After 7 days felt fine so continued for a month and that turned into 100 consecutive days of running 5km+ for a total of about 460 miles (740kms) in 100 days. That streak helped me reduce my weight by 25 lbs and get back my lost fitness. In the meantime biking and specifically climbing increased significantly with coach Venki finding some of the toughest climbs in Bay Area for us to do. Did close to 100K feet of climbing through the year and some of the toughest climbs in Bay area . The confidence and fitness was at its peak by end of December. Charul - a super runner, Dhakkan runners coach, a Boston marathoner and a fellow Team Asha biker, reminded me that I had some really good base running miles in the year and recommended that I attempt some PRs. He invited me into a group virtual team for Boston 5K, 10K and HM. Was very happy that I got my PRs in running - a sub 25 5K, a sub 54 10K, and most importantly sub 2 hr HM!! 2020 turned out to be the year when my fitness journey really resumed in full swing.
At the end of the year, I had done 1230 miles of biking with 92K ft of climbing; and more importantly 913 miles of running. My maximum running mileage in a year. Its going to be hard to beat that!
2021 - Half Everesting
As 2021 rolled around, needed some new goals. The Team Asha alumni biking gang was primed to achieve some new goals. So we decided to do Half Everesting or Basecamp - basically we have to do a climb multiple times to reach half of the height of everest - 14515 ft. We found an ideal segment for our attempt - a local hill Mt Eden which has a segment of about 0.74 miles with 274 ft climbing. So we needed to do 59 repeats of the hill. Sounded quite doable as we had been trained up already by Venki for rides upto 10000 ft by then. We finalized on Feb 20 to be the D day. Some of us did 20 repetitions a couple of weeks before as a route recce. Took about 3:30 hours. So the HE attempt would take anywhere between 12-13 hours including the breaks. We had good full day SAG arranged. Raja for breakfast (as he couldnt ride due to his fall the week before), Sonali for lunch, Vandana and Monali for evening snacks. We rolled around 6:20 am in the morning. Venki, Siva, Bhupendra, Sandeep, Naveen, Saravana, Murali, Surya, Aman, Alok, Anantha and myself started with the goal of finishing the full ride or some folks wanted to do part of the ride. A few others joined for company and to cheer us along the way. What a day it turned out to be. Rained a bit in the morning but weather was quite nice. First 35 repetitions were reasonably comfortable which is when we stopped for lunch. The afternoon heat and fatigues sapped us big time till we got additional refreshments around loop 45. By then I knew every single small dent in the road and every single turn and gradient of every patch on the road. I started with climbing in around 7:10-7:30 minutes. By the 40th loop I was at 8+ minutes. Its mind numbing to do any hill repetition for 59 times! After 50 we could see the end in sight plus got a bit of a second wind as the sun set and it became cooler. Finished the 59th loop in the dark around 6:30 pm in quite cold weather. It was quite an exhilarating feeling to get in the Hall of Fame on everesting.cc. 7 of us - Venki, Siva, Bhupendra, Murali, Surya, Aman and me finished the HE attempt on that day. Quite a tenacious, determined and a super fit group indeed. The company of this wonderful group all day long is what helped us achieve this milestone. Some folks who couldnt finish or ride that day (or overachieveres like Bhupendra) - Raja, Naveen, Sandeep, Bhupendra, Alok came back and completed the HE attempt later on. So overall 11 folks from the Team Asha group got into the hall of fame! An achievement to brag about for sure! :-)
2021 - Death Ride
After this achievement I had to go into a hole for the next 4 months due to work. My company was building a platform to help micro businesses get government loans during the tough pandemic economy. Super crazy 120 hours work week for close to 3-4 months completely stopped my fitness activities in its track. I re-emerged again sometime in May/June. Just in time to join the team to train for the Death Ride in July 2021. Death ride is a climb fest. 105 miles and 15K ft of climbing in the beautiful Tahoe area. Its just one relentless climb after another. Kinda similar to the elevation we did in the HE attempt but the difference is that the climbs are much longer. Total of 5 long climbs. I had to skip some of the initial rides due to work. Fitness reduced as had a lot of muscle loss during this time. Also was mentally drained during this period. The group energy and the fomo factor helped get me back on the saddle. Naveen also pushed me hard to get back on the saddle to do the tough rides. Eventually caught up with the group and did some really grueling and amazing climbs in the bay area. The peak of the training was when we did Mt Diablo (a 11 mile 3500 ft climb) 3 times, Mt Hamilton (18 miles 3900 ft) 2.5 times. Did quite a few 8-11K ft climbing rides. Venki had created a perfect training plan to get us prepared for DR. All prepared we reached Tahoe, collected our bibs and were all mentally ready to have fun and do the ride. Venki, Sandeep and Murali had a mini disaster reaching Tahoe. Sandeep's car got rear ended with their 3 bikes on the bike rack in the back. All 3 bikes destroyed! :-( Luckily no injury to any of them. so they braved it out and decided to borrow/rent bikes and show up for Death Ride, such was the determination!
And then a bigger disaster struck .. A forest fire - Tamarack fire, got out of control in Markleville area which is where our ride was supposed to start.
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| The smoke plume was the first indication that something was happening |
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| This is the place where we picked up the bibs at 4 pm. Fire spread to this area at night and this photo was sometime the next morning when the ride was supposed to start! (Image sourced from internet) |
The fire spread like crazy and completely burnt down the area where the staging area for the ride was. It also jumped over the highway we were supposed to ride on. Unfortunately DeathRide got cancelled. We did a consolation ride around Lake Tahoe - one of the most beautiful rides I have ever done. No wonder this route is called America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride - AMBBR.
We didnt want to lose all the goodness of our climbing training, so we decided to go back to Tahoe and do the Death Ride ourselves in August.
Had a weeklong vacation planned to Colorado Springs in 2nd week of August to celebrate birthdays and anniversary. So training shifted to running during those vacation days. Was hoping to climb Pikes Peak (24 miles 8000 ft elevation gain) on my birthday. The toughest part is altitude. The altitude at the top is 14K+ ft. So would have been super tough. Unfortunately getting a bike rental in Colorado Springs was a logistical nightmare as during covid and the supply chain issues following it, rarely any bikes were available for rent. So the Pikes peak plan got shelved. A bucket list item for the future.
Back to the August DR plan .. unfortunately we were second time unlucky as another wildfire near Lake Tahoe ruined our plans. So eventually Venki decided to create a local Bay Area equivalent of Death Ride in September, sponsored by Team Asha. He called it the Crab Ride. A 115 mile 14500 ft ride in the Portola Valley area with 6 climbs. And with timed controls and SAG! Amazing route planning and this I feel this has the potential of becoming an iconic route in Bay Area. So we continued our climbing training for another month and did the ride on Sep 4th 2021. What a ride and what a route!
13 of us - Venki, Shriram, Siva, Murali, Anantha, Naveen, Bhupendra, Rohit, Naresh, Raja, Maneesh, Surya and me started the ride around 5:30 am. Alok thought the AQI was not that great so he decided to do the exact same ride virtually on his indoor trainer (Still cant believe he did the full 13 hour ride indoor)! Started with PageMill climb (8.3 miles 2000 ft), turned around at Pescadero road and climbed back up to Skyline on West Alpine (7.4 miles 1900 ft), then down on PageMill to Portolo Valley for the first SAG. Both these climbs in the early morning fresh legs were fantastic. There was some mist in the air while we climbed Page Mill. West Alpine climb usually comes in latter part of the day for most of our rides and we do it on tired legs in hot weather. This one was really early in the morning, so got a PR on it. Was going really strong. The SAG arranged by Venki and Team Asha was phenomenal. Having indian hot breakfast and tea/coffee on a tough ride is heaven!
We continued on to climb highway 84 and then northbound to Tunitas (8 miles 1850 ft). Down on Tunitas and then turned back and climbed Tunitas creek climb (8.3 miles 2000 ft). Then descended down to Woodside using Kings road. Second SAG. Again had fantastic lunch there and refreshed again. By this time it was around 2 pm and temperature was in mid 90s! Super hot and fatigued by this time. Kings Mountain climb next (4.4 miles 1600 ft) was a drag and had to stop a couple of times on the climb to get to the top. Took a long 30 minute break at the top to get some mojo back. From here on out there was 1 big climb and rollers on skyline to deal with and then the final 1/3 climb on Alpine left. About 4k ft to go. Descended down on 84 to get to base of OLH where found Anup and Deepak as god send. Refilled water .. had some quick refreshment and started the final big climb of the day OLH (3 miles 1250 ft). The most well known climb where top climbers benchmark themselves. My best time on this is around 31 minutes. This day though obviously took way way more .. happy to have finished it in 42 minutes. Anup and Deepak were cheering us along the climb. Took another 15 minute break at the top and then started the final rollers journey on Skyline. Another 2k ft to go. Reached Pagemill by around 5:30 pm. Another SAG and control with Samosa and watermelon. Amazing support! The temperature also started cooling a bit so had a second wind going down PageMill. The final climb on Alpine was a breeze and then the sprint to the finish line. Finished at around 6:50 pm. Ahead of the cutoff by about 40 minutes (I think). What a ride after the multiple false starts to the Death Ride this year.
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| We used the DR bib for our local Crab ride. With the stickers and all! Thanks Team Asha and Venki! |
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| Not the real DR but used the swag I bought at DR |
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| The super strong Team Asha group that did the first TA Crab ride |
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| Celebration dinner and drinks after the ride |
What a ride and what a group! The group was so resilient and motivated to do the DR over all the adversities we had faced, that we manifested the DR in our backyard!
The rest of the year we did more climbing and also completed the top 10 toughest bay area climbs. With all the climbing through the year, this year I had the maximum elevation gain in any year. 250K ft of climbing in the 2800 miles of riding I did in the year! Its going to be hard to beat that.
I really feel I am back on the fitness wagon again starting 2020 after falling off for about 3 years from 2016-2019. Huge credit goes to the Team Asha group that gave me the energy and motivation and the needed push at times to keep going.