Counting Coup Milestone

There is just too much information to put down in one post, but I'm going to try. First a quick summary for anyone that might not want to read this huge post ...

Counting Coup is an annual race in the Santa Ana Mountains. It is 42.5 miles and consists of 8,627 feet of climbing.

Elevation chart:



Google Map of the course:



Some quick stats for the ride:

Calories burned: 4,441
Average Heart Rate: 155
Max Heart Rate: 188
Total Ride Time: 6 hours 3 minutes


Times for various checkpoints (time is total ride time to get to a point):

Blackstar Gate to Beek's Gate: ~1:07
Beek's Gate to Motorway: ~2:25
Bottom of Motorway: ~2:35
Maple Springs to Four Corners: ~4:05
Four Corners to Upper Holy Jim: ~5:00
Upper Holy Jim to Bottom of Lower Holy Jim: ~5:45
Lower Holy Jim to end of Trabuco Creek: 6:03

I beat the first cut-off time by almost an hour and a half and beat the second cut-off by almost two hours.


Now for a more detailed ride report (only read if you have lots of time) ...

The Counting Coup race is on March 3rd this year and I wanted to make sure I had trained enough for the ride. I really wanted to do the full course once before the race to build up the confidence and to work out riding strategy. I wanted to make sure I knew how to eat and drink on the ride and where to hammer and where to cruise.

A bunch of us decided that this last Saturday (2/10/07) would be a good day to do the entire course. The final group ended up being me, Troy, Matt and Andrew.

I was kind of worried about the ride though because my normal bike is in the shop due to a dead rear shock. This meant that I would be riding the entire course on my old Trek 6700 hard tail. I had waited a while to buy new riding shorts and I ended up buying them just in time. I needed all the padding I could get considering the hard tail offered me _no_ protection against rocks etc.

My other fear - besides the bike - was bonking. Bonking just means running out of gas physically. I came up with a plan that I stuck with for the entire ride, and it turned out to work really well.

The plan for Stage 1 (Blackstar to bottom of Motorway):

Take 1 bottle of Cytomax and a camelback with 2 liters (2/3's of the capacity) of water. I didn't fill the entire camelback because I didn't want to carry water I wasn't going to drink.

Have one gel flask in my pocket for eating. The flask holds about 6 gels inside and makes it very easy to get gel in without a big mess.

Have one cannister of "cramping pills". You just suck on these until they are gone. The only downside is that my breathing is affected when I have this huge pill in my mouth. At least they have a nice lemon taste.

For the first stage I planned to drink 2-3 mouthfuls of Cytomax and 1-2 mouthfuls of water every 20 minutes. Every 30 minutes I would choke down 1 gel from my flask. Every hour I would take one cramping pill.

This strategy really paid off I think. It was tough at some points to drink, swallow a gel and then pop a pill, but it seemed to work ok.


The plan for Stage 2 (Maple Springs to Holy Jim):

I took the same quantities of the items as listed above, but changed the water in take to every 15 minutes instead of 20. The gel stayed at 30 minutes and the cramping pills on the hour.

I figured I needed more water at this point, especially since it was hot out.


Overall I was really happy with the nutrition plan. I never bonked and I never felt like I didn't have enough energy to finish a particular climb or descent. It was also good to stay on the bike while eating and drinking. I didn't have to stop to do a gel or anything like that.


The actual ride ...

We had planned to start riding at 7am, but we ended up starting at 7:30am because of me. Haha. I had a lot of things to do to my old bike to get it ready to ride. I used my one zip-tie to mount my GPS upside down, I needed to replace my water bottle holder, tighten my clips and lube my chain. Thanks for being patient with me guys. Haha.

The ride up to Beek's wasn't that eventful. Some guy passed me, but wasn't riding a very fast pace. He ended up cruising with Matt and Troy to the top. My goal for the first few hours was to keep my heart rate at or around 160-170. If I had to push up to 175 I would, but I wanted to stay below 175 if possible.

Interestingly enough, even with my heart rate so low (which really means I was riding lower gears), I only missed my best time to Beek's by a few minutes. I usually like to push as big of a gear as I can and keep a low cadence. This ride taught me that it is probably better to push a lower gear at a higher cadence. That will save me for longer rides.

When I got to Beek's I stopped for maybe 2-3 minutes to pee before getting right back on the bike. I wanted to simulate the race as best as I could and that meant no stopping.

The ride from Beek's to the top of the Motorway wasn't that interesting either. I kept busy by watching my heart rate and eating and drinking on my intervals. Probably lost some time wrestling with the pockets of my new shorts. Haha. The descents on some of the hills felt different as the hard tail doesn't absorb anything for me. I felt everything.

I got to the top of the Motorway only to see Matt waiting to see if I was ok. Once he did he was gone. Haha. Was cool he waited though. Hope he didn't wait too long.

The ride down the Motorway just plain sucked. The first third wasn't horrible, but the middle section after the rocky switchback was terrible. I can't believe how much energy I burned trying to fight the bike over the rocks. On my other bike I usually fly down and it's not a big deal. The hard tail was a battle though. I remember thinking I was going to cramp in my legs on the downhill and that it was harder on my body going down than it was going up.

I was excited to see though that I made it to the bottom of the Motorway in a real time of about 2:40. That means that including stops and all that, it took 2:40. That's better than my average and my ride time was about 2:35. I was very happy with that and I felt good at the bottom of the Motorway.

We rested at Maple Springs for a while, but I wanted to get going as soon as possible. I filled my camelback with Propel, which apparently was a mistake. I thought Propel was mostly water, but it turned out to be pretty sugary, which might trash the bladder in my camelback.

I had forgotten my Cytomax mix and so I ended up using only Propel. It worked ok I guess. I won't make the same mistake on race day.

I wanted to really concentrate on the ride up the pavement from the bottom of Maple Springs. It's so tempting to hammer away because pavement is easier than dirt mentally. You figure that since it's paved it has to be easier and so you should gear up and put the hammer down. Add to that the fact that my three friends were riding at a faster pace and I had to fight the temptation to gear up and attack.

I kept my heart rate down on the paved section and I think it paid dividends later in the ride.

The dirt section after the paved part ends really sucks. I just don't like it on the longer rides. The first two miles are a little rocky and the grade is a little steeper than I would like. It's funny to write that since the grade is actually insanely easy and it's about as smooth as you could want in a fire road. However after riding for 3 hours (and on a hard tail too), it's not that much fun.

The only other thing to note about the ascent to Four Corners was the effect of the gel I was taking. I would notice that every 20-30 minutes I would get this huge burst of energy and would gear up and take off. At the time I thought it was because the grade was getting easier or the road smoother. In retrospect I realize it was the gel hitting my system. All of a sudden I felt amazing and would ride a lot faster. Then the gel would wear off and I'd crash back to earth at my super slow pace.

At Four Corners I met with Troy and Matt as we waited to Andrew. I passed Andrew on Maple Springs because he got a flat. On some other day I would have stopped and helped or waited with him, but this was a race training day. He'd have to go it alone. Haha.

Andrew ended up getting two flats and so it took him a while to get to the top with us. We ended up seeing Cameron at Four Corners and it was cool to talk to him. I mean this guy is what I would consider a world class rider, and it's awesome to talk to him and see what he's doing. He was training for Vision Quest and had just finished his _second_ climb up Harding for the day. He said his first time was around 1:10 I think and the second wasn't too far off that. In other words he can climb Harding twice in about the time it takes me to climb it once. _AMAZING_

From Four Corners I got dropped pretty fast by the boys. It was a really bad climb up to Modjeska Peak. I spun out once and had to restart on the bike. I hate that. I'm not sure if I was picking bad lines, if the bike was the problem or if the trail was just that much rockier, but I had a really hard time getting up that section. Usually I fly up that section and feel fine, but not Saturday.

The ride from Modjeska to the saddle also sucked. I'm usually able to gear way up and fly down, but the bike just wasn't having it. It was really hard to get momentum up on the hard tail. I would get going and then hit a bump and all the speed was lost. Even worse was the fact that I was losing energy absorbing the impact of the rocks etc.

I passed a guy on the climb to the peak, but that didn't make me feel that much better. That last climb always takes so much longer than I want.

I ended up coming to the peak to find that I was alone. My buddies had kept going, but that wasn't a big deal. I understood. I figured they'd be waiting at Upper Holy Jim for me, but they weren't. Haha.

Again the descent from the peak to UHJ was no fun. I want my Specialized back.

When I got to UHJ I just went straight down. I didn't stop to eat or anything. The ride down wasn't the best at all. I walked a lot of sections I would normally ride for two reasons. Firstly I didn't want to fall and get injured before the race. Secondly I was not nearly as confident on the hard tail. The brakes are so much weaker and I didn't have the benefit of suspension. It took me quite a while to hike down a few sections.

Matt and Andrew were waiting for me at the start of Lower Holy Jim. Nothing to report about the descent really. Lots and lots of hikers were out, but they all were nice and got out of the way. I even ran into some _very_ hot girls at the bottom of the trail. It's not how I'd prefer to meet hot girls, but oh well. I mean here I come with snot on my face, white crap (more snot) on my shirt and who knows what else on my shorts ... not the best looking, but oh well.

Troy was waiting at the bottom of Holy Jim and we rode out Trabuco Creek Road together. Well ok, maybe not together. I was way behind because of the stupid hard tail.


In summary I'm stoked I did the ride and I feel great about my fitness level and my nutrition plan for the race. My time was 30 minutes under the GeoLadders average, which is pretty good. I'm hoping to finish the race in under 6:30. Even though my ride time was 6:03 this last Saturday, that doesn't include breaks. We'll see how it goes.

I'll have to stop this post now because it has already gone too long. I'm sure I'll think of more things worth noting, but I'll try and save that for a later post.