The Return of the Fat Bottomed Girls

The week-end before the solstice crazy people from across the Yukon, and apparently North America, gather to ride their bikes across the Haines pass. These people are crazy, because they know the ridiculous elevation gain and leg numbing hills, but what you never know is how much wind there will be, whether or not it will rain (or better yet, snow), or any other number of factors that can easily change race day into the day of doom. Thankfully, this year's Kluane Chilkat International Bike Relay had excellent conditions, a much appreciated change from last year's wind-fest.

Last year, Lisa and I split up the race, with me riding the first half up to the summit. This year, I joined up with Kathryn from Fort St. John, with her taking the first half and me finishing us up in Haines, Alaska. When we arrived in Haines Junction on Friday, the sky was falling and we were pulling out every piece of rain gear we had packed in anticipation of a very wet and cold ride. Saturday morning, things weren't looking terribly optimistic and about 30 minutes after the cyclists shot out from Haines Junction, it started to rain. Luckily, the rain only last for around an hour, before it started to clear up and turned out to be a gorgeous day. Even with the small bit of rain, the most important weather detail was the wind. Last year, the first half of the race was pounded with a nasty headwind. This year, it was calm all the way to the American border, with only the last two legs subjected to a windy assault.

My goal for the second half of the race was to do it under 5 hours. I am please to say that I shattered this by coming in at 4:01. I decided not to check the time until after I crossed the line, I detail I slightly regret, as I think I could have easily broken 4, if I would have known 3 km from the finish. In any case, I'm not complaining because my race went fabulously and I was even able to walk the next morning. Our time took 3rd place in our category, which was exciting (even if there was only 5 teams in total) and we finished in the top half of the duos.

My dad came up for the race again this year, along with some friends from Edmonton. Dad smoked the course in 8 hours and 40 minutes. He was feeling so good after the race that he put in a strong "leg 9" and stayed up listening to bluegrass at the bar and until 2 in the morning, significantly later than my 11 pm bedtime. Now that he's met is sub-10 hour goal, I'm going to work on convincing him to ride solo with me next year. This will mean getting my butt on the bike as soon as the snow melts, but I think I can probably do it, with a little bit of training and a lot of Cliff shots.

The greatest part of this year's trip is that we managed to get hotel rooms in both Haines Junction and Haines, Alaska. There is no greater feeling in the world then rolling over in the morning to see pouring rain and realize you could have been stuck in a tent. Maybe I'm just getting to be an old yuppie, but a warm dry bed is just too appealing these days!

Our weekend was almost perfect, which meant that something needed to go wrong. That something ended up being a broken tire valve right at the Haines Summit. We tried pumping up the tire with our bike pump every could kilometers, but that was a bit too time consuming, so we decided to slap on the ol' donut. The spare made it 260 km (approximately 180 more than it was ever intended to drive) before blowing up 20 km out of Whitehorse. We were able to limp back home using the original tire (with quick pump-ups every 8 km or so). In the end we got to the house and managed to jump on our bikes and make it to Klondike Rib and Salmon for a huge (and very well-deserved) dinner.

Sierra posted this on Jun 18, 2007 from the outside | | permanent link