(This document was scanned and an OCR was used for the text, so there may be some typos.)

The 1990 Markleevile Death Ride -- Tom Davis

I have ridden the Markleeville Death Ride since 1986, and each year it has gotten more popular. This year, there was a limit of 2000 riders, and since there are only about 5 places to stay aside from a bunch of campgrounds in Alpine County, you have to sign up early for both a ride number and for a place to stay. Ellyn and I signed up months ahead for both, even though at the time, I was obsessed with the marathon and hadn't been doing any riding at all -- I ran in the hills one or two days each weekend and basically stopped riding in August.

In 1990, you could sign up for 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 passes (well, there's also a zero pass option for spectators that included lunch, a cycling hat, and maybe a water bottle). The cost was the same for any number of passes, so of course I signed up for all five. Ellyn, being more sensible, signed up for one. I figured 5 passes were nearly impossible, but I'd leave my options open.

The first two years I rode the Death Ride, I did all five passes; on the next two years I did only four. Last year I think I could probably have done the last one if someone had held a gun to my head, but the other year I was completely cooked after four.

In 1986, the ride was tough, but I trained pretty well; in 1987, it was easy to do five passes since they were arranged in a logical order, and the easiest ones were last. For the last three years, however, the course has been about the same, and fiendishly difficult.

First you ride from the start at Turtle Rock park following the Carson River (Kit Carson's name is plastered all over Alpine County) and drop about 500 feet to the town of Markleeville. You then climb Monitor Pass and descend the other side into the Owens Valley to where the road meets Highway 395. You turn around and retrace your path over the pass, down the other side, and back to the start. After a stupid little loop in the desert, you head up Hope Valley and Climb Luther and Carson Passes, coming down each the way you went up. You then return to the start. To climb the final one, Ebbett's Pass, you have to retrace the route back down to the base of Monitor, but bear to the right and follow another stream up to the top. Not only do you have to pass the start/finish at Turtle Rock Park on your way, but you have to retrace about 16 miles (including a 500 foot drop/climb) that you already did in the morning. Of course, Ebbett's Pass is also the highest and steepest. The total distance for five passes is about 142 miles, and the total climb for the day is about 15000 feet.

At least this year I knew a bunch of other folks who would be riding, including 4 members of my bicycle club. Also, a woman who works with me, Ann Sydeman, had taken up cycling, and she, her boyfriend Henry Moreton, and his buddy (name unknown) on the Cal cycling team talked themselves into doing the ride. They also managed to suck another fellow at work, Luther Kitahata, into signing up as well. I also figured I'd run into other folks I know at the ride.

As the date of the ride continued to approach, I continued to not ride my bicycle at all and spent the weekends running. I ran the Humboldt Marathon in October and qualified for the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon was in the middle of April, and two weeks later, I did the Big Sur Marathon. Then 1 started training for the San Francisco Marathon on July 1. Luckily for my death ride, I managed to get an ideal injury about 3 weeks before the marathon - I bruised the top of my foot (I think by running for too long with the shoelaces too tight). It was an ideal injury because it was very painful to run, but cycling was painless (well, at least it didn't hurt my foot), and as soon as I was sure I'd never run the marathon, I freaked out about the Death Ride.

I started doing two hard rides each weekend and the Thursday night rides with my bicycling club - short, hilly, high-speed rides that last about 2 hours after work. The first week, I did 40 and 50 mile rides on the weekend, and didn't even finish the Thursday ride. I did my longest ride Ñ about 80 miles Ñ the weekend before Markleeville. I remember talking with the president of our club (who hadn't seen much of me for the past six months), and when I told him I had signed up for five passes at Markleeville, he told me it would be the comeback of the century if I actually did it. I began to convince myself that perhaps the three pass option might be about right; 80 miles and maybe 9000 feet of climbing. Ellyn had even less time to ride before the event, and although she did get in a few rides on weekends, she figured even one pass at Markleeville was hopeless, and sold her entry to a fellow in my bike club.

Ellyn and I both took a week of vacation before the ride, and spent Monday and Tuesday at home running errands, having guests to dinner, and generally enjoying ourselves. On Wednesday noon, we started driving. It was a furnace all the way, and the temperature in Sacramento was around 105 degrees. Our accommodations were at a place called Sorensen's in Hope Valley at about 7000 feet, so the heat wasn't intolerable there, although we didn't need much more than a sheet or thin blanket to sleep comfortably on any of the nights.

Just as we pulled in to the Sorensen's parking lot, we met a couple of friends from home who were there for the ride Ñ John Hughes and his girlfriend Barbara Harvey. Speaking of the comeback of the century, John Hughes is it. Last year he qualified for the RAAM (Race Across AMerica) where riders go day and night for about 10 days in a race from San Francisco to Washington DC (at least that year Ñ this year I think it starts in Los Angeles). He had qualified by winning a 500 mile race in about 28 hours of continuous riding. The winners of the RAAM generally sleep about 2 hours per night and ride fast all the rest of the time. John had to train like crazy just to qualify, and just after he did so, he got hit by a truck out in the boondocks past Sacramento on a night training ride.

Apparently the docs in the boondocks didn't do a great job, and he got some horrible bone infection. He was in a wheelchair for months, and had repeated operations to fix up his legs, arms, and everything else. He's still got metal plates in one of his legs, and gets awfully sore after a few hours on the bike. Anyway, he had been the physical therapist's dream patient for more than a year, and had decided to try the Death Ride. His longest ride to date was around 100 miles.

It turned out that John and Barbara were staying at Sorensen's, and came over for wine that evening. John said he was planning to climb Monitor and Ebbett's pass the next day (Thursday). He was planning to start early, since we were having bad luck with the afternoon weather. On Wednesday afternoon, it suddenly got very cloudy, and began to rain with plenty of wind and thunder and lightning.

The next day, at about 10 o'clock, I decided I'd take a ride up Ebbett's so I'd at least have ridden all the passes even if I only finished 4 on the official ride on Saturday. Ellyn took off in the other direction to do Luther Pass since it's probably the easiest. To get to Ebbett's, you race down Hope Valley to Woodford's, dropping about 1000 feet, and then you ride down to Markleeville and lose another 500 feet. I think it must have been the altitude or maybe just general fear and loathing, but I felt like a dead fish even riding over little 30 foot bumps on the way to Markleeville. It was also blazing hot between Woodford's and Markleeville, and although I refilled in town, I was wondering how I was going to make it all the way up Ebbett's Pass on just two bottles of water.

There's a long, gentle climb to Ebbett's for about 9 or 10 miles from Markleeville, and I figured I'd just take it real easy and dawdle my way up. Just as the climb started in earnest, I noticed a cyclist filling water bottles in a campground off the road, so I stopped. It was John. He'd already gone up and down Monitor Pass, and was water loading for Ebbett's. I drank a couple bottles on the spot, refilled them, and started climbing with him, and for the first time in my life, I was able to keep up, although just barely. Once we got in the shade things cooled down rapidly, and we enjoyed the ride all the way up.

As it is in me Olympics, we both had a urine test at the top of the pass. The John Hughes urine test is a bit different from the Olympic test, however. The Hughes urine test involves seeing if you can pee at the top of each pass; if you can, you're probably properly hydrated; if not, watch out!

I had broken the front fork on my favorite bike and I was riding an older bicycle that handles very differently. It is not as stable, has much tighter steering and is generally trickier to ride, but climbs like a dream. I told John not to wait for me on the way down because as mister paranoid, I intended to set a record for the slowest time ever down Ebbett's pass. John assured me that no matter how paranoid I was, he was more so, and that I would surely be down long before he was. I was right and he was wrong.

By the time I got off the steep part, John was nowhere in sight, so I started cranking like a madman to try to catch him. It took about 3 miles to ride him down, and then we drafted each other back to Woodford's. A little thunder and rain added to the fun. John met Barbara in Woodford's for lunch, and I headed back up to Sorensen's alone. By the time I climbed the 1000 feet, I was pretty wiped out. I did about 60 miles total that day with about 4000 total feet of climbing.

Ellyn had successfully climbed Luther Pass, and felt good enough that she had put in some extra flat miles toward Carson Pass as well. After a shower and a nap, we decided to go to South Lake Tahoe for dinner. We found on previous trips that the meals in the casinos are pretty good and pretty cheap Ñ they figure they'll take your money at the tables. We took a tour of the casinos and bought a couple of rolls of nickels to squander. At one point Ellyn was up about 9 bucks, but by the end, we were down to a 25 cent profit, so our lifetime net losses at the casinos is now $9.75 Ñ we lost all ten bucks last time. With a 5 cent maximum bet, it takes a long time for anything to happen, and we must have invested a couple of hours making our 25 cent profit.

Dinners are cheap, but not 25 cents, so we came back from Tahoe with less money than when we began. We got plenty of thunder and lightning and rain that night.

On Friday morning, the day before the ride, Ellyn and I set off to climb Carson Pass - a 1500 foot climb from Sorensen's. Since Carson is the fourth pass, I figured I'd only need to do three passes on the actual day of the ride. We took it slow and easy, and neither of us had any problems. On the way down with the wind at our backs and a beautiful road, I got going 56 mph, and Ellyn hit 38 - personal speed records for both of us.

Afterwards, we drove to the ride headquarters at Turtle Rock Park to register for the ride, and for the traditional pre-ride spaghetti dinner. I ran into another fellow, Dan Baum, from Silicon Graphics, who was planning to ride 3 passes. It rained through dinner, and I found out later from John that a couple of his buddies had gotten caught in a real downpour on Monitor, complete with thunder, lightning, and hail. We said they turned around because when they looked up, the rain coming down "hurt their eyes".

Dan Baum, however, had seen something even stranger - he drove to Markleeville over Ebbctt's pass and he had seen people getting ready for the ride on the day before on that pass. It seems like a pretty silly thing to do unless you are a really strong rider - you'd be better off resting or doing minor climbs the day before - but these folks were not exactly strong riders - they were walking their bikes!

Again that night we got plenty of rain, so I was certain that the Death Ride itself would have good weather, since all the bad weather must have been used up.

On the day of the ride, Ellyn and I got up at 4:00 am and drove down to the start. We were particularly happy not to be campers since the parking lot at Turtle Rock Park was muddy as hell. I ate my breakfast and most of Ellyn's, and I started riding at 6 am while she took the car back to Sorensen's to go back to bed. The 5 pass riders start at 6, and folks riding fewer passes start later and later so as to avoid crowding, and so that the folks going farther will have fewer weak and inexperienced riders doing bizarre things on the road in front of them. Consequently, I was afraid that everybody would be stronger that I was, but surprisingly, I was about average.

I knew that John Hughes had left very early (at about 5:15), so I wouldn't see much of him, and I was right Ñ for most of the ride he stayed about 45 minutes to an hour ahead. It was quite convenient; very time I'd see him coming down a pass, I'd know that I had about 35 minutes of climbing left. Unfortunately, meeting in that way doesn't make for a high quality social interaction Ñ one rider is exhausted, struggling, and blinded by sweat in his eyes, crawling up the hill at 8 miles per hour, and the other rider has a death-grip on his handlebars and has his eyes locked on the road a hundred yards ahead as he hurtles down at 40-50 miles per hour, wishing that he had replaced that questionable tire the night before.

As I climbed Monitor Pass, I met a fellow riding at almost exactly my speed, and we yakked all the way to the top. He was aiming for 3 or 4 passes, but didn't want to destroy himself since he had a triathlon the next weekend. I Figured if I just stayed at his pace, I'd probably last longer.

We had a great descent down the far side, and started climbing back at 8 am from Highway 395. It was already starting to get warm, so I was glad I'd started riding at 6. We were met by another fellow who was riding a bit faster up the back side (some real-estate agent from Arnold, California) and we picked up the pace a little to ride with him. He got ahead of us on the way back down Monitor, and we lost him. About half way down Monitor Pass, I saw Ann Sydeman coming up, and it looked like she was doing fine and having a good time. She had been a bit worried about being able to complete the 1 pass option, given the altitude and distance (about 60 miles).

On the ride back from Monitor through Markleeville and Woodford's, I started feeling better than ever in spite of the fact that I'd already climbed 6000 feet. My triathlete friend dropped back and I never saw him again. As I passed Sorensen's on the way up, I saw Ellyn and Barbara, so I stopped and told them I planned to do at least 4 passes, and I'd decide about Ebbett's later. I caught the real-estate agent man about halfway up Luther Pass. We rode part way to the top together, but I got there about 5 minutes faster. I waited for him, and we came back down to the lunch stop at the base of Carson Pass. I convinced him that we could easily climb and descend Carson Pass before the lunch stop closed and that it might be a good idea to hurry since it was starting to drizzle.

As we started cranking up the pass, it really began to pour, and there was plenty of lightning and thunder. I just got wet, but a lot of folks got hail as well, and said it makes a pretty amazing sound drumming on your helmet. For the last 1000 feet of climbing, I was pretty wet and miserable, and was able to convince myself that 4 passes were plenty. I was so anxious to finish the climb and get the hell down that I left the real-estate agent far behind. I had a windbreaker, but I waited until the top to put it on since it's pretty easy to generate your own heat on the climbs. They had cardboard at the top which you could stuff under your jersey, and I used that and the windbreaker, and shivered my way down the pass. After dropping 1000 feet or so, the sun came out, and I warmed up pretty fast. I skipped lunch altogether, although I ate a couple hands full of cookies, and started down toward Woodford's.

I saw Ellyn and Barbara at Sorensen's again on the way down, and by the time I reached them my brain had started to malfunction again, and I was convinced I could do Ebbett's pass. Consequently, I told Ellyn to meet me at the finish at about 5:30 or 6. I broke a spoke on the way down to Woodford's so the rear wheel was enough out of true that it rubbed on the brakes with each revolution. I figured I'd fix it at Turtle Rock Park, where you were supposed to check in if you wanted to attempt the fifth pass.

At the check-in, I was amazed to see that they were still on the first half of the first sheet, so I was really making good time. I ran into Ann at the check-in and she asked me how many passes I had done. I told her I'd already done 4, and was checking in for number 5, and that I really felt great.

"That's funny.", she said, "You sure don't look great." Truly encouraging words from a fellow Silicon Graphics employee.

I trued my wheel as well as I could, but it still wobbled a bit, and started off for Ebbett's Pass. I had one exciting encounter with a truck just beyond Markleeville, and nearly got forced off the side of the road. It was on a right turn, and as the truck passed me going around the curve, its wheels remained on the road, but of course, the body of the truck was much closer 10 the edge. I only had an inch or two of pavement to play with. The way the driver honked at me, I'm sure he was an asshole, and I'm pretty sure he was either trying to scare me or kill me on that comer. Unfortunately, on a bike, there's not much you can do.

Needless to say, there were not a lot of folks on the road on me way to Ebbett's. Quite a few people were still coming back from the 1 and 2 pass options on Monitor, but once I got past the turn off to Monitor, things got pretty lonely. At least every time you met somebody, you knew they were nuts, and probably riding at just about your speed, since you'd both gone a hundred-odd miles in almost exactly the same time. We speculated that around each comer we'd probably find a bus waiting to pick up all the 5 pass riders and take them back to the asylum.

There was a rest stop at the base of Ebbett's and I loaded up my stomach with cookies and fruit and water, and started the final climb. I spent time climbing with a bunch of different folks, but I ground up the final three miles (with plenty of lightning and rain, of course) with a fellow named Doug from Oxnard.

With my wheel out of true, my odometer had gone bad, and it was nice to have his to measure the final miles to the top. I remembered from the Thursday ride that there is a lake a few hundred yards from the top, and around it there's a distinctive rock-pile. I started seeing that rock-pile over and over again, starting about 4 miles from the top.

I reached the high point of the pass and the high point of my cycling career at the same time. If you complete all five passes, you get a special pin at the top of Ebbett's, pinned on by no less than Miss Alpine County herself. It must have been near the low point of her reign, however, standing in the freezing rain at the top of the highest pass in the county pinning pins on freezing, smelly cyclists, more interested in eating and getting the hell out of there than in her.

They had plastic bags at the top, so I took one of those, put it on over my windbreaker, and started coasting down the hill. The pass is steep and twisty, so everybody was taking it very slowly, and the only muscles I used on the way down were those in my fingers squeezing the brakes. By the time I got to the rest area at the bottom, I was really cold and started to shiver pretty badly. They had some blankets, so I crawled under one of those, and started eating. One of the women working at the rest stop had had some first aid training, and was certain she was treating her first hypothermia patient. I told her that in exactly 20 minutes, the sugar from the power bars I was wolfing down would hit my bloodstream, and if she checked in 25 minutes, she would witness a miracle cure. Of course she didn't believe me and checked every 5 minutes or so - I was really impressed how seriously she took her job.

As predicted, on the 15 minute visit I was still shivering, at 20 minutes I seemed nearly normal, and at 25, I was raring to go. She insisted on taking my pulse to make sure, and was amazed to see that was already rock-steady at 60 beats per minute.

The 12 miles back were uneventful, and Ellyn, Ann, Henry, and Luther were at the finish. Henry's friend from the Cal cycling team was still somewhere on Ebbett's and they were waiting for him.

Ann did one pass, Luther, two. Henry and Dan Baum, three, and Henry's friend whom I never met, five. John Hughes did all five passes, and finished about an hour and a half ahead of me Ñ apparently he didn't feign hypothermia at the base of Ebbett's like I did. A good time was had by all.

Ellyn and I had dinner with John and Barbara at Sorensen's that night, and exchanged war stories far into the night - I think John and I managed to stay awake until nearly 8 o'clock.