The Whitney Classic began as a ride with a few of the Summit staff and their friends. It has since become a yearly tradition and we are now in our twelfth year!

Beginning at Badwater in Death Valley (lowest point in the United States, 282 feet below sea level), the ride crosses two 5,000 foot mountain passes on the way to Whitney Portal at 7,800 feet. The ride distance is 136 miles. This is not an easy ride, with three long climbs (17 miles, 13 miles, 13 miles) and an elevation gain of over 12,000 feet. _Most_big_hill_climbing_events_also_have_large_elevation_ _losses;_the_whitney_does_not_.

In the early years of the event, hiking the Mt. Whitney trail to the summit was a traditional part of the Whitney Classic. We are not able to use the Mt Whitney trail as a part of the event due to USFS regulations. Therefore the mountain is NOT part of the event and the Whitney Classic officially ends at Whitney Portal.

If you decide to hike the Whitney trail on your own, you may do so as an individual. Permits to stay overnight on the mountain may be obtained from the Forest Service.

Benefit: This ride is not with out a cause. The proceeds from this event will go to the general Summit Adventure program to scholarships for our Youth-at-Risk and disabled programs. The Whitney Classic allows us to continue offering affordable programs to a variety of populations.

Phone contact: Cindy Kuttler, (209) 642-3899.

Basically the ride starts in death valley at 3pm (hot? yes.) and has 3 major climbs. It gets cold once the sun goes down. There is a 24 hour cutoff for the ride. They recommend a 42x28 as the largest bailout gear to have, for strong climbers.

I heard about the ride about 4 weeks before it began from a local race magazine (Race Place, I think). The description in the mag was something like: ''grueling 136 miles, over 12,000 of climb''. Since I tend to like extended climbing (yes, I'm strange), I thought about trying this ride. It took me a couple days to call and get some information faxed to me. By that point I had mentioned the idea of trying it to enough friends that they were telling me to try it. The day after getting the fax and looking it over, I email out to a bunch of friends asking them to sponsor my ride. Almost immediately, several people said they'd provide a donation for Summit Adventures. This locked me into the ride; I couldn't back out now. :)

Since my weekly riding had been starting to slack off, I decided that I should get to work to get ready for this event. However, my best laid training plans never got realized. School started a week and a half before the ride, and working full time right until the week before the ride didn't leave me with lots of spare time.

I started doing some rides up a local 5,000ft mountain for training. However, it was further away than I remembered and the 1.5 hour drives each way took up even more of my time. For those in the San Diego county area, this was Mt. Palomar. For those not in the area, Mt. Palomar has an access road which starts at under 3000' and goes up 7% grade for about 6.8 miles to just over 5000'. About 6 miles from this point is the peak, but that portion has a descent and an additional climb and only finishes about 500' higher. The peak also houses the world famous 200" reflecting telescope.

I went out here on several days. My last ride on Mt. Palomar was exactly one week before the Whitney Classic. The last few times, I was doing 4-5 repeats up the mountain taking about 5-6 hours in total. My lowest gear used was a 42x23. I got some good practice in with how night time can affect me when I'm already tired. Plus some colder weather experience, without which I would have had to stop in the Classic after the first climb. I didn't do any riding in extreme heat. I had ridden in ~100 degree weather in the past and I suppose that I wasn't as worried about the heat as I should have been.

I woke up Friday morning to find that I had a cold sore in my mouth. It hurt a fair amount when eating, but there wasn't much that I could do about it at this point. I was somewhat irked, because I had run around for the past two weeks yelling at all sick people to stay away from me, lest I catch a cold. Then I get a canker sore the day before the ride, maybe it's stress related, because it's been years and years since I last had one.

Friday was school as normal, and then packing and getting ready. At 9pm, I drove over to my sag driver's house, and ate some spaghetti. We then took off for Furnace Creek in Death Valley about 10:30. I drove until about midnight, at which point Tim, my driver, took over. I tried to sleep in the car a bit, but wasn't too successful. We arrived in the furnace creek campgrounds about 4am. I threw my sleeping bag on a picnic table (I should have put it _underneath_ the table, and went to sleep. I woke up at 8am when it was getting warm enough that I couldn't hide to ignore the light. Felt fine. The temperature seemed nice and reasonable (this is a bad sign, because it was only 8am).

I ate some food, drank a lot of water. By the ride start I had made sure to drink 1.5 gallons. It was getting hot, and we had several hours to kill. So we drove out to badwater slowly and and walked out on the salt flats. Then drove back to furnace creek for some food and sitting in the shade of the visitor's center. Then a little after 1 we drove back out to badwater. We got there about 1:30, and I and one other person walked over to the registration table. They weren't ready for us yet (we were the first 2 people there). Apparently they were a tad behind schedule since registration was supposed to be from 12:30 to 2:30. After getting my bike and myself setup, checked in, inspected, and running to the port-a-potty a few times (1.5 gallons), it was finally announced that we should gather to get pre-ride lectures from the Forest Service and the California Highway Patrol. We were told that it was above 110 degrees, and given various other safety and regulation lectures. This went on past the starting time of 3pm.

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The ride started at about 3:15pm. I've learned from the few mass start rides that I've been involved in that starting at the front is a good thing. Often I forget to line up until I'm half-way in the start pack, and have to fight my way around other people to get to where I want to be. Well, I started this ride by zipping out in the lead with about 5 other people. I guess I've retrained myself well; let other people fight to pass me not the other way around. A couple people took off very quickly, and I decided to just go at ''my pace''. I was moving away from another person who had been right behind me.

Within 1 minute my heart rate monitor (HRM) started beeping. I was already at 170bpm. Remembering that I'd heard that heart rates get elevated in heat like this, I kept going trying to figure out if I should be slowing down. I didn't feel like I was pushing that hard, so stayed with it. The sun was coming down pretty hard, and I was sucking down water from my camelbak. A couple support cars passed me and pulled off just ahead of me. I was very surprised. I had never ridden with support before, and I had simply told my driver to meet me at the first checkpoint 17 miles in. Someone in the passenger seat of a red land vehicle thing gave me the thumbs up sign. Things like this helped me a lot and brought a smile to my face.

A few minutes later a person caught me and we exchanged some basic hellos. Only 3 people at the ride had camelbaks (I was one) and this person was another. We rode together for a bit, taking a couple alternating pulls, but then I decided I couldn't ignore my HRM and body anymore and fell off the back slowing down. Since I haven't ridden in pacelines/groups except for about 3 rides in the last 8 months, I find that riding with someone else often is more of an energy drain than the draft is a plus. But just over a small hill I saw him hit a paceline of 4-5 people. I decided that it might make sense to stick to these guys, so I sped up a bit to catch them.

I finally caught them, but decided upon reaching them that they were going to hard for my plans, so dropped off the back again. Drinking a lot during this whole time. Suddenly I was being passed by a whole line of bicyclists. I dropped in behind the 8-10 of them. Their pace was more in line with what I wanted and had no trouble staying with them. At this point, Tim (my sag driver: Tim from now on) drove past. The thought crossed my mind that I wished he had passed earlier and could have gotten a photo of me out by myself, rather than seeing me at the end of some huge paceline. A couple more cyclists caught up to the line and fell in behind me. The person in front of me seemed to fluctuate his speed a lot and it kept disturbing me. Perhaps, it was just my lack of group riding recently. I felt like I had to keep slowing down and rejumping to get his wheel and it was irritating me.

We hit a hill. Death Valley is not flat. I thought it'd be flat for some reason. But our car drive out showed me that there were a lot of small/medium hills (rollers) between the start and the first checkpoint. The whole line seemed to break apart. The person in front of me was suddenly going slow. I decided this was the perfect opportunity to escape from paceline hell. I normally tend to speed up climbing over rollers like this in the first place, so I decided to let the HRM start beeping while I pulled away over the top. I'm not sure if the line reformed, but there were now a group of a few individual riders out in front of it.

I immediately felt more comfortable being by myself. As more rollers came along, I found myself gaining more on the people ahead of me. On one descent, someone latched onto my wheel and I pulled him for a while. Sometimes even pulling can get to me, because I feel I shouldn't slow down or such, so it still affects my pace. But I started to feel a little tired, and he came out and pulled for a while, keeping the same pace. He asked if I was a climber noting that he thought I looked like one. I said yes. We hit a hill, and he stood and climbed over it without losing speed. I stayed seated and stuck to his wheel. We past someone on this climb. On the next flat, I pulled out in front for my pull. I was watching closely to make sure his shadow was still with me, since I was pretty happy with his pace and riding so far. We hit the next roller and there was a guy halfway up it. As I passed him, I kept watching the shadows to make sure that I wasn't going too fast up the climb. On the descent, I noticed that he was still with me.

Suddenly in the middle of the next flat, he pulls out from behind me and starts to pass at a pretty good speed. I was a bit surprised, and then I realized that this was a different person! The biker we were passing on the last hill stuck to my wheel and we dropped the original person. I let this guy go, we were getting pretty close to the first checkpoint. During a water bottle exchange the driver of this rider yelled something which I took to mean he was in 6th place.

After a turn at Furnace Creek (which the CHP had setup with traffic control), it was just a very short distance to the first check point. I pulled in, took off my camelbak. I started explaining to Tim what concentration of cytomax to refill it with. I also asked him to get me a couple advil. I had to take a few moments to explain to him where the advil was! It's at this time that I started to realize that I hadn't properly considered sag support and hadn't told Tim enough information before starting. I told him to bring me the camelbak and advil up the road about 4 miles. I got back on my bike and took off. Upon being reminded to check in my rider number via a shout, I shouted back '135'. It was a little after 4pm.

There was a definite descent out of this checkpoint and I pushed through it. I was feeling pretty good so far, and wasn't really letting my mind get filled with the thought that I had about 120 miles to go. I kept drinking, probably about once every 3-5 minutes. My HRM beeps every 10 minutes to tell me to drink, but it was so hot I drank more than that. I was finding it hard to drink my ultrafuel liquid carbo. I never had any trouble with it in the past, and I assumed that it must be the heat. I forced a banana down.

Along the way I passed a woman who was sagging a couple times (as she kept hopping down the road). I got to saying hi. I've decided that in the future I'll make sure to tell my sag drivers to do their best to wave and otherwise encourage all riders, because it really does matter.

Another larger (this should be in comparison to the rollers earlier, nothing compares to a 9% grade later that night) climb loomed ahead, and I passed someone up it. On the next climb, I passed yet another person. My internal counter had read down to 5; I thought I was in 5th place. I wasn't there to race, I was there to finish, but it was a nice psychological boost to think I was so close to the front.

I got my camelbak at some point in here and swallowed down the advil. I also exchanged a plain waterbottle that I had emptied in the 4 miles from the checkpoint. Half of it I had poured on my head, a practice I was to continue from that point until after the sun went down. Tim told me that as of the first checkpoint, I was only 4 minutes behind the leader.

More descents and climbs. I started to get a very unique headache, but otherwise I felt very good. I hit checkpoint 2 and didn't see Tim! I decided to just go on as I still had some water left on the bike. I yelled out my number. Someone yelled back that I had a message, so I slowed, turned around and came back. Then they yelled that the message was for #134 not #135, so I arghed and turned around and took off. It irked me to lose momentum there. Another volunteer a bit further up the road gave me a look which seemed like she was acknowledging how that annoyed me and smiled. I felt better about it and took off, hoping that I would be seeing Tim soon, cause I was nearly out of water.

Just near a turn, I saw Tim coming from the other direction, so I just kept going. He turned around and caught me a minute later. He gave me more fluid, and explained that the checkpoint wasn't where it was indicated on the map (looking at the map latter, I agree with him).

I passed 2 more people on the somewhat longer flat sections and more gradual climbs and descents that were in the shortish section between checkpoints 2 & 3. My brain clicked over thinking that I was now in 3rd. I was baffled. Perhaps everyone knew something I didn't, and I had overexerted myself? I tucked down on my aerobars through almost this entire section, and decided that since I figured that the desert portion would be harder for me than the climbing that I didn't think I had overdone it yet.

Hit checkpoint 3 at 41 miles. Still feeling good. I toss Tim my camelbak, and my ultrafuel bottle. I tell him to make 2 scoops of ultrafuel (since I only drank half of it and it's normally 4 scoops). I'm told that I'm about 15 minutes behind the leader, and that there are 6 people ahead of me with 4 in a pack near the front, but with 1 only about a minute ahead. So much for 3rd, but still feeling really good about my performance, and since I was just hoping to finish, I figure this is a good sign. A woman volunteer asks me if I want some carbos as I go flying out of there. I yell back that I'm fine. It's about at this point that I start consciously thinking that I am drastically under the amount of food I had planned to eat during this section.

It seems like there is a slight hill out of checkpoint 3, so I start climbing it. But it just seems to keep going on. For a while along here, I keep constantly passing the same 3 sag vehicles (I will keep seeing them for quite a long time). Eventually Tim catches me with liquid. He says something about needing lights soon. As it's about 5:30, I figure that we'll need them soon. He says something about top of this hill. It seemed to me that this hill just kept going, even tho it didn't look that long. My headache started to get significantly worse.

I started pouring more and more water over my head and body, in an attempt to keep from overheating on this hill. Somewhere around here, I realized that I was actually on the first *climb*. The first climb is a simple 17 miles at only 5.5% average grade.

My headache grew progressively worse. I had never had a headache like this before. And I've experienced quite a few headaches as a person who gets migraines for various reasons (such as food scheduling and caffiene withdrawal as two examples -- btw, this is important: I'm caffiene free for a year now). This headache was centered directly in the middle of my head (mid-sagitally) along a line between my temples. I put it's size at about a large almond or small walnut, shaped more like an almond. I did my best to ignore it, and when that failed to actively try to get rid of it using relaxation and visualization techniques taught to me for migraines. These didn't help either. But I suspect that biking up a 5% grade isn't exactly a good form of relaxation. Luckily at no point did it occur to me that I still had approximately 100 miles to go for another 14 hours. I just seemed to be fighting the pain a tiny short distance by a tiny short distance. Psychologically it would have at least slowed me down, if not make we want to quit entirely, if I thought I'd have that headache for that long.

I rode on, doing my best to just keep myself soaked in water and drinking, hoping the headache would go away. I passed Tim and asked him for advil up ahead. He gave me some, it was about 6pm. The sun was just starting to slip behind the mountains and which was at least a psychological reduction in the heat.