Twenty-two riders showed for the Mt. Doug challenge, the second last race of the Victoria Cycling League series this year. I have always feared the Mt Doug hill climb. I fear it when I do it for interval training, which is rare, and I fear it even more when I do it as a race.
When I think of climbing that road, its gradient something around 16-18 percent for much of it, memories of a hazy curtain of suffering descend across my consciousness, and thoughts of it trigger a chain of physiological responses: increased heart rate, shallow breathing, increased muscle tone, hyper-alertness and sweat. Well, perhaps I exaggerate, but not by much.
So I set out to face this fear, the day after a Jordan River ride on Saturday, during which I felt somewhat bonky and during which I believe I actually met the gypsy cyclist in the living flesh. He was a slight man with piercing blue eyes and a short-cropped, slightly greying beard. He had stopped in Sooke near the store where I also stopped on my return from Jordan River. He sat at a little table eating Chinese food, it appeared, judging by the take out venue by which he sat. Nearby was his bicycle with paniers on.
As I stumbled out of the store, light-headed, with a can of Coke and two chocolate bars in hand and one half devoured before I was even out the door, he asked me how my ride was. He, like a man who lived for the solitary freedom of the open road and the exhilaration of continuous energy expenditure, explained that he had journeyed from Vancouver to ride from the ferry in Nanaimo through Duncan and across to Port Renfrew, and now was on the second leg of his journey from Port Renfrew to Victoria. He explained how most of the road from Mesachie Lake to Port Renfrew was actually paved, a fact most people don’t seem to know, he said.
It’s him, I thought. I’ve actually met the gypsy cyclist, although I have never really imagined him with a beard. But unlike the adventures of the imaginary gypsy cyclist, I, as the one whom he met, had no stories to offer him. Surely if he returned to tell stories of his Homeric two days of riding, there would be little to say of the cyclist in blue who stopped at the store in Sooke that Sunday afternoon.
But I digress!
The hill climb: in the end, that which I feared was overcome. My time was 5:25, good for third behind Marcel Aarden’s stellar time of 5:04 and Kenyon Campbell’s time of 5:10. Bob Cameron was a mere two seconds behind me, with a couple of times in the 5:30s, and some in the 5:40s and so on.
Ross Hooker still holds the VCL record of 5:02, while Roland Green has the outright record, of 4:39 (I believe), with a couple of other times under 5 minutes as well, set during B.C. Cup races.
Full results at www.duanebc.com
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