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| Illahee Hill (courtesy of Google maps) |
Phil, a friend and coworker, got a promotion and will be leaving
my office. To celebrate and commemorate the occasion, five of us got together
for a ride. The plan was to end the ride with a celebratory beverage. The ride
was curated to include Illahee hill, a local test piece. The kind of place you
go to in order to find how in or out of shape you really are. Phil decided to
make the ride more interesting by offering a beverage to anyone who could beat
him up the hill.
We set off on Friday, the shining sun taking an edge off the
chill in the air. We rolled down Tracyton, watched the mountains play
peek-a-boo with the clouds, watched the reflections of the game on the water,
and watched each other for signs of weakness. Each hill proceeding Illahee was
met with dual purpose. First and foremost, each of us was trying to warm up for
the big show. Attacking a large hill cold is a recipe for suffering slowly as
you watch your friends pull away. Secondly, we wanted to see how the others
were doing. Were they dropping off the back on the smaller climbs? Did they
look calm? Did they look comfortable?
I am convinced that a full half of bike racing, at least the
low-stakes-between-friends kind of racing I’m familiar with, is mental. If you
feel faster than your opponents, you go faster. If you feel slower, something
inside puts the brakes on and you go slower. There is machinery inside the
body, in the uncharted depths of it, that controls what your body will actually
do when your brain tells it to act. That machinery is controlled more by
emotion, by feel, than by will and by mind.
We took McWilliams, up and over the rolling hills, across
Wheaton way, and down Oceanview Boulevard. Oceanview Boulevard is a fast, fun
decent that is lined by trees and faces the bay. On a clear day, you can see
Mount Rainer framed by the trees as you whiz down the hill. On our ride, Rainer
was hidden by the clouds. A view for another day.
And there it was. The hill. Illahee hill. One mile. 300
feet. Six percent average grade. Those are numbers that may or may not mean
anything to you, so allow me describe it to you in another way. The hill is not
steep enough to be immediately intimidating. It invites you to go fast, to
stand up and ride past it. It doesn’t look long. There is a bend in the road,
and surely the hill must end on the other side. It does not. The overeager
cyclist will find themselves out of gas at the bend only to see the vast
majority of the hill stretching before them, waiting to grind them down. There
is a feeling that all cyclists have felt, that deep pain of going too hard too
soon only to find a seemingly endless suffering, a deep longing for the end of
the climb.
The prudent cyclist takes the start of Illahee slowly and
rides a steady pace up the climb. So, of course, Phil stood up and attacked at
the foot of the climb. Delaney and Ben followed. I groaned internally and then
spun up to grab Delaney’s wheel. Phil continued to stand, flying up the hill.
“Too soon,” Delaney said, as he dropped into a saner pace.
“Is this the hill?” Ben asked. Of the five of us, Ben was
the least prepared. Invited at the last minute, he was riding in street clothes
with a backpack on unfamiliar roads. This did not diminish his enthusiasm.
“Yeah, this is the hill,” I said, wheezing as we rounded the
first bend.
Ben responded by standing up and flying passed us, dancing
on the pedals, his backpack swaying with each stroke. He caught Phil and passed
him as well, and my heart fell. Phil fought hard and caught Ben’s wheel, and
the pair of them started to pull away. I did not try to follow their accelerations.
My heart was already in my throat, my lungs already burning. I was putting
everything I had into holding onto Delaney’s wheel. I was going to come in fourth.
Phil attacked again and put a gap between him and Ben. He
was unstoppable. That mechanism I talked about earlier, the one that is so
emotionally driven, began to shut me down. My legs got heavy. My breath was
labored. Defeat felt inevitable. I fought on, but it was a dogged sort of
fight, more a refusal to give up than an attempt to win.
I started the ride with grand designs on winning this little
race, but those plans were slipping away. All I could do was stare at Delaney’s
wheel and concentrate on spinning. But then, something hoped for but still
unexpected began to happen. The gap stabilized. The distance between the
leading pair and the following pair stopped growing and then, shockingly, began
to shrink.
I could see the crest of the hill. I down shifted a few
gears, stood, and launched a desperate attack. I passed Delaney. I sat and spun
and mashed and struggled and urged my bike forward. I was hollow, weak,
exhausted. I stood again and passed Ben. Phil was just ahead, seated, head
down, struggling in the last few meters. I surged, leaned into my bike, willed
that machine to go faster. Three bike lengths back. Two. One.
Phil crested the hill.
My momentum carried me by him. Too late for victory, but
just in time to offer first congratulations. Phil won in style. He attacked and
attacked and attacked. He put everything he had into that climb, and he won.
Post script:
I should add that Mike was the fifth rider. Unaddressed in
the above retelling, he was fighting a battle of his own. He posted a personal
best time on the hill and can rightly claim a victory of his own.
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