From sea level to volcano summit on a bicycle

Prior to doing the climb, I studied the hell out of the elevation profile. Knowing that the steepest quarter mile is 11% and the steepest continuous mile is 7.8% I was very confident that my hilly riding routine in San Francisco would prepare me well for the endeavor. However, I had never done over 10,000 ft of elevation gain in a single ride before. I hit up my friend Declan the week before to ride both Mt Tam and Mt Diablo on the same day. It’s 126 miles and 11,000 ft — another insane ride that deserves a separate blog post but I don’t want to digress too much here. So, after Tam and Diablo, I felt way more prepared than ever. I decided to keep my mileage really low the week of the race and only did a Z2/Z3 ride the day before in East Maui for some warmup. On my flight to Maui, I brought my bicycle along with repair tools and around 1,000 calories of bars and gels knowing there would be support along the way.

The morning of June 25th started gloriously. The race started at 6:30am so I arrived around 5:55am. Plenty of time to prepare. I talked for a bit with a cyclist from LA and we exchanged words of encouragement with one another. I could sense that everyone was already in high spirits! The race began with a Hawaiian tradition of singing and chanting, after which we started rolling hard.

In the first 5 miles, the big peloton started to scatter. I began to take notice of people around my pace. At first I thought of chasing the leading group but thought better. This is not a climb I’m familiar with plus I prefer taking it slow and taking pictures along the way. That said, I still got very excited and put my heart rate in the 155–160 bpm zone a lot. My average power was 160–180 watts, my usual threshold zone. I knew this decision would bite back at some point but I was having way too much fun from the adrenaline rush.

After 10 miles, I knew I had to slow down otherwise I would suffer above 6,000 ft of elevation. That was also when the weather changed for the worse. Biking up a tall volcano means going through many weather zones. And that was the case.

The next 20 miles was spent biking in from slightly damp to very wet conditions. It was miserable. When we got to the famed Haleakala switchbacks, I could barely see anything. A fellow rider told me this is not typical Haleakala, but also the mountain is very very “moody” and unpredictable. Coincidentally, the middle part is also the toughest with multiple 8–11% pitches. I tried my hardest to conserve as much energy as possible by pedaling in lowest gear whenever the grade got over 6% and maintaining a 80rpm cadence to save myself from knee pains. My average power dipped down into 140–150 watts. Still good enough. Psychologically speaking, despite the rain I was really enjoying my Spotify playlist. The “high” was still there and music made a lot of sense. I was spinning in the “zone”. At rest stops, I got to chat with fellow riders and volunteers and some of them really liked my Fat Cake kit and the purple bike hehe.

At 8,000 ft, things started to take a more drastic turn. I started to feel the lack of oxygen and built up acid lactic in my legs. I started to get into this weird psychedelic headspace when I went around in thought loops. The line between reality and imagination started to blur. Like on a typical insane ride, I started to question my own sanity and the life decisions that got me to that point. I started to doubt myself and my ability to finish this climb. One thing that was stuck on my mind though was that I cannot give up. The pain of not finishing this ride and regret would far surpass the physical and mental pain I was feeling at the moment. I gathered every ounce of willpower and reasoning I had left and kept reminding myself: “one pedal stroke at a time”.

When I got to the last hundred yards that led on to the summit, the road turned steeper than 6%. I didn’t know what else was going on, alongside the words of cheering and encouragement from people on cars, passers-by and volunteers. I took breaks literally every few hundred feet to keep myself from feeling too dizzy. Finally I pushed on to the summit and finish line.

That was one of the best euphorias I ever felt.

Thankfully, I got a ride down from the organizers. Normally I love fast descents but the condition that day was simply too sketchy to do a 10,000ft downhill straight back to sea level. My brake pads would melt because Haleakala has some of the craziest hairpins in North America.

The more I talked with fellow riders, the more respect I have for them. There are a few folks well into their 60s and 70s yet finished around the same time as me or even faster. There was a woman in her mid 60s that rode all over the world — from the French Alps to Dolomites in Italy — to prepare for this climb. This is one of the aspects I love so much about cycling: we share the same yearning for suffering, yet we always push ourselves to the end of our physical limits and then laugh about it after. I felt like I had known those people for years.

Overall, this climb reminds me of every reason why I bike. The day before, I received news of Roe v. Wade overturn. Life is so full of craziness and nonsense that I have a very hard time trying to understand. But being there, present, suffering, breathing and pedaling helped me transpire the regular nonsense superficiality of life. Dipping into the boundary of my physical limits is empowering but also humbling at the same time. It’s as if I could be gone at any moment. In a world full of things that don’t make sense, the only thing that still has meaning is that I’m alive and nothing is impossible.

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