Zach Hilton Gilroy City Council Member: July 2014

Zachary Hilton

Markleeville, CA

Weather: 73 degrees avg. Sunny and temps rising, cold morning, sunny with clouds for the end

Start Time: 6:00 am

Total Time: 09:18:00
Power: 120 W avg, 560 W max, 152 W NP

Average Speed: 13.24 MPH, Top Speed 48.12 MPH

Average HR: 149 Max HR: 181

Elevation Ascent: 14,606 ft

Training Peaks Data

This is one of the most brutal rides that I have ever done. When I summited Carson Pass and came through the last checkpoint I wanted to cry and cheer! I haven't felt that way since Avery was born. It was such an accomplishment. It was an epic adventure, and I got to eat ice cream on the top of Carson Pass. I had a good week of training leading up to the race. I am just beginning the second phase of my training for the season. We woke up at 4am for breakfast which was a hard boiled egg (sorry Todd) waffle with strawberry jam, and a banana. I'm riding my 2009 Specialized Tarmac with the new Ultegra 6800 11 speed group set. I rode a 53/39 11/32 on the back just for this event. It was like having a big pizza pie on the back wheel!

We drove up the night before and stayed in Minden, NV at the Quality Inn and Suites. A perfect hotel choice, and they open up breakfast at 3am on the morning of the Death Ride. Monsoon type weather for the first night. The morning of the ride was cold, but quickly warmed up as we climbed the East side of Monitor Pass HC. The peaks would cool us off, and the valleys were slowly heating up during the day. This is a very well supported ride. At the top of each pass and at the bottom were rest stops. Porto potties, real food, sodas, V8's, fruit, and food you could take with you. There is a lunch spot at the bottom of Ebbett's. I carried way to much food on me. One of the blogs that I read before hand really helped me pacing myself and mentally finishing the ride on Carson Pass. Key point for me was maintaing the 60-70% FTP during the entire ride. That kept me in check on the climbs. We passed up hundreds of riders during the ride, and many tried to stay on our wheel or pass us....only to see the ones that didn't know what they were doing burn out and we would catch them. We also met a few people and talked about getting through the mental challenge of riding through the valley and climbing the 5th and final pass.

The valley's before the climbs were around 5,200 ft elevation and the peaks were from 8,300-8,700 ft. Monitor Pass and Ebbett's would be climbed both sides, and Carson would be climbed on one side. If you finished all five passes you would get a 5 pass finishers badge.

I carried one small bottle of Hammer Heed with me, and one water. I stuffed my jersey pockets with food. I also was taking Race Caps Supreme every two hours. We had a cooler with fresh bottles and ice cold Mexican cokes stored in my truck on the way to the final climb of the day on Carson Pass Rd. That was huge, and a mental victory. You can see how exhausted we were in the video below. When you finish the ride on the last pass you are treated to an ice cream and a finishers pin. The emotions that ran through me when I completed this ride haven't been felt since my daughter Avery was born. I drank some Recoverite when I got back to the truck, and we had some ice cold Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA's waiting for us. That night we treated ourselves to huge hamburgers from Carson Valley Inn Casino (CV Steakhouse) We ate like kings! Had some DQ for desert and passed out till we woke up. Time to recover!

I got an email the same night when we arrived back in town from Todd. Titled am I crazy to be thinking of doing this ride again. I responded no not that crazy!!! But it means you like to suffer and now you want to see if you can suffer with some PR's attached to it. The day of really hard events and races I always tell myself I'll never do that again. Somehow I seem to have short term memory loss when it comes to suffering on rides. I always sign back up. The Death Ride however set the bar so high in that suffering category for me. None of the races that I have done seem to be even close to what I experienced in surviving mentally and physically. Kind of reminds me about when I went through the drill academy for Oakland Fire Department. They ran us through the ringer one night during the night drill, and I have still never felt the exhaustion at a real fire, as I did that night. If you do it again, I'll do it with you. I won't do this ride by myself.