Aaron Baker

For my BDC2010 in honor of Steve, I thought of pulling a ferry boat across the Golden Gate Bridge with my teeth. But since I suck at swimming when there aren't waves to body surf, and since I hate being in cold water, I decided against it. Sorry Steve. Instead, I opted for the following punishments: ride 500 vertical meters of 20% grade in 50 minutes; 50 pushups in one go; 50 squats (no weight but after the ride) in 5 minutes; 50 pull-ups in 500 seconds, and 50 ab-rollers in 500 seconds.

I decided to start with the hardest part, the ride. I recently moved to Marin, and in my explorations of my neighborhood, found a terrific (to me) ridge that separates my city of San Rafael from the city of Larkspur. The ridge has a few roads going over it, each absurdly steep. Total elevation gain is only 400 feet or so, but it's really hard and I've been doing a weekly ride taking in a
selection of the climbs as training. After sussing things out, I found that one of the more difficult climbs has a sustained steep section of about 65 meters at 20% or so. It is really, really hard. I did the math and concluded that I could ride this hill 8 times to get the necessary vertical gain.


Of course I got sick the week before, but I rested and tried to take care of myself leading up to the Challenge on Halloween. Scary! I wasn't entirely at my best, but I was good enough. The climb actually starts with a 100 vertical feet ramp that goes from 10% to 20%, I didn't count this part of the climb but my body certainly noticed it. After the first lap, I became really concerned about finishing. Have I said that this is a really, really hard climb? It's funny, people talk about 20% climbs, but really I find that most people have no idea what 20% actually looks like, let alone feels like. Most people add between 5-7% to their estimates of steepness. In truth, 8% is an unusually steep climb. Most are around 6%. 20% is truly rare. And Hard.


On the second lap, I started to hate Steve and particularly Lisa, for cooking up this idea. And though Steve is a truly great friend and an inspiration, I began to hope that he doesn't have a 60th birthday. Sorry Steve. On the third lap, I grew convinced that 8 was too many. There is no taking it easy on a 20% slope. You can't hide, you can't rest. If you try to slow down, you start to fall
over. My times for each lap ranged between 2:40 and 3:00. So I stayed consistent. But each lap was a little piece of hell.

The fourth lap was something of a mindset change, because it meant I was halfway there. Though I suffered more on each lap, I could begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. From start to finish, each lap took about 6 minutes (three up and three down and back to the start). I took a wrong turn after the first lap, and lolly-gagged on the next two on the way down, losing time. After the third lap, I realized I needed to actually get down as fast as possible if I was going to make the 50 minute cut.

On the sixth lap, my photography team showed up (Michelle and the kids). Nothing like kids screaming "go daddy go" as you labor at 4 miles an hour. But the distraction helped me take my mind off the climbing a bit, and got me through lap 7. On lap 8 I was really cooked. You can see from the pictures how much effort I had to put into the pedals, almost bending over double on each stroke. I looked like shit. But I got up all the laps, and didn't even puke. Michelle asked me to puke because she thought it would be a good picture. I thanked her for the suggestion but demurred.

Ultimately, I missed the time, 50 minutes past as I descended after lap 7. I came in at about 54 minutes. In total, I climbed over 3,000 feet. 524 meters on the climb. Unfortunately, my garmin showed that the average grade for those 524 meters was just a hair over 18%. I guess that a couple of street intersections (which were still steep) brought the average down. Total climb
time was about 21:30, or under 1500 seconds, so I rode a bit better than a foot/second. This was really hard.

Next up was 50 push-ups. Not as much of a mental game as the ride, but for pure physical challenge, more difficult. I typically do about 30 push-ups a week. Never more than 15 at a go. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do this. As you can see from the photos, I was maxed. At 47 I just came completely unraveled. It was like a complete system shutdown. I found myself lying on the ground, covered in sweat, with Michelle yelling at me for being a quitter. I knocked out the final three after catching my breath for a few moments, but have to acknowledge that this part of the challenge was a bit too hard.

The squats were a welcome contrast. I wasn't sure how the legs would respond after the climbing, but they actually seemed pretty loose and good. I adjusted the challenge mid effort from 50 in 5 minutes to 50 in 2:30. Not a real problem. But Michelle didn't think she'd gotten a good enough photo, so made me keep going. Pretty soon I reached a point where the body said stop, so though I finished, I think it was closer than it felt. I should have tried for 100 in 5 minutes. That would have put me in the grave.

Halloween interfered with the completion of the challenge, something about and trick-or-treating made it difficult to reason with the little ones about the value of pull-ups and ab-rollers. I'm not sure what this means for Steve's anti-child-obesity mission. Next time I'll make the little ones do the challenge while I yell at them with a bull horn. I should have thought of that
sooner.

The next day I set about pull-ups and ab-rollers, but it put me in the grave. I'm sick again and really weak. I tried to finish my challenge, but could hardly do any pull-ups at all, let alone 50 in 500 seconds. Here's a photo of my weak attempts. Made it through 35. Couldn't have done 50 in 50 minutes today. I abandoned the ab-rollers. On the bright side, clearly I pushed it yesterday. Now I need to get healthy again. Looking forward to some local organic veggies for dinner tonight.

Happy Birthday Steve!