Sweetwater Westside Style

Posted February 22nd, 2010 by KellBell

My cycling adventures continued this past weekend. Earlier in the week Rita sent me a message saying that she wanted to ride Sweetwater on Sunday. Having never done Sweetwater I was pretty intrigued. I had heard how hard it was, but despite all of that I was ready for the challenge.

The idea was to attack Sweetwater from Westside Rd (this map actually shows our approach to Sweetwater backwards). Dave had said that coming in from Westside was the easier way to get up and over the climb. Since then, however, I have heard from several other folks that they think Westside is the harder side to climb. Given that I haven’t done the climb from the River Road side I can’t really say who is right, but based on the descent down to River Road I can only imagine it hurts no matter which way you go.

After swinging by to get Rita and Margie, I headed to Riviera to meet everyone else (Margie got a pinch flat so I had to roll on without them). We were a small little group of 5 when we started, but man we punched it out the gates. We picked up Laurie on the way out at the end of Slusser and rolled our way along to Westside and eventually the turn off to Sweetwater. Now Rita and Margie had rolled ahead when the rest of us made a pit stop after crossing Wholer Bridge so after saying good-bye to Laurie (it was an off day for her so she wanted to keep it flatter) Lauren, Terri and I made our way up Sweetwater. From everything we heard the actual climb up Sweetwater was only 1.5 miles long. The only problem we had was that none of us knew where the climb began. After climbing up a bit and then rolling down and along some more we finally caught Rita and Margie. Rita confirmed that we hadn’t even hit the climb yet so we all settled in for the eventual adventure. We finally hit the base of the climb and the pain ensued.

Supposedly Sweetwater has an overall gradient of 11% but what that doesn’t tell you is how steep some of the individual sections are. All I know is that I had a tough battle against gravity as I climbed my way up to the top. There was one section close to the middle of the climb that pitches to about 17% (or slightly more) and goes through a couple of switchbacks that way. Unfortunately for me, by the time I hit that section I was already pretty tapped and I couldn’t keep my heart rate down. Combine that with not knowing the road and I freaked out a bit and stopped midway up to ward off an asthma attack. I no longer carry my inhaler with me since I have learned to read my body and anticipate when an asthma attack may come on and I can usually slow down or ease up to keep it in check. That wasn’t the case up this climb and mentally I threw in the towel after freaking out and came to a complete stop. About 45-60 seconds later I recovered enough to try climbing again and after a few failed attempts I finally got going up hill again. It was slow and painful and my legs were tired, but I finally made it to the top.

After we all regrouped back at the top we started or twisty, crazy descent down the other side of Sweetwater towards Armstrong Woods and River Road. Not only did the road curve down the hill with hairpin turn after hairpin turn in a couple sections, the rain was waiting for us on the other side. Not wanting to extend our torment in the rainy weather our little train hauled it back down River Road into Santa Rosa as quickly as we could. A 20mph pace may not be quick to a lot of people, but after climbing Sweetwater my legs were tired and it was a tough battle to keep it going. But it was all well worth it because after 3 hrs and 51 mins of total ride time, Rita (very unexpectedly) treated us to a post ride lunch at Riviera. On the way back she had said how she wished she had her keys because she would treat us to lunch, and as it turned out luck was on our side since Jose was already there working.

So this is where my 57.54 mile Sweetwater adventure ends. Thanks to Rita for convincing me that I wanted to do this ride and for treating us to lunch. Thanks to Lauren, Terri, Laurie, and Margie for joining us on this adventure. And thanks to Dave and Jeremy for driving SAG! I still don’t fully understand why they drove SAG, but I appreciate it. The support and comfort knowing that they were back there in case anything happened was huge! Besides…how do you think I was able to get all these pictures? Until next time…