Aiming for the Shasta Super Century

M. and I registered for the Mt. Shasta Super Century--one of the options of the Mt. Shasta Summit Century--on August 2nd this year. The super century is the most difficult one--according to the website, this route consists of 135 miles and 16500 feet of elevation gain spanning over 4 passes (and descents). In many ways it's very similar to the Markleeville Death Ride (Tour of the California Alps)--long sustained climbs on multiple passes, long distance. Even though the Death Ride has more notoriety, on paper the Shasta Super Century has more elevation gains over similar distance. The altitude of Death Ride's location could make it more difficult. Living in Berkeley, we embrace steep or long hills--it's hard to do any ride longer than 10 miles without climbing almost 1000 ft near where we live, but climbing 4 long hills with moderate gradients, with part of the ride under high heat will be a difficult challenge.

We already ride quite a bit of hills, but we need to increase the mileage as well as get used to the heat. We will set up a training schedule that will culminate in a training ride from Ukiah to Mendocino and back, which is more than 90 miles with 12000 ft of climbing. We look forward to it with some apprehension--probably just the right attitude for such a difficult ride.