The Mount San Bruno Hill Climb always starts at 8 A.M. sharp on New Year's Day. It should come as no surprise that a significant number of the contestants are hungover or just dead tired. And these people are usually cold; in Mark Twain's words, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." Well folks, the winter in South San Francisco ain't any warmer. The beginning of 1981 was no exception as we could see our breath in the cold air.
The race is simple: it just goes up the north side of Mount San Bruno! It starts climbing immediately, so it doesn't take long. This mountain is where a lot of radio and TV stations had their transmitters and antennas in the days before Sutro Tower on Twin Peaks, and there was still a lot of junk up on the hill. It was a relief that cold morning when the race started because for a brief time we would be generating significant body heat.
Within one minute of the start, the race with some sixty entrants had already sorted itself according to ability (or some would say insanity owing to the date and time of the event). Joe Ryan, Robert Ford, and I were clearly the front runners. "Robert Ford?" you say? Yes, Robert Ford, a former Jamaican national sprint champ who was also known as "The Jamaican Jet," was one of the best sprinters alive, and had been making a concerted effort that winter at working on his greatest weakness: hill climbing. I was really surprised when we made the only turn in the race and hit the steep section to find that Robert was still with us. Nobody else was even close.
Sadly, it was not to last; Robert finally suffered melt-down after having made a remarkable effort. Joe, who had won the national cyclocross championship a few days earlier, was in his best shape ever and was setting a pace that I knew that I could not sustain. This hill was not like the one up Mount Tamalpias (see Mount Tamalpias Story). It got progressively steeper, and Joe was going up it like a gazelle. I was profoundly determined to hang on for as long as possible.
Joe had no idea how much I was suffering, and upon completing a switchback, he almost lost me. I had been transfixed on his freewheel, but now it was all I could do to stare at my front wheel and keep his rear wheel in my peripheral vision. This was becoming increasingly difficult due to worsening tunnel vision. I rubbed Joe's wheel a few times as a result, and he either ignored this or took it as a sign to speed up because the level of difficultly subsequently increased.
I saw "500M" (five hundred meters to go) painted on the street go under my bike as my brain's navigational system started to crumble. I realized that we had barely a quarter mile to go, and wondered if I could see the finish. That's when I made my big mistake. I threw my head up to take a look. Already operating at 99.44 percent of maximum output, what few precious molecules of oxygen that were reaching my cranium got tossed into the abyss. I became disoriented, dizzy, rubbed Joe's wheel really hard (he still ignored it), and then the horizon started to swish back and forth. Suddenly, Joe was way off to the side and the guard rail was coming towards me at a funny angle. I averted it, the pedal effort became easier for some reason, and then I saw that I was heading straight for the hillside!
Holy cow, I was starting to black out! Having previously taken this sensation to completion and not wishing for a recurrence, I immediately backed off, put the bike into first gear, and continued to ride towards the finish, going as slowly as possible. Hearing the crowd cheer for Joe, I hoped that I would simply slink across the finish line, unnoticed by all but the scoring referee. Sadly, this was not to be as it was I who got all of the attention. Confused by the sunlight and recalling my close encounter with the guard rail, I steered clear of the referee's stand. So far clear in fact, that I felt the gravel on the far side of the road under my tires as I pulled into the finish area. People who sounded very concerned engulfed me from all sides, so close that I could not even reach down to unstrap my feet from the pedals. I still did not have much of my vision restored, but I felt someone's hands unstrap me, and then many sets of hands removed me from my bike. Is this what Bob Simpson felt like on the Ventoux in the 1967 Tour de France?
I don't know what happened after that as my mind went blank. The next thing I remember was resting in the shade at the bottom of the hill, being told that my bike was on the car's rack, that my prizes were in the car, and that somebody was going to drive for me. I'm sure that Joe was as fresh as a daisy, and he probably went for a long ride after our race. Robert Ford finished in third place, two minutes behind Joe and I, and comfortably ahead of the fourth place finisher, an amazing accomplishment for a pure sprinter who had been allergic to hills. Many years would pass before anybody got remotely close to our record finishing time of just over twelve minutes. Whew, I think I left some brain cells up on the mountain!