A lot of miles have gone under my wheels since the last post, so I’ll try to summarize them.
I rode Mark’s buddy ride with the fast team and didn’t hold them up too much. Good mix of climbing and pace lining.
I coordinated SAG for our Tour de las Montañas, so I was pretty busy leading up to this ride. I got some great volunteers; we had some great weather; and we had an awesome ride.
Craig’s buddy ride was really hard, sending us almost 2,000′ up King’s Mountain Road. Most of the team also did the bonus climb up West Old La Honda, which is not as steep or as long as the East side. My GPS had a dead battery, so I just mapped the route on RidewithGPS.
That leaves us with today’s ride: the Old La Honda Odyssey. It was cold at the Foothill College parking lot when we met at 7am. This was the first ride during Daylight Savings Time (sunrise was officially 7:15 according to Weather Underground), so it was also darker than usual.
We were supposed to climb the East side of Old La Honda Road, which is slightly shorter and has a little less climbing than King’s Mountain. But when we got to Portola Valley, it had started to rain. At the bottom of Old La Honda, it was cold and full-on rainy. There were only three people in my group due to various reasons, so Coach George asked my opinion of whether or not it was okay to proceed. I know I could’ve done it, and I’m sure my teammate Samy could have, but George was making the call for the whole team, not just me and Samy. So I gave my honest opinion of whether or not I thought the road would be safe for the whole team: no.
The climb would’ve been fine. When you’re on OLH, you’re just in a mindset that life is going to suck for about 35 minutes and then the hard part is over. But we would’ve had to descend Hwy 84 into Woodside and in the rain, that means going very slow through some very tight turns and probably would’ve taken about 15-20 minutes. For me, the risk of hypothermia would’ve been the bad part. We’d be spending a lot of time coasting, getting colder and colder. For others, it would’ve been that, plus negotiating the road under wet conditions. That can be hard and scary if you don’t know how to ride on wet roads. So, we cut out the climb and the boring “additional miles” part of Cañada Road and went to where the third rest stop volunteer was waiting. Bill had volunteered for me two weeks prior and had built a little shelter for us. We helped him take it down and headed for home on Foothill.
It was a tiring day, not because of the route, but because I did half of it with wet legs. I wore my tights, which have an extra “wind stopper” material on the front. But they still get wet and with the temperature in the 40-50 degree range all day, I probably used a lot of energy just trying to keep warm. So I treated myself to a Señor Taco wet super burrito and a nap when I got home. All in all, it was a good day on the road despite the rain.