Today was beautiful: sunny and 50°F at the start, sunny and 70°F at the end. We got a late start, which meant we all got to sleep in a little. After the week I had at work, it was nice to catch a few extra winks before hitting the road.
Beth picked a route that slammed us right away. Just three miles into the ride, we got smacked in the face with our first category 5 climb. So much for sleeping in. Maybe the early climb did some good, though, because I swear the ride was pretty easy (relatively speaking).
The route took us through some beautiful parts of the Los Altos Hills. It seems like every ride, I say to my teammates, “I’ve never been on this road” and “This is some beautiful scenery!” and this ride was no different.
Then we went through some areas I know very well from mountain biking and motorcycling. We headed up Arastradero Road to the Arastradero Open Space Preserve, which used to be my mountain bike playground. We stopped at the greatly upgraded facilities (it used to just be porta-potties ten years ago) for a pit stop, then kept going north to Alpine Road.
We turned left and started climbing Alpine. Mapmyfitness.com says the top portion is a category 3 climb, but it must be due to the general length of the climb because there weren’t any areas I thought were particularly steep; it just keeps going up and up until you get to the end. Then we turned around and eventually made a left at Willowbrook to wind our way to Robert’s Market in Woodside via less-traveled roads.
Along the way, we saw several other Team in Training groups. I guess the spring cycling team had their sorting ride today and I think the Tri team had a SAG stop across from Roberts. Anyway, it was cool seeing so many TnT jerseys on the road, even if mine was back home.
After our quick stop in Woodside, we took a little detour up to Kings Mountain Road, Manuella and a few others before picking up Cañada Road, which we’d stay on until the intersection with Hwy 92. We turned around there and took Cañada back to Woodside.
We are usually careful at stop signs around here because it’s heavily patrolled by the cops. We’ll yell “foot down” at stop signs to signal that not only are we coming to a stop, but we’re going to put a foot down to show any cops in the bushes that we’re actually stopped. Not everyone does this though and we saw a cyclist getting a ticket in the Robert’s Market parking lot.
After that, we headed down to Whiskey Hill Road and picked up Sand Hill to Junipero Serra/Foothill Road. Really, after the first two climbs, the last 30 miles of the ride were pretty easy. I got back to the parking lot about 1pm for a total time of 4 hours, 15 minutes.
As for the knee, it seems pretty good. I felt some twinges at about the 25 mile mark, but they just kind of reminded me that my form was falling apart. I started spinning circles in the 80-95RPM range and it felt fine after that. Next week will be another big test: our first 80-mile ride. It’s in Santa Cruz—and I have to be there by 6:45AM!