Time for something a bit different. Been to the coast too many times, and West Alpine by itself wouldn’t be enough. Time to pull Mt Hamilton out of the bag of tricks, and turned out to be a really good day to do it! We were prepared for the cooler weather forecast but leg warmers, base layers and long-fingered gloves all turned out to be a bit overkill. Fortunately we also brought short-fingered gloves, and ditched the leg warmers before starting up the hill.

As usual we avoided use of a car to get to a bike ride, opting instead to ride to Caltrain in Redwood City, take the 9:13 to San Jose and ride from there. Definitely nicer to get a warm up before heading up the mountain, and the train schedule works out pretty well, getting you to San Jose before 10am and getting us back home, including the ride from the train station, by 4pm.

I felt ok heading up the hill, nothing great, but OK isn’t too bad. Kevin was having some knee issues at first but that went away by itself, and with two miles to go he just took off…hard. I mean really, really hard. As in, I lost sight of him amazingly fast. His time for the final two miles was faster than anything I’ve done on Strava.

The plan is to do our first century, a Santa Cruz run, on May 30th. Last year we didn’t get in a single 100 mile ride, so it’s time. Will I be ready? Just noticed that’s only two weeks off!