All posts by Mike

Hopefully final rain ride for awhile?

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For the first time in like forever, there’s no more rain in the long-range forecast. Which of course was no help to us this morning, as Kevin and I managed to get in a wet ride that ended with blue skies.

As was the case last Thursday, we got about halfway up Kings before having to put on our rain jackets. Not too cold, with the temp only briefly fluttering to 39.8. Wet, messy, and once or twice I caught myself thinking, is it really sensible to trust such skinny tires descending at 30mph in the rain, when some of our customers won’t do more than 25 when it’s dry?

Pretty good ride up West Alpine, but yeah, got rained on. Kinda done with rain y’know?

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

The assumption was that this was going to be a “rain ride” based on the forecasts, but this morning, the updated report said there’d be a hole in the weather from 11:30 to 4pm. Hey, I’m down with that! With the slight breeze the streets were drying off around the house so it even looked safe to take my nice bike (the Trek Emonda).

Nobody, I mean nobody, was out there. Canada Road was deserted, despite being 100% dry. OK, I saw two cyclists instead of 100 or so. Nobody at Roberts either. Two people on Mtn Home Road. The sun at this point had been out for a couple hours. Guess not everyone’s like me; planning their Sunday around their bike ride seems perfectly normal.

I took it easy up OLd LaHonda; I’ll pretend it’s because the wet road (once I started climbing) kept my speed down. Heading over West Old LaHonda the clouds didn’t look as friendly as the forecast had assured. But I had a plan, and the plan today was to ride up West Alpine. Felt a few random drops so I stopped where West Old LaHonda hits 84 and checked the latest weather report. Uh oh. At 1:23 it said “Thunderstorms ending at 2:15pm” in La Honda. Of course, I kept going. And just a mile or so out of Old LaHonda bam, heavy rain. And no rain jacket. Didn’t think I’d need one. But, I knew it was going to end soon, so I kept going, thinking I ought to be able to pick up the pace a bit to generate some heat and dry myself off. That’s what West Alpine’s for, right?

So, alone, I hit the flat part of West Alpine hard. Really hard. 8 seconds off my best-time-ever hard. I worried a bit that I might burn out before the climb, but at least I’d be dry, right? Funny thing is, when I hit the climb, I just kept going. I never burned out and ended up with my best time up West Alpine since August 2017. Probably could have gotten another 20 seconds better if I didn’t have to play it safe on the flat part at the top due to wet pavement.

Overall a pretty good ride. Could have done without the rain though.