All posts by Mike

Jabba the Corgi greets us atop King Mountain!

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

A Corgi to greet you at the top of the Kings climb… what more can you ask for? How about a Corgi that bears a passing resemblance to Jabba the Hut?

I wasn’t sure how I’d be feeling this morning, after Sunday’s surprisingly-nice 100 mile Sequoia Century. Monday, yeah, I was feeling it on Monday, and for reasons unknown hadn’t slept all that well Sunday night, which isn’t the norm after a hard ride. But this morning I woke up feeling pretty good and sure, climbing over Jefferson I felt a bit sluggish, but got stronger as the ride went on.

George, Kevin, Kevin, Karen and Marcus this morning. Cool, but never cold, despite getting down to 48 degrees at one point. My ultra-lightweight white Bontrager “suncovers” (legwarmers) worked out fine, and made more sense today than Sunday. But, I’ve either got to smear on black tar for sunscreen or wear something that actually covers exposed skin since my new meds are supposed to increase susceptibility to skin issues caused by the sun. Ironic given that I have skin that pretty much refuses to burn (never mind what a few hours snorkeling, with my back exposed to the sun, did to me in Australia!).

The group started up Kings pretty easy, gradually increasing the pace as we went up the hill. At the halfway point I fell off the back but was quite surprised when George suggested the rest of them slow up and wait for me at the clearing. I repaid George the favor by beating him in the Skyline sprint.

Riding the West Old LaHonda section I felt a bit like I was in a fog… because I was! No great views today, but it was the first time we climbed the upper half at a pretty good pace. Felt good, although it meant I had nothing left to contest the sprint at the end, which George took, followed by younger Kevin.

The 84 descend… this was one of those days the delay was quite a bit more than usual. About 8 minutes extra. So much for my idea that we were going to get back to the start at an almost-normal time! Still, a really nice ride. As just about all bike rides are.

First 100 miler of the year went really well!

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

First things first- I think it’s nuts to require 100 mile riders to start between 6-6:30am for a century. Combine that with my general avoidance of driving to a cycling event (if you can possibly ride, why not?) and you found me waking up at 5:50am this morning (isn’t that early enough?), getting breakfast going, waking up Kevin at 6, and then leaving for the start, by bike, at 6:50am. Since the ride passes not-too-far from where we live, we roughly followed the ride’s route to the start (um, yes, well we did skip the section up Joaquim…), arriving there 48 minutes later.

By the time we were “officially” riding, it was 7:50am. That’s OK; more fun when you’re chasing people down! Heading immediately up Moody and Page Mill gave lots of opportunities for that. It was quickly evident it would be a very long day for some, as they were off their bikes and walking within just a few miles of the start. Kevin was clearly the stronger rider in the early going, having little trouble on the steepest sections of Page Mill.

After climbing Page Mill to Skyline, it was a quick descent on West Alpine and into LaHonda for the first rest stop. Coffee, fruit bowl, and we’re back on the road again, now heading over Haskins to Pescadero. We rode at a respectable clip but respectful of the fact that we had a very long way still to go. Topped off with a bit more food at the Pescadero rest stop before heading onto the Coverdale loop. It’s at this point where we’re suddenly alone… as in really, nobody else out there. That’s because, up to now, the 100 & 70 mile courses had shared the same roads. But only the 100 milers rode the Cloverdale section, and since they’d all left well before us… we had some serious catching up to do! We were slowed in that endeavor for a couple minutes when Kevin had a yellow jacket latch onto his neck; after swatting it away and making sure it hadn’t been a bee (leaving a stinger behind), we were back on the road, soon making the turn north up the coast, into a strong headwind. If I were designing this course, I probably would have done this loop counter-clockwise, taking advantage of Cloverdale Road being more sheltered from winds than Highway 1. But the good news is that I was feeling pretty good and able to pull fairly strongly into the wind. A headwind that continue all the way north on Stage Road of course!

Fuzzy picture of Sarah Coyle earning Goddess status by handing out red vines on Tunitas.
Instead of heading straight over Tunitas, the route had us doing a bypass on the lower flanks using Los Lobitos and Los Lobitos cutoff. This seems rather cruel but in reality it wasn’t that bad; even the really steep section of Los Lobitos went by pretty quickly. Tunitas itself? We were catching up to a lot of people on Tunitas as I was actually feeling pretty darned good as the ride went on. Best part of Tunitas was Sarah Coyle handing out red vines at the Grassy Knoll (the part where the road begins to level out a bit).

We had to do a bit of creative looping in Woodside to make sure we actually got 100 miles before getting home. The ride went better than I expected; my new meds didn’t do me in. Just felt a bit silly wearing white sun shields (think leg warmers) because I’m supposed to limit my exposure to sunlight. They look positively dorky. Think I’ll try some SPF 5,000,000 sunscreen next time!