this was a tough one

There are a lot of beautiful places in the world, but this time of year in California is hard to beat. The hills are green and the sky is blue.  We live in an area where the towns are quite bicycle-friendly, have good bike lanes, and lots of cyclists, but a short 20 minute ride takes you into rural areas with cows, horses, sheep, vineyards, and fewer cars. It makes me really happy to be alive and healthy and take in the beauty around me. These are some of the roads we ride:

 Vineyard on the right

 We love this house on the hill with its white fence.  Sometimes there are even cows at the very top, silhouetted by the blue sky and it is so picturesque!

 Patterson Pass, where there are lots of windmills.

This is my favorite picture, it just kind of sums up what we see.

At the urgings of another cyclist couple, we signed up for a century that would be more difficult than anything we'd done before.  Besides being 102 miles, there would be nearly 7,000 ft of climbing, much of which would come in the middle of the ride on two 10 mile long climbs. I was pretty nervous about how hard it would be, but we worked hard on our climbing and about 10 days before the ride we rode 80 miles with about 4800 ft of climbing and felt like we were ready.

Last Saturday, we left Pleasanton at 5:30a and drove to Gilroy to begin our ride. At 6:40a we unloaded our bikes amid the usual festive air that surrounds this kind of event.  There were 2,000 participants riding 3 different length rides.  The course opens at 7:00, but there isn't a gun start, you just kind of go and keep your own time.

 Brian, Sandy, Me, Mark at the first rest stop

The four of us stuck together on the flats and rollers, but once we started serious climbing, it was every man for himself.  The scenery was beautiful and I did take a few pictures, but couldn't stop too often for that. At one point on a winding descent, there was a guy in a skeleton costume waving his arms as a warning to be careful going around the curves too fast.  A little while later we saw a guy on the ground surrounded by a group of people (and a highway patrol) who had obviously crashed.  One side of his face looked like raw ground beef. It is always a sobering reminder to be careful.  We later heard that he was moving all of his extremities and seemed to be doing okay.

 Brian & Sandy

 Mark & I, this was our lunch stop

 You can't really tell from the picture, but going up that hill was about a 20% grade!

About 60 miles into the ride, we turned north and were smacked with about a 12 mph headwind.  We drafted Brian and he was awesome.  Our foursome was joined by a younger rider, probably in his early 30s, who switched off with Brian "pulling" us.  At mile 75 or 80, we turned and headed back south, this time with a sweet tailwind.  We were mostly on the flats with just 3 smaller hills to climb (which to my screaming leg muscles felt like Mt. Everest!).  Because of the tailwind, it was exhilarating to be skimming along at 22-27 mph at mile 90 on our way to the finish. At one point I looked behind us and noticed that we had picked up about 8 other riders who were taking advantage of our momentum and were drafting behind us.

We finished with a riding time of 7 1/2 hours, which made our average about 13.4 mph.  Not a terribly fast time, but given the amount of climbing and wind, we were happy with our accomplishment.  And happy to be off the seat!