See, last week on my solo ride, I cut the ride short after W. Alpine, OLH, Pescadero, and Stage, because I "was feeling a bit lonely and missed company." Somebody up there must have heard me and sent me this message in the form of a forwarded email to a gym mailing list I'm on:

From: Jim xxxxxxx
Subject: Celebrity Cruise: South Bay

Matt, "(he thinks he's good looking and all that)," Damon and his brother will be joining us on a South Bay ride on Sunday: closer to LA. They'll be riding their Scattante carbon fiber tandem bling with their matching Performance jerseys and fabulous Forte footwear: can you say "HOT-T-T?" Matt promised no bad Jason Bourne kung-fu or kungfucious, and not to bring along his wretched wooden friend, Ben Afflack: – so this should be a good time. Matt also promised to buy us all artichoke, garlic-bread, Fritos, (if we agree to eat them off the oily pavement), and espresso in Pescadero: especially if we keep a tight paceline and don't drop him.

Climb we shall young childrens: Start at Hwy 92 and Canada, – or the School in Woodside, – go up over the hill on Old La Honda and descend down 84 and back along the Pesky-dero race course to the land of Peskies. Then up to San Gregorio, and Tunitas Creek, and then descend down 92 to the cars.

Not too early, not too late, 9:30 AM sounds really great.

Don't be shy, invite all of your friends, – Matt loves to chat….. RSVP to me as Matt is busy.. start times, start locations, negotiable……..

Well, a quick Google search shows pictures like this one:

(source)

Maybe he saw Cadel Evans' tweet that "the ride to Peca[s]dero might make [his] list of all time best rides" and decided to give it a go himself?

The ride described is always a favorite of mine. But it was the artichoke garlic bread that sealed the deal. I'm in! My weekend would have been spent this way: Henry Coe Trail Work on Saturday and hanging out with Erik on Sunday, but now I had to change my plan to: hanging out with Erik on Saturday, and riding with Matt Damon on Sunday. (Sorry, Henry Coe!) I had to spend some time with Erik because otherwise he would have spent both days working, which would not be good for his health. I managed to drag him to the climbing gym for a couple of hours and later we went out for dinner.

After RSVP'ed with Jim, I learned that we were meeting at Woodside Elementary School at 10am. I left home at 9:12am on my bike. It was chilly, but the long gradual climb up Hwy 84 kept me warm before it took me over the hill and dumped me at the school just on time. People were rolling in, but there was no sign of Matt Damon. When the group was about to roll around 10:20am, still, no sign. I couldn't help but notice that there were six guys wearing Dolce Vita Cycling kit and only another guy and I did not belong to the club. "What's going on? Are we not waiting for Matt"

It's a joke!!!

Jim sent the email only to the club mailing list and he obviously did not know how it was forwarded to somebody like me. On the other hand, as welcoming as he is, he never asked me "Who are you?"  I guess his teammates, knowing him well, got the joke. Not sure about that other outsider, but he, a strong climber on Old La Honda, split with the group at its top and was not seen again.

So, it's a joke, eh?

I started pedaling still trying to digest this new knowledge. Disappointed? Yes, but I tried to remind myself that I was out here riding my favorite route on a beautiful day. Pretty soon, the disappointment wore off. The guys were all very strong. I hung with them well on the climbs. On the descent down Hwy 84 before turning left on Pescadero, they dropped me. I got smart though — After the Hastings Grade climb, I gave myself a head start and started descending without waiting for the entire group. That strategy worked well because the paceline caught me on the flats. As inexperienced a rider as I am, I still knew that if I got dropped by the group on the flats, I would not see them again until Pescadero and it would be a lot of hard work for me to ride by myself. So, I tagged on. I accelerated whenever they did. The five guys kept changing the formation of the paceline and sometimes even broke into two small groups. I just made sure I was on someone's wheel. Not used to riding with a group (read: never), I really had to work at it, but I managed. The guys were extremely courteous to me too. I could tell that they kept looking back to make sure I was not dropped.  But sheesh, did't these guys know that they were supposed to relax on flats? (Note: When I later told Erik about this, he said it was good for me to ride with guys like these because I needed to be pushed on flats. Guys, sometimes, I just don't understand them!)

We had lunch in Pescadero. Jim did get two loaves of artichoke garlic break for the group, which were super delicious. Sipping my coffee and eating my Cinnamon roll, I was in heaven. But as soon as we got on Stage Rd, my legs felt heavy and post-heaven Blues set in. In that mood, I couldn't help but feel sad that despite secretly considering myself a smart woman, I was fooled by such a joke. Where was my critical thinking? Why didn't I raise any question? Sad, I was sad! As a Chinese saying goes, "Turn your grief into strength!" So, at St. Gregorio, when the guys decided to cut the ride short by turning right on to Hwy 84 to go straight back (only 8 miles of flat riding for me), I told them I would split there and ride up Tunitas — I had strength in me!

Each everyone of them is a stud!

It was the best weather condition for riding up Tunitas (I took the Lobitos Creek detour for extra scenery). When I reached the top, the sensible thing for me to do was turn right on Hwy 35 (Skyline Blvd) and just cruise down Hwy 84 home because I had run out of water (only had two bottles and did not refill) and my legs were sore. But, I had so much grief, no, strength, in me that I descended Kings Mountain Rd, and took Whiskey Hill, Sand Hill, Portola Valley Rd, Alpine Rd, and Arastradero, which led me to the base of Page Mill, a big climb by the local standards. By that time though, my grief had long worn out, along with it gone was my strength. But I was in a very cheerful mood even though my face might not have shown it. When it was not very steep, I enjoyed the easy pedaling. When I labored at the steep parts, I kept glancing down at my GPS every second happily observing the total elevation gain jumping up at a fast speed. At the bottom of Page Mill, it read 7800', so I thought it had a good chance to break 10000'. I watched it grow. Kid you not, it broke 10000' right at the summit of W. Alpine Rd before I started my final descent. I was filled with the sense of "Mission Accomplished." Unfortunately, that sense did not help keep my body warm. Despite having every piece of clothing and fabric on my, I had a bone chilling descent. It took me 30 minutes of drinking hot drinks and eating hot food nonstop to make the shivers stop. Just then Erik walked in (from work). Hearing that I  did 94+ miles/11K' of riding (48 miles solo), he thought I was a stud.

No, a stud is someone like Matt Damon. Thank you Matt for getting me out to do this ride without you even knowing about it! And, I have Jim to thank too!

(link to the page)

(link to the page)

Next time you are in Pescadero, seek out this bread at the market. It's oh so delicious!

I rode Old La Honda with other Low Key climbers. My personal best on it so far (before today) is 21:50. That was on a Wednesday after work in May. The condition must have been great because Erik got his personal best on that ride too (20:58). I was hoping to improve on this ride because I would be "racing" with other riders. (Come on, we all know that the Low Key riders are competitive.) Beautiful weather and the test piece hill climb brought around 150 riders out. I saw a few acquaintances mostly from last year's Low Key series.  I was happy to see Krishna out there. He is a fellow mountain biker, an extremely talented and strong one.  He is riding for Team Mud 'n Crud. I only wish he could do more of these climbs in the series, but I understand that it coincides with the cyclocross season, in which he excels too. Anyway, I was just happy to see him out on this ride. I was also happy to see Janet Martinez. She is a very strong road rider (2nd place last year over all) and she is always smiling. I heard that she had an accident earlier this year and got injured, so it was good to see that she is back on the bike (and later found out that she was still riding strong).  When I told her that I had been riding my mountain bike mostly, she exclaimed, "ahhh… cross training…" I laughed and said to her, "I guess only a roadie looks at it that way." And I guess I'm not a roadie. (Just for the record: I have nothing against roadies though.)

Due to the narrow road on OLH and the size of the group, we were sent out 10-15 at a time. The organizers suggested riders to look around and see who might ride at the same pace and join them. Hmmm… that's a little risky, isn't it? I don't want to offend people, you know. Then I got an idea. I found Janet and asked her what her targeted time was, she said with a smile, "Oh, if I break 23, I'll be happy." Considering my last time on it was 22+ minutes, that's about where I was, so I happily stood next to her.  When our group got sent out, I sprinted together with the group (on the initial less steep part), but very soon, most of the group pulled away from me including Janet after she uttered encouragement to me. It took me a while to settle into my own rhythm. I didn't feel fast, but I felt the work — I was panting most of the time. Passed a couple of Low Key riders and got passed by a couple. When I topped out, I had 21:48 on my GPS. (The Low Key has 21:53 for me due to some  inevitable timing overhead in the group setting.) A mere 2 second improvement. And I was dying! At the food and water stop at the top, I chatted with Krishna. He rode a stunning 17:09!!! And he was not even breathing hard while I was hacking. (Granted, he had 5+ minutes of rest on me already.)

After I wrapped up with the roadies (Krishna is an exception), I went over to Skeggs. Since I forgot my camelpack at home, it was just a small , but fun, loop for me. Ran into the MTBR group on Manzanita and later caught the tail end after Methuselah. And at the end of my ride, ran into Josh (ROMP) and his wife Joe (spell?). We talked pedals and bikes (Blue LTc!) I went home with a big grin on my face because I didn't have to choose between road and MTB — I rode both.

My road ride:

My MTB ride:

And here is a picture on OLH by Dan Tylayco.

P.S. It turned out that I got the 2nd place in Women's Category on OLH today. Cool! Here is the Results page from the Low Key site.

This beautiful bird was just sitting on a fence on Stage Road. Wish I had brought my camera, but I only had my phone. Bet you don't see that everyday.

Did the ride with Bryn, a friend at work. Later Jeanne and her brother Alan joined us from Woodside.  It was a beautiful day for such a ride.

West bound on Hwy 84 towards the ocean, we started our ride for the day. Half way down, three riders (one man and two women) passed us and we tagged on. One woman and I sat in the back enjoying the draft while Erik joined the other woman and the guy in taking turns to pull the paceline. We were flying. Before we got to San Gregoro, it was Erik's pull. He spotted a rider ahead and started sprinting towards him hoping to pull the paceline to him before we were to turn right on Stage Road. By the time, we arrived at the intersection, his legs were cooked. And the three riders stopped too because it was their rest stop. It turned out that the were out on a charity ride and there were tables setup there to replenish them. Erik cooked his legs for nothing, which he paid for on the rest of the ride. We all said thank you and have a good ride to each other before Erik and I continued riding toward Tunitas Creek Road — our first climb.

We had set our mind on a series of hill climbs. The route we followed started with: up Tunitas Creek Road, down Kings Mountain, up OLH (25:35 for me when I paced myself for the rest of the ride), down Hwy 84 towards Woodside. Then we Portola Road, Alpine Road, and Arastradero Road to Foothill Expressway, which took us to our CR-V parked near Trader Joe's at 85 & 280. We stationed the CR-V there yesterday evening after we did our Bohlman-On Orbit-Bohlman (BOOB) time trial. We took a lunch stop. It was already feeling hot. Not very easy to get back on the bike after the lunch, we rode on nonetheless.

Montebello was the next climb on the list. This was my first time on it. It turned out much longer than I had imagined. I kept thinking the summit was coming up after that next turn, but the road just kept going. I was thoroughly feeling the heat because the climb was mostly exposed. By the time I finally arrived at the summit after 44'05", I chucked down a whole bottle of water. While stretching, I could feel that my hamstrings were on the verge of seizing up. It felt hot even when I was descending! Man, this is tough!

We turned right on Stevens Canyon Rd, which led us to Redwood Gulch Rd. It has a couple of short steep pitches, but the climb was short. Before I knew it, I was at the intersection with Hwy 9. Down we went. By that time, it was past 3pm. Having a dinner engagement, we needed to get back to our car by 5pm. We would not have time to do one last climb (we were thinking BOOB) before we headed back. Once again, Erik did what any wonderful husband would do — he offered to ride back to fetch the car while I went to suffer on the BOOB climb, alone. We split in downtown Saratoga.

Too soon, I was at the bottom of Bohlman. Today, I had no delusion to post a fast time (I did PR at 35'26" on it yesterday though). Actually, I wonder if I had enough in my legs that I could manage to ride up the whole thing without stopping. I dropped down to my granny gear from the very beginning. The road was very quiet. Even though I was much slower than usual, it was too quick when I arrived at "the wall" on Bohlman. I gritted my teeth and stood out of saddle. I am never an out-of-saddle climber, but now my legs and gluts were too tired to spin even the lowest gear, so I had to rely on gravity. 1,2,3… I counted my strokes silently and restarted when it reached ten. It seemed like an eternity when I finally got to the top of the wall. The tougher section was yet to come — that was On-Orbit, steep and sustained. My speed was reduced to 3mph, lower than my usual walking pace, but I managed to stay on the bike. Again, 1,2,3… When I finally got to the top of On-Orbit, I knew I had this thing in the bag.  The upper part of Bohlman is rolling. Yesterday, I did it in middle chain ring and was able to pedal on downhill to gain momentum to cruise up the uphill most of the ways. Today, I simply stayed in my granny gear. I would cruise down, and then cruise up and start pedalling slowly once the momentum ran out. Finally, I reached the "End" sign at 45'02" after I started the climb. This was the slowest time I ever posted on this climb; yet, it made me most proud.

We rolled into the downtown Saratoga parking lot at the same time. Talk about perfect timing! After a nice stretch at the gym and a refreshing shower, I felt like a new person. Maybe I could go out and ride a couple of more hills now. Not. We had dinner with our dear friends at St. Johns and finished off the perfect day with good conversations.

Late start, so we hit our usual route to climb W Alpine and OLH. My legs were dead. Erik did not have the PR drive in him either. So, we just peddled along. Both our times on OLH were almost two minutes slower than our PRs. We survived the ride just before it started getting dark. This time we went down Page Mill (instead of Hwy 84) and did a short out and back on Moody Road.

Okay, I guess I'm happy that we rode. It was just too nice of a day to have stayed in the house.

Stats:
Distance (mi)     34.4
Total Ascent (ft)    4426
Moving Time    02h 45m 16s
Stopped Time    00h 06m 59s

I on the other hand just decided to be lazy. I slept in, posted my yesterday Henry Coe Trailwork trip report to MTBR, upgraded my WordPress (blog), and played with the cats. I could have spent the afternoon napping and sunbathing with my cats, but I remembered Erik said to me before he left, "Go ride Alpine and Old La Honda today."  I'd like to let him think he is the boss, so I dragged myself and my bike out of the door just in time for a ride before dark.

I normally would not have bothered with a trip report for this ride because it has been repeated by us a few times. Today is special though. I broke my PR on Old La Honda: 22:59. Wow, finally, I broke 23 minutes! Yeeeaaah!

There are some good references online for many, if not all, of these climbs. For example,

• [1] Lucas's cycling gradiometer page.
• [2] Some Southwest San Francisco Bay Area Climbs (Western Wheeler's Bicycle Club)

Alpine West

• Start: A small bridge (right above the bridge is a brown sign that reads "…. Grove")
• End: Skyline (Hwy 35)
• Distance: 6.65 miles
• Elevation: 1883' (ascent) / 180' (descent)
• My recorded best time: 45:37 (03/09/2008) -> 41:18 (08/02/2008)
• Erik's recorded best time: 44:10 (03/09/2008) -> 41:15(08/02/2008)
• My comments: A nice climb. 70% in the shade. A first timer might be fooled by a couple of false summits only to find that there is more climbing to do around the bend. On the way up, you will get to a stop sign, where you turn left. There is a short descent before the climb to the top. And there is another descent after the summit before the road ends at Skyline. On the other side of Skyline is Page Mill Road. Traffic is very light on this road. Descending on this road is pretty pumpy in the forearms because of its fast descent and many blind turns in the upper half.
• Web references: [2]

Old La Honda (OLH)

• Start: The concrete bridge shortly after you turn on to the road.
• End: Stop sign (Skyline — Hwy 35)
• Distance: 3.21 miles
• Elevation Gain: 1285' (ascent) / 15' (descent)
• My recorded best time: 25:46 (03/09/2008 after Alpine West) -> 23:24 (08/02/2008 aAW) -> 22:59 (01/11/2009 aAW)->22:14 (05/20/09)->21:50(05/27/09)
• Erik's recorded best time: 25:24 (03/09/2008 after Alpine West) -> 23:21 (08/02/2008 aAW) -> 22:51 (01/03/2009 aAW)->22:30(05/20/09)->20:58(/05/27/09)
• My comments: Almost my favorite hill climb. 94% in the shade. Not too steep but sustained. Some sections of the road are a little bumpy. Traffic is light, but because much of the road is so narrow that it gets a little annoying (to both parties) when a car needs to pass a cyclist. I heard somewhere that it's bad form to descend Old La Honda on weekends. I've never descended this road. Not sure how it is coming down.
• Web references: FelixWong's blog , [1] , [2]

Page Mill

• Start: Moon Road (I need to double check. It's the entrance to the Palo Alto Open Space.)
• End: Stop sign (Skyline – Hwy 35)
• Distance: 7.48 miles
• Elevation Gain: 2075' (ascent) / 190' (descent)
• My recorded best time: 54:01 (03/09/2008 after Alpine West and OLH)
• Erik's recorded best time: 51:15 (03/09/2008 after Alpine West and OLH)
• My comments: So far, I've always done this climb after at least two other big climbs, so it always feels hard on this road. But it does offer a couple of short descents for you to rest your legs and catch up with breadths. In my impression, this road is 30% in the shade. There are two short steep sections one around half way and one near the top, but they are so short that you are over them very fast. So far I haven't experienced heavy traffic on this road. For the most part, the road is wide enough that cars can easily pass.
• Web references: [2]

Pescadero (East side)

• Start: The turn off from Alpine
• End: The summit (the obvious point where you cannot go up any more)
• Distance: 1.64 miles
• Elevation Gain: 603' (ascent) / 8' (descent)
• My recorded best time: 14:39 (03/09/2008, but this can't be the best because this was after three big climbs, but this is the only record I could find)
• Erik's recorded best time: 13:31 (same as above)
• My comments: The road surface on this one is superior. But for the same reason, motorcyclists love this road. It's common to run into strings of motorcycles on weekends. Some of them go a bit too fast. All you can do is hope that they know what they are doing. 90% in the shade. It used to feel like a big hill until recently.
• Web references: [2]

Sierra Road

• Start: Sierra Road & Onslow Way
• End: The summit
• Distance: 3.70
• Elevation Gain: 1832' (ascent)
• My recorded best time: (32:15.50 02/16/2008 Webcor King of Mountain Ride) -> 30:44 (12/28/2008)
• Erik's recorded best time: 30:35 (12/28/2008)
• My comments: I love this climb. It's beautiful. Okay, I live in an area where there are many beautiful climbs, but I guess the openness of this one appeals to me. I found myself looking around on the brutal uphill taking in the peaceful views of the rolling hills and the bay area down below. I haven't done this one in the summer yet, but I'm guessing it will be very character-building since it's pretty much 95% in the sun. I've found it work out really well for us to park near Calaveras and Piedmont (there are a couple of churches there) and ride over (about 3 miles of flats) to the start as a warm up. And then just drop down Calaveras to make it a 15 mile loop.
• Web references: My first time, my second time, [2]

To be continued…

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