View West towards San Francisco from the top of an early morning Skyline. Bay Bridge, Treasure Island, SF, Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate Bridge can be seen.
{my Leukemia and Lymphoma Society fund-raising page may be found
here (http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/touralps11/llitalien)}
Unfortunately I didn’t get the opportunity to go for a ride this past Saturday as I had pressing work to attend to. I didn’t mind all that much since I knew Sunday I would be riding in one of my favorite century rides by far, the Grizzly Peak Century. I was fortunate enough to get a transferred registration from Kevin H. Thanks!!
Climbing Grizzly in the early morning shaded sun.
I was up before dawn to get all my ‘stuff’ together for the day. I put the bike on the rack and drove out to Moraga CA where the Grizzly starts from. I loved the fact that since I was holding a transferred registration my line was absolutely empty. I could walk right up and be done. At 7 am I took a ride through the parking lots looking to see if I could find any more TNT riders as I saw Jerry and John in line at the registration table. Seeing none I headed out and started the route shortly after 7 am. The first few miles were cold. My fingers started to get numb and I regretted not bringing my full fingers. They didn’t stay numb long. Once we began climbing towards Grizzly Peak we hit some sun.
It was after the first rest stop when I ran into John Buckley and noticed he had the same Death Valley jersey on. It was a few miles later he caught up to me and we started talking about our experiences there. After a few minutes, he dropped back and I continued on my merry way as I was felling pretty strong.
Not all century riding is through gorgeous green valleys and flowering mountain tops. The Grizzly has us riding smack dab through and oil refinery in Port Costa.
After Port Costa, one of the major climbs of the day is immediately after the rest stop, McEwen. It isn’t the longest but surely is the biggest gradient. Towards the bottom of the hill there are signs every few yards. There were three in succession at a very steep part of the hill that said something like ‘you may have noticed you’ve come to a crawl…one should not fear…unless one doesn’t have a granny gear’. Further towards the top of the climb there is ‘you’ve made it to the top…but don’t put on airs…for in a few miles…you’ll face the BEARS’. Alluding to a series of three significant climbs; Papa, Momma, and Baby Bear.
Cresting McEwen
For the middle few rest stops I seemed to leap frog with Jerry from TNT for a few hours. I would catch up, move ahead a bit, and end up taking a little extra time at the rest stops. The fruit was fantastic; strawberries, pineapple, melon!! And this century has a lot of riders. It is a very social century. It wasn’t until after the Wayside Rest Stop (mile 77.6) that the number of riders ahead and behind started to become sparse. Up until this point there were always riders ahead and behind that I could see. Not now, it seemed at times that I was riding this route all alone. Also it wasn’t until after Wayside that I slowed my pace considerably. I was getting kind of tired. There were still many big climbs ahead, Redwood up to Skyline, Skyline, Walnut, Redwood, and Pinehurst. The second Redwood climb is a long slow slog. It doesn’t look that hard on the elevation chart but it came at mile 95.
Unhappily I report that my hot foot has made a re-appearance. It hasn’t bothered me in quite some time and hope that it is not a foreshadowing. I pulled into the finish shortly after 4 pm for a total riding time of approximately nine hours. Felt good for 109 miles, but realize I still have a lot of training to do to be ready for the Death Ride.
