Hello, old friends and new

12:29pm is when I woke naturally, following a restful night of sleep in my brand new Tempurpedic mattress.

“Ok Google, what’s the weather like?”

“54 degrees and sunny,” my assistant chimed back.

“Ok Google, when does the sun set today?” “5:10 pm.”

I headed to the bathroom for #2 and to insert my contacts. While washing my hands, I spontaneously decided to weigh in. 132.4 lbs. Seeing as I weighed in at 134.5 lbs before going to bed, it seems like overnight water loss and #2 added up to over 2 lbs. Interesting.

I decided to wear only a light windbreaker instead of full cold weather gear as the 50s are still in my comfort zone. Castelli bibs, heart rate monitor, bib shoulder straps, long socks, jersey, and windbreaker went on in short order.

I opened the box for the Wahoo Bolt I haven’t yet used and quickly perused the instructions, then installed the necessary apps on my phone and set about configuring the bare minimum needed to start my ride while plugging the computer in to charge beyond the 47% battery it came with.

“To eat or not to eat,” I pondered as I made my way downstairs. I filled up my two Camelbaks and decided to not eat as I still felt bloated from the massive meal last night. I stepped into the pantry and grabbed 4 bars - 3 Kirkland chocolate chip granola bars and a fruity fig-like bar, shoving them into my jersey pockets.

I grabbed my keys to make my way to the garage to prepare my bike for its first ride in over a month, even as I filled out my mental checklist. Tires pumped. Cadence sensor battery replaced. Saddlebag attached. Wahoo mount screwed on. Speed sensor attached.

I quickly removed my left pedal in order to remove the cadence sensor without snipping the cables and managed to pry the sensor open with a flat-head screwdriver and replace the 2032 3V battery. Unfortunately, this will probably be the last time the sensor will be opened as the screwdriver did some damage. I hurriedly grabbed the Wahoo and noticed that it had charged to 75%. I didn’t know how long the battery was designed to last, but it was already past 1:30 and I didn’t want to risk biking home in the dark.

The tires filled up quickly and the speed sensor attachment was simple. The Wahoo mount simply screwed on and the saddlebag was attached and its contents were verified. Water bottles in the mounts. Helmets and sunglasses on my head. I looked up at the sun and decided I wasn’t going to wear sunscreen as I had a long-sleeve shirt and my face and legs were not going to be substantially exposed to the sun.

The bike felt strange as I pedaled away from the house, as if it was unsure how to react to my lunges and pulls. As I turned onto California, familiarity slowly returned and my body voluntarily stretched forward to sit more firmly on my sit bones. “15 mph” the GPS read out as I stomped my pedals on California. No way that was right. So, just before the footbridge, I decided to take out my phone and turn off automatic wheel circumference inference and manually set my tire size to 28mm. I have a feeling that the tires actually measure around 29-30mm, but that can be taken care of at a later time.

After I turned onto Charleston/Arastradero, I started to stomp up the slight grade in earnest, rapidly elevating my heart rate to 170. For the first time in a long time, my cardiovascular system was holding back my musculoskeletal system. The feeling was liberating. After Foothill, I noticed that my cadence stayed relatively low and increasing it seemed inefficient, so I kept it at 80-85. The Arastradero mini-climb after the park felt great and the subsequent downhill gave me my first substantial respite of the day.

As I waited at the stop sign to turn onto Alpine, I saw a cyclist making his way up the slope. A few cars later, I made my turn. Initially about 50 feet behind him, I caught him about 2 minutes later, and accelerated away even as I heard him laboring to stay on my tail.

I didn’t stop at the market water fountain as I hadn’t drank any water from my smaller bottle and still had half my big bottle remaining. Bombing down Portola road was pretty great and it seems like there were very few cars on the road.

At this point, my mind started deliberating between OLH and Kings Mountain. OLH is slightly shorter (3.3mi) but slightly steeper (8%) than Kings (4.4mi, 7%). But Kings is farther away and would allow me to rack up some really fun hilly miles. In the end, even as my new Wahoo signaled to me that the OLH Strava segment was coming up, I sailed past OLH while looking longingly at the cyclists who had just ended their OLH descent.

After making a left onto the irresponsibly-named Portola (in fact the same Portola as I had just been on), I immediately noticed the cooling effect of the large redwoods flanking the narrow shoulderless road. The scent of the fresh rain was quite invigorating and I felt as if I had boundless energy. As I made my way up the small climb just before merging onto 84, I noticed out of the corner of my left eye that there was a police car parked on 84, no doubt to catch stop-sign rollers (I’ve heard through the grapevine that Woodside police give out tickets for now unclipping at stop signs). I purposefully unclipped my left pedal and waited for all the slow-driving cars to pass the police car. Before I had a chance to clip in and continue after the cars, the police car decided to also take off after them. Figures.

As I rolled on 84 and turned onto Tripp, my stomach started growling, probably due to my earlier neglect. I made a decision to stop at the general store just before start of the Kings Mountain climb and consume a couple of my bars.

While cruising along on Tripp, I noticed that there was quite a bit of construction going on, especially on the left side of the road. Looks like somebody’s gonna have a really good time sometime in the near future.

Just after I passed the construction, I noticed a man walking with his wife on the road. She holding a cane in her left hand. Him, standing tall, wearing a bright yellow safety vest, seemingly holding her up as they walked forward slowly. Inexplicably, even when I was 100 ft away, I knew she was going to greet me. My mind scrambled for a meaningful response, but the revelation that she was going to talk preempted any attempts to formulate a response.

“Hi there,” her scintillating voice rang out.

“Good afternoon,” my cracking voice stupidly responded.

And the moment ended and they were behind me.

A minute later, I arrived at the general store and quickly wolfed down two of the Kirkland chocolate chip bars. It was exactly 3:00pm and I had to climb quickly if I wanted to be home before dark. I again neglected to fill up my water bottles as I still had a full small bottle and would be able to refill after the descent.

And then the Kings Mountain Strava segment started. I actually didn’t know how long the climb was before I saw “4.4mi” flash on the screen. One minute in, I hit the right turn and glanced down. “16 seconds behind,” the screen displayed. “WTF,” I thought, “who is this comparing me to?” I started pushing harder to see what I had to do to not get further behind, but it was hopeless. The “PR” time was displayed as 30:40 and my predicted end-time was around 38:00. I felt like I was giving 35:00 effort, but maybe I’m weaker than I thought after over a month off the bike. About 3 miles in, I saw another climber in front of me and a few minutes after that, I caught him. At this point, the end-time was showing 36:05, probably due to the fact that I was squashing my pedals as hard as I could. The Wahoo showed “0.9mi left” and I further cranked up the power. And all of a sudden, I saw the “Stop sign ahead” lettering on the ground. That’s not right. I had over 0.5mi left. Turns out that the Wahoo undercounted my miles, making me think I was going slower than I actually was. Probably because I selected a too-low tire circumference. Oh well, I can squeeze myself harder at the end of a climb another day.

The descent was quite sloppy. A car passed me with reckless abandon while I was doing near 25. And another cyclist and I switched back and forth once. And it was cold. My fingers were completely numb by the time I was halfway down. I had to switch from 1-finger to 2-finger braking to ensure my fingers had enough force to stop me in tight turns. Once I reached the general store, I filled up the smaller bottle, which I had completely consumed on the climb.

All in all, the entire Kings Mountain climb and descent only took a little more than 45m and I had plenty of time to get back home before dark. I decided to navigate through Woodside and Sandhill, and down Foothill. I strongly disliked turning left from California onto Rengstorff, so I wanted to take Foothill to El Monte instead, but I didn’t realize El Monte was so much farther and instead took an earlier turn onto Edith, which connects to San Antonio. So, I still ended up turning left on California.

Overall, definitely a top-tier ride. My satisfaction would be supreme if all my 2020 rides end up like this one.