Wooded heaven no more

It was 3:01 by the time I made it to the bottom of Page Mill. I had prepped my ride more efficiently than on Saturday and was out the door 39 minutes after waking up. Three bars. Two water bottles. Sunglasses, gloves, helmet, shoes. I even grabbed the new heart rate monitor the Wahoo GPS came with as I wanted to see if it was more comfortable than my old Lezyne one. As I was starting late, I decided to clamp a rear light onto my seat post. And because my arms were sweaty underneath my windbreaker two days ago, I elected to not wear it this time around, especially since the temperature was 55 degrees.

I immediately regretted this decision. The sky was cloudy. And it was windy. As I pedaled down California, I involuntarily shivered. “At least the automatic wheel circumference inference seems to be working correctly,” I thought as I looked down at my GPS. Unlike on Saturday, there was no urgency, no imperative need, to get to the base of the climb as soon as possible to bring suffering onto myself. I casually rode to the base of Page Mill and got there in 23 minutes.

Once I got onto Page Mill, my mind started contemplating between my options for the day. Kings? No, I can’t ride the same climb as last Saturday. Plus it would be tough to make it back before the 5:19pm sunset. Not that it really mattered, since I had a light. Page Mill? Nah. Page Mill is my least favorite climb. OLH? Looks like that’s the only good option. Especially if I do it twice. Since it’s only 1300 ft. Or so I thought.

As I turned onto Alpine, there was no other cyclist to goad me into smashing my way up the hill, so I took a much more leisurely pace. Portola was quiet as usual and as I bombed down the last segment before OLH, endorphins coursed through my body in anticipation of a good climb.

“MAINLINE EXTENSION PROJECT - Road blocked Orchard Hill to Martinez - Jan 17 to Jan 31 - NO PEDESTRIANS. NO CYCLISTS. NO THRU TRAFFIC,” read a large sign at the entrance to Old La Honda. I didn’t stop pedaling as I despaired. I didn’t want to do Kings again and I wasn’t aware of any other climbs that could induce significant suffering within a rideable distance. I had no recollection of either Orchard Hill or Martinez so I decided to keep riding until the road closure and to do repeats if so.

As I made the first left turn and left behind the initial straightaway, I felt a peculiar suspicion that something was amiss. The sun was diffusing through the clouds. The asphalt had patches of wetness. And it suddenly all came rushing back. The wooded heaven was no more.

Back when I first rode up OLH, I marveled at the lush mosses growing on both sides of the road for nearly the entire length of the climb. Towering trees hung over the road, blocking out the bulk of the relentless sun while allowing beams of glitter through their foliage. The mosses and overhanging trees had a pleasant cooling and moistening effect that seemingly turned the road into its own mini-biome: A wooded heaven where one could invigorate oneself by simply breathing in the cool fresh air.

This all changed sometime between my penultimate and final climbs of 2019. Almost all overhanging trees were cut down, with their trunks stacked on the side of the road. Bushes were uprooted and, together with branches too small to be stacked, were littered about as if a hurricane had come tearing through. Tree stumps lined the road like toy soldiers. Even the ground was torn up where bushes were uprooted and stumps were excavated. After that final climb of 2019, I had decided I would frequent OLH less as much of the draw to the place was gone. Now, it was just a lightly-used 3.3mi road graded at 8%.

As I made my way up the slope, I felt lethargic. My leaden legs would not accelerate, perhaps since the magic of the place was gone. Or perhaps because I was still ramping up my workload and the one day respite did not fully restore my legs. 2/3 of the way into the ride, I noticed that the OLH Strava segment was on my GPS. 1.1 miles remaining. On pace for 25:10. That was something I could deal with. I steeled my resolve and ramped up the RPM to 90 as the expected ing-time dropped slowly decrased. 25:08. 25:04. 24:59. My first official OLH PR attempt resulted in a 24:36. I figured I would try to beat that. 24:52. 24:48. It did not feel like a sub-25 OLH. At point, I noticed that I had entered the final redwood segment. Fortunately, when the trees and brush at the lower elevations were removed from the road, the redwoods remained, perhaps because they possess some protected status. The cooling effect brought on by the shade of the redwoods caused me to further extend myself and to my amusement, I saw “124 ft remaining” on my GPS with the mailbox signifying the end of the road nowhere in sight. It seems like GPS had overcomunted my mileage, the opposite of what happened on Saturday. I knew at that point that I had about 0.3 miles left. So, I decided to go all out. My lungs rasped and my quads screamed as I stomped my way up the remaining bit of redwood-covered road. Curiously, the GPS’s display still showed the segment but with a “-78 ft remaining.” Figures. As I approached the mailboxes, I ran out of gas and had to sit back down. “26:19” the GPS flashed as I passed the mailboxes. I don’t quite understand why the “distance remaining” measurement was so far off, but at that point in time, it didn’t matter. I got the physical suffering I was looking for.

I didn’t even stop at the top. I rolled right around and descended. For some reason, my hands were not cold from the wind like on Saturday. As I descended, I started contemplating my options for the rest of the ride. It would be approximately 4:02 when I arrived at the bottom of OLH. I could do another round which would take approximately 35-40 minutes or I could climb something else, like Alpine or Page Mill up to Moody. I decided that OLH had caused me enough suffering for the day and would bike back toward Alpine and decide later whether to do Alpine or Page Mill.

On my way back to Alpine, shortly after passing by the Portola Valley town center, I saw a young woman riding a magnificent bay horse. On the side of the road. Right in front of me. I glanced back, saw no cars, and took a wide berth. She waved. I stared. And we were both merrily on our way.

As I approached the gas station just before Alpine, I realized I had not eaten and was quite hungry. At the stop sign, I quickly wolfed down a fig bar and a Kirkland chocolate chip bar and swallowed everything with a squirt of water. A fellow cyclist wearing bright neon-yellow gear crossed in front of me just before I turned right onto Alpine and I rushed to catch up. I passed him a minute later and started RPMing my way to the top of the initial slope. Alpine is an interesting climb. It is fairly evenly graded (aside from the initial dip), but has a gentle slope of less than 4%. It seems like the road was designed as an access road rather than as a through mountain road. Irregardless, it makes for interesting rides. You can zoom up the slope with much higher speeds and can carry momentum better than on steeper slopes. Me climbing Alpine must be what professional riders feel like climbing Alpe d’hues.

About 10 minutes into Alpine, I hit the wall. My body hadn’t had the chance to digest the bars yet and I had burned off my readily available fuel stores. I rapidly slowed from over 10mph down to just over 5mph. It was a special kind of fun. I trudged on and managed to top out a few minutes later. The descent was speedy and I managed to hit 35mph at the steep part just before the stop sign. Then, I saw another fellow cyclist about 200 feet in front of me. The appearance of a fellow rider spurred me to catch up. By this time, I felt reinvigorated from the bars I had consumed prior to the Alpine climb. This guy was fast. I had only narrowed the gap down to about 150 feet by the time he turned onto Arastradero. I elected to follow instead of proceeding down Alpine. I nearly caught him at the top of the Arastradero climb, only to be left in the dust during the descent. As we passed the Arastradero preserve, I cranked out ever more Watts and managed to narrow the gap to about 50 feet just before we reached Page Mill. He ran the stop sign. I didn’t. I lost another 100 feet to him. It wasn’t until we were both laboring up the segment of Arastradero next to 280 that I caught up to him. He looked gassed, so I decided to trail him to see what he left to give. As we approached the stop sign just past 280, he suddenly turned onto the multi-use path, whereas I headed straight on the road. Oh well, I had a good go.

Upon reaching Foothill, I decided to pursue my Moody/El Monte dreams today and turned right onto Foothill. It turns out that the segment of Foothill intersecting Arastradero is more N-S than E-W, which means this was just another excuse for adding more miles. Four lights later, I was at Moody. I turned left and zoomed all the way to El Camino on the nice wide bike shoulder. Once I turned onto El Camino, I took things down a notch all the way back to my front door.

Overall, today was nice ride, with relatively poor performance.