11 April 2009

Saturday harbor ride

It was overcast and chilly and humid in the morning. I woke up too late to ride to the club ride at Pescadero that I had planned on doing, so I headed over for the harbor ride. On the way to the harbor, 6 lights turned yellow just as I was approaching, and I had started sprinting towards 2 of them, which was really annoying.

This time, after the descent of Bonita, I wasn't at the back of the pack like usual, but somewhere in the middle of the back half. In the pack, I did a lot of coasting, and did get shuffled back a little, but never did get all the way to the back. On the little climb after Buena Vista, a lot of riders started going backwards, so I wound up somewhere in the middle of the pack for the rest of San Andreas.

There was a big group doing Hazel Dell. I guess there were at least 30 riders in the pack heading up Mt Madonna. On the steep part, a few riders at the front went hard. A bunch of other riders went backwards. When I got to the top, there was about a 50 yd gap to the lead group, or at least, the largish group just ahead of me. So I hammered for a while with one guy on my wheel, then he came around and pulled. We closed the gap a little. Then a train of 4 others came up from behind and filled the gap just as we got to the Green Valley intersection. I shifted to the small ring and dropped back just after that.

On the climb, the pack ahead was shedding riders. I caught up to a couple of riders and hung on their wheels to the summit, expecting to get dropped on the descent. However, I stayed with them, as well as one other rider that we collected, all the way to Corralitos. Then I rode with a couple riders over Hames, Day Valley, Valencia, and part of Soquel, then solo the rest of Soquel and back home.