Diablo Summit - 33 miles

Saw Rick at the corner of Ygnacio and Bancroft where we both arrived at the same time (him in his Explorer, me on my bike). He parked on Doncaster and we rode to the Gate from there. JB showed up a few minutes later and we got rolling. Lots of bugs on the road today - for some reason they cluster in the parts of the road when you're likely to have your mouth wide open so you suck in a good dozen before you can react and maybe spit out half that many. We rode casually until the bottom of the Bump where I started my intervals. I stayed ahead for a lot longer than I would have thought but did get caught around the Upper Wash Out. Rick's back has been hurting from too much manual labor so he started to fade and JB and I played a little cat and mouse the rest of the way up. I pretended I didn't care about beating him and he pretended he was riding his own ride but he opened up a big gap well before we got to the point where I can usually out sprint him. My time was 41minutes and change so it was a good second half after a relaxed start.

Ride up to the summit was leisurely and we didn't stop at Juniper, we all got to the bottom of the Wall at the same time but I let them go up first so I'd have a clear shot - and anyway I like to ride a few laps around the Lower Parking Lot to make sure I've got maximum lung reserve before I start up. No problem though - it's always a great ego feeder to make it up the Wall without hitting the wall.

Dozens of riders were coming up as we were descending. Even saw a guy with a Klein wearing a Klein jersey at the Junction - I gave him a ring of the old Incredibell as I went by.

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