Diablo Summit

Rick, JB, and I met up at the Gate. Just the guys this morning, so it promised to be a sufferfest. Rick announced he was planning on riding one minute intervals every five minutes, JB announced he was NOT going to do intervals but would ride steady-Freddie and would then go back the long way, down South Gate.

So Rick and I synchronized our cyclecomputer stopwatches and the first interval came at 5 minutes – we pulled way ahead of JB, I stayed on Rick’s wheel and didn’t really dig too deep. Then JB caught up to us in the recovery.

Wildlife Encounter : A coyote chasing a jackrabbit. Looked like the coyote was going to have a big breakfast but I didn’t see the capture.

Over the next few intervals we pulled farther away from JB and I also started powering away from Rick, but we always re-grouped during the recovery minutes. With each interval my peak heart rate got higher and so did my recovery heart rate. About the forth interval JB started getting ahead of us during our recovery phase and then we’d catch him during the hard effort, but at the sixth interval we were totally fractured. Interval number 7 came at 40 minutes but I stretched it out a little longer and crossed the line at Junction in 41m10s, just a few seconds behind JB. Rick came in about a minute later looking like he’d been mauled by a bobcat. Good interval workout, should help my time on Wednesday.

There were a lot of fresh faces on the mountain today, but a lot of the regulars were away doing the Death Ride. I expect to see some new 2004 Death Ride jerseys this week on the Wednesday ride. While we were waiting around at the Junction, Peter showed up and convinced us all to go up. I stayed together with Peter until Juniper where I knew JB and probably Rick would turn around. Then Peter and I went to the Summit and my total Summit time was 77 minutes. That Diablo Challenge thing might just be worth doing this year!

Met Rick for a Jamba Juice, which tasted great after the ride (the 16oz size in one of the new low-cal flavors… I’m in training you know).