Diablo Junction plus South Gate and back up- 34 miles

I was about 5 minutes late getting to the Gate and I saw Peter starting up alone so I chased him down. I knew no one else was coming so I also knew I’d have to match Peter’s pace which I wasn’t sure I could do today because I felt kind of sluggish.

We rode together and Peter seemed happy to go a bit slower too, but we did pass several people on the way up. Peter got a REALLY bad case of poison oak all over his arms from a hiking incident yesterday and it looks like road rash and he said it hurts too so that was slowing him down a bit.

We had a little break at Junction and I suggested going down SGR to the tire poppers and back up and he liked that idea. It was quite cool on the way down but it felt good. Turning around at the tire poppers was tough and I thought that would be good training for the Death Ride – even more important than the long climbs is the repeats. After a few minutes I noticed a guy not far behind us and he was riding at about the same speed. A couple times I got ahead of Peter but it all came together near Stagecoach. Then Peter and the other guy (who was riding a classic steel Miyata with downtube shifters) opened up a gap on me, but I caught back on right before the Junction. So I did 44 minutes up from the north, and 34 minutes from the south.

There were lots of riders who looked like they were training for Markleeville next month. Maybe they thought that’s what we were doing too.