Diablo Junction plus South Gate Road to Blackhawk – 38 miles

Today the plan was for an easy ride followed by watching a football game at the sports pub. So I rode Eddy with my MTB shoes, baggy shorts, and a Hawkeye jersey. Rick and JB came along and we tooled up North Gate without getting too competitive.

Wildlife Encounter: Dozens of tarantulas. I’ve seen a few the last couple rides, but today was prime time for the little crawlers.

Rick got a bike computer for his birthday that stores altitude, speed, distance, and temperature data for his rides so he’s been e-mailing me the graphs that it makes afterwards on his computer – pretty interesting if you like gadgets like that.

Rick also set a new PB last Wednesday when I couldn’t ride – 35:25, very impressive (read, better than my PB). He’s thinking he can do a 62 minute Challenge so that’ll also be very impressive. For training today he decided to do 30 second intervals from the Upper Washout to the Junction so that was the last time I saw him. JB went chasing after him so I was off the back for the last few miles, even though I felt pretty good.

At the Junction there were dozens of riders obviously preparing for the Challenge next week. And on the way down South Gate there were another couple dozen coming up… very nice to see.

I’ve been having some front brake problems on Eddy – it’s felt kind of grabby for the last 6 months or so but today it was giving me some scary vibrations and chatter when I pressed hard, so I had a slower than usual descent. JB was meeting a friend at the pub so he took the hole in the fence, but Rick and I did Blackhawk, and then Danville Blvd. We hooked up with some other guys there and I think they sneered at my football jersey so I took a long pull at a couple mph faster than they had been doing and made them hurt a little bit. But then I was about spent when we rolled into Walnut Creek and we split up.

Football game sucked but the beer and hot fries were pretty good, then I rode home.