Wednesday Bump Repeats

The day got away from me and rain was coming in the afternoon and I didn't get started until 4:30.

Got pretty wet but the rain never got heavy and I felt good and we needed the rain so it was fun.

Hardly saw anybody else.

My plan was three Bumps minimum; goal of 5, stretch goal of 6... criteria was to get out of the Park by 6:30 because DARK. So I got four and that felt right. My last one was the fastest... that probably means I'm getting good at this.

Bwah ha ha... Number of the Belgian Beast

Not many other riders means you get a bunch of my own selfies.

Legendary Status:  This Brian H guy has held the crown for about a month now, and I don't know if he's going to defend or even if he knows I'm challenging him, but I do know that he's following me on Strava so he knows I'm doing repeats and at some point he's gonna figure it out. He probably won't put up too much of a fight because he has Legendary Status on every other segment too and he probably doesn't have a broken knee and might take pity on me.

Saturday Junction

Three Bumps closer to being the Legend.

It was cold this morning, but pretty warm by Junction.

JB's been sick enough that he had two COVID tests... negative though.

There was a guy at Junction that said he was just getting into riding, even though he had a pretty nice bike. We told him how to complain like a pro... "I need a bigger gear for those intervals.  This frame is a little flexy in my sprints."

These guys were FLYING! 

This guy had what appeared to be a painted titanium Serotta.

Wednesday Junction

Today, Charlie and I did Junction plus ONE extra Bump.  I'm a little behind the curve because of other stuff... time to get back to the business of becoming The Legend of the Bump.

Bumps Today:                02

Bumps of Autumn:        11

People Ahead of Me:     12

He pushed me hard and I faded bad, so I'm calling it good training. He talked about how many years since he did a Bump Repeat, and then he did it and set a new Personal Record... beating me by about a GigaBikeLength.

I wore my retro Eddy Merckx jersey. It looks like wool and has long sleeves, but it doesn't have any pockets so I had to wear my windbreaker over the top and lose the style points.

Knee didn't hurt much... still lumpy and weak but that beats pain.

I had my annual doctor exam on Monday. In the last 2 years I gained four pounds and shrunk a half inch... probably the vertebra fracture.

Making progress

See if you can guess when I broke my patella.

This is the start point for a Bump Repeat

This is the stop point for a Bump Repeat

Saturday Morning Bump Repeats

First Diablo in TWO WEEKS! 

JB was sick, even got a COVID test, no results yet.

If I'm every going to be the Legend of The Bump, I have to step it up, so today I did FIVE Bumps and skipped The Junction.  It was about as hard as I expected, and I was getting rubber legs on #5. As of now I have 19 Bumps in the last 90 days, and the current Legend has 55. Nobody told me this would be easy, I figure I should aim for 70 just to take the trophy and show a clean pair of heels.

Wildlife Encounter: deer on The Approach.

Some guys with trucks and what I think were hang gliders rolled up on top were scouting out The Bump - but they left without unrolling so I'm not sure,

It's been a rough year at the Diablo Homestead. January was my patella fracture, in May my greyhound Isaac died of liver cancer at 8, and this week our cat Ace died of lymphoma at 7. We adopted Isaac as a 2-year old and Ace as a kitten in 2015 and they both went way too soon.

Diablo Challenge 2021

This was a great Challenge! The event got cancelled in 2020 for COVID so it was nice to be back AND the weather was perfect.  Hardly any SNAFUs at the start line, although they were a little behind schedule.

Winner Quin Felton came in with the 9th best ever Strava time for The Segment which puts him after 7 Tour of California pro's and the exalted Nate English in 8th.

I talked to a guy named Ken at the start - he said he got into cycling when he quit his long-haul trucking job and lost 100 pounds!

I was one of the last vehicles down because they needed my truck to haul one guy with a minor medical issue, and another guy who had a mechanical on the way down. Most of the celebration was over by the time I got back to the high school, but I got a veggie burger and saw a few more friends.

Ken

Nancy, who loves this Mountain almost as much as I do. (Note professional cowbell)