I've been waiting for today for at least six months.
Last year when the AToC came over Diablo it was not a decisive stage, not a decisive point in the stage, and not really that interesting since they just came up to Junction and went down the other side in one big group plus a meaningless breakaway. Also they didn't show ANY of it on TV since it was before the coverage started. But I guess we impressed the race director enough to convince him that Diablo deserved a mountain top finish.
Left home a little before noon planning to be at my spot by 2pm and that worked just fine. I was kind of hoping my spot wouldn't be too popular... increasing my chances for international television fame; but there were hundreds of people there... including a guy in a chicken suit, a girl in a cow suit, and another guy in fishnet stockings and a bodice.
Race entered the Park at 3pm right on schedule. New climbing records were set for the SGR-Summit route; The stage winner probably had the fastest time but it doesn't look like he has a Strava account. Awesome that anyone could do such a fast time after a hundred miles of racing before they got there.
SPD pedals for standing around shoes.
Lower gears help when you've got a 30lb backpack.
Helmet with camera mount, and California mix on the box.
Bike parking was sub-plentiful.
Man, this is a good spot.
I brought some chalk but couldn't think of anything
clever to write on the road.
I wish these guys would pick a spot and stay there instead
of riding around until the last minute.
JB was running late so I did a solo to Junction. This time I went for an assault on Split 2 - Penny Lane, starting at the park boundary sign. The hard part about this segment is you don't have your climbing groove on quite yet, and as soon as you're done you face the Bump so you know you won't get a chance to recover at the end of your hard effort... 90 percent of it is half-mental. Missed my PB by 3 seconds.
Roadkill Report: rattlesnake near the Loading Dock
So the rest of the way to Junction was done in oxygen debt. Also, it was getting pretty warm.
At the Junction JB showed up a few minutes later, and then ex-regular Moss arrived with his FIL on the way to the Summit. Moss said he was a volunteer for the AMGEN Tour of California Mt. Diablo Stage. He'll be directing traffic on NGR early in the morning and he bought one of the special jerseys that aren't available to the GenPop until race day... also he says they told him the finish is definitely at the Upper Lot - and it sounded like they will be taking the Challenge route where they go up the down wall.
The Team ClubSport folks were doing a ride up the Easy Side so JB and I went down to meet them but they weren't there yet so he went on around and I waited at the Tire Poppers and then came back up with them for a Bump de Bump.
After a hot few days... today was pleasantly cool.
The wristband on my heart rate monitor broke last week. Replacements were impossible to find, so I just glued the watch part onto the handlebar mount with a big glob of Liquid Nails.
Me, JB, and Seppi all rode well together for the first few miles but it was obvious that I was breathing harder than they... so I struck out with great vengence and furious anger up The Bump and stayed away until the Lower Ranch when they caught me back up. I figured it was better to have flashed and flared-out than never to have flashed at all.
Seppi also forgot his shoes and had to ride in his running shoes... didn't slow him down.
Lots of people at the Junction, many talking about The Amgen Tour of California Mount Diablo Stage coming up. Still not sure if they're going up the Wall though. No bikes past Devil's Elbow, but there will be bike vallet parking there so you can hike up to the Summit.
The rules aren't clear.
At the Junction, some guy driving a brand new car scraped the passenger side on the swinging barrier gate that was propped open... he was backing up and appeared to be not only a bad driver but an all-purpose twit. The ranger went over to make sure he wasn't drunk or something, the rest of us all just laughed.
TODAY is the Devil Mountain Double, and we saw quite a few of those intrepid pedallers coming down NGR.
Passed'em : Passed me ratio - 1:1
Sometimes folks joke about recumbent riders... but if you
ride the DMD on one, you get a big Diablo Salute from me.
Talked to a guy at Junction who used to ride with Cunningham, Fisher, and Breeze in the incipient days of mountain biking in Marin County... he had some good stories.
This was the biggest group of riders I've
ever seen going up The Mountain. Most had matching
but I didn't recognize it.
Kind of windy at the lower elevations. Charlie set a hard pace the first 4 segments and had me breathing hard but then he faded.
Some cows escaped above Diablo Ranch. There were about a dozen humans on foot trying to round up the errant bovines while we were ascending. Then on the way down they had mostly succeeded in herding the beefalo back down but they were causing somewhat of a traffic jam.
Time trial guy passes us at the bottom of The Bump
I hadn't until I met Kyle Bryant. He used to work for my company in our Sacrameto offfice. I don't know him well enough to call him a friend, but I've met him a few times and I've watched his disease progress, and he's the kind of inspirational guy who makes you ask your family, friends, and blog readers to make a donation. Kyle is now a spokesperson for the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance, and organizer of the series of charity rides like the one I'm doing in Davis on June 1.
F.A. is an insidious genetic disorder that slowly but relentlessly takes away your coordination, your ability to speak, your sight, and your hearing... and THEN you get diabetes, scoliosis, and heart disease.
Now I could post some lugubrious videos here showing kids who are losing their ability to walk, teenagers who went from running hurdles to hobbling on crutches, and adults who have to worry that their hearts and lungs will just stop because of this disease... but instead, I found this one of Kyle that shows the guy I know - a man with absolutely zero self-pity:
My Donation Page:LINK (I put one of those tear-jerker videos there in case you need a little arm-twisting). When you click on the donation link, you'll see this:
Now I hate how they make it look like a $500 donation is realistic, and a $50 donation isn't REALLY REALLY generous, but the webmaster didn't consult me. My idea of a magnanimous gesture is to skip one lunch at your regular lunch place and donate the amount you would've spent to a cause that someone cares about enough to ask you to. So don't be shy about clicking the OTHER AMOUNT circle.
One really interesting thing about F.A. is that they know EXACTLY what causes it... the exact genetic error and exactly which genes are involved and exactly where they're located on the genetic map. But they don't know how to "patch" the genetic mistake, or counter-act the effects. So this disease that only affects one in 50,000 people gets a lot of interest from medical researchers because there's a real chance that they could figure it out, and when they do they could apply that knowledge to other similar conditions (like ALS) that affect larger numbers of people. You can share in a little of that triumphant discovery by offering your lunch money to the cause.
Devil Mountain Double was today - most of the fast guys were already gone but we got to see quite a few finishing their Diablo segment. Chapeau to everyone who finished the most awesome double century in the USA.
edit - anonymous poster tells me today was the staff ride and the actual DMD is next week. I guess I was fooled by the DMD rest stop at the church and the red numbers on the riders' backs. Still... I should know about that kind of stuff. Actual DMD is on Saturday, and the ATOC Etape de Tour is on Sunday so lots of Diablo riders next weekend.
JB uses the stopwatch function on his Blackberry
instead of a cyclocomputer.
Some guy who just happened to ride into a nice
natural frame behind me.
Wildlife Encounter: a bunny.
That's some blue sky right there.
The green phase has passed.
The wind was really stiff up above 1,000 feet or so. Put your head down and grind is about all you could do.
Perhaps the DMD caboose.
I don't know this guy, but I think he was posing for my seatstay cam.
