Ride route: Cedar St/Eaton Rd/Alameda, Edgewood, Cañada south to Woodside, Mountain Home Road to Portola, Portola to Alpine, Alpine becomes Santa Cruz into downtown Menlo Park. Pause in Menlo Park for lunch at Le Boulanger. (I think we stopped about 40 minutes.) After lunch I could have gone back home (total distance just over 20mi), but crazy me thought it would be nice to ride back to San Carlos with the rest of the group. So I did. We took the N-S Route with Redwood City Cutoff: Middlefield to Semicircular and through the neighborhoods to downtown RWC, then up Arguello and over to Old County into downtown San Carlos. Then back on Cedar/Eaton and Alameda to Valparaiso, cross El Camino, right on Laurel and home.

Total distance: 38.33 miles
Ride Time: 2:51
MXS: 29 mph (down Edgewood toward Canada)
AVS: 13.3 mph
General weather conditions: cloudy and light breeze in the AM, clearing and windy in the PM. I was supposed to have a tailwind on Alameda on the way home but it didn’t feel like it.

I did not have to walk my bike up Edgewood this time, although I think I made the same number of rest stops. Flying down the other side was less freaky the second time. I saw a lot of new scenery — all the southern area of Cañada and Mountain Home were totally new to me, along with the stretch of Alameda between Edgewood and Woodside. I didn’t realize that Alameda gets narrow at points, rather than having a nice bike lane the whole way like it has in Menlo Park. Some of it is not very nice to ride because people are rude. Also it’s hilly, but that’s not really news to anything but my thighs, which were extremely unhappy that I was climbing anything at all after Edgewood (parts of Mountain Home and Portola were pretty challenging on Edgewood-drained legs too). Mountain Home also doesn’t have shoulders (unlike the other possibility, Whiskey Hill) so that was interesting. Not as scary as I expected, especially with little traffic and five of us riding. There were some places where the asphalt patches were clearly whimsical — a snowman and a spiral — which was fun. I’m actually very glad we didn’t take Whiskey Hill because if you do, you have to climb that stupid hill that’s a continuation of the Sand Hill climb on the Portola loop, and that hill still is a challenge for me even when fairly fresh, so I don’t know what would have happened in this situation.

I really only intended to do about 20 miles today to prove to myself that I’m in shape for the Sequoia 50K next weekend, but for whatever reason — I guess just that I love sightseeing on my bike — I decided to keep on. I’m very tired now but not notably sore (except my hands are a little bit sore, and I’m sure I’ll hear from my legs when I stand up), and I don’t have to climb Edgewood next weekend (just Arastradero and Whiskey Hill), so it should be more than all right. I think I’ll be faster this year than I was last year. Last year I had only just gotten Maia, for one thing. Today I was keeping up with people who are much fitter than I (at least one of whom had already ridden a century that weekend) and I did all right, though I did fall behind on the climb, on Cañada, and a bit on Portola. But coming down Valparaiso at the end I was still going around 18 on the gradual downhill, which I know is faster than I was going last year on the same approach during the Sequoia, and I didn’t feel muzzy until I actually got to El Camino (very close to home), whereas before I remember that I felt muzzy once it flattened out and had to really concentrate to get to the rest stop at Burgess Park, at about the 20-mile mark (I think). Whereas this ride, at 20mi I was definitely ready for a break (and we took one) but not in the same way.

All in all, a highly successful ride.

I need to think about what mileage to do this week. I’m thinking 20 (if I can), 13, 6, 0 (I have something else to do Friday that precludes biking to work, though maybe I should get up early and ride a bit), and ~3 Saturday just to spin a bit, then of course 30ish on Sunday.