Today was the Mount Diablo Challenge, an 11.2 mile bicycle ride up Mount Diablo.  CA Technologies sponsors the event every year, and I’ve heard Mike Gregoire brag about it in town hall meetings.  He should.  Not only are the racers supporting the land conservation efforts of Mount Diablo’s myriad stewards — many of them volunteers — but the ride itself is just glorious.  You feel damn good about helping save Mount Diablo when you reach its peak.

Speaking of reaching its peak, most of the riders in this race are very serious cyclists.  While mountain bikers (like me) could register and participate in the race, I saw only a handful.  The “peloton” was a hardened group that finished the eleven miles and almost four thousand feet of elevation gain in less than an hour, last year almost a hundred of them.  Look at the road bike times from last year’s results.  According to Google, cars finish this course in about forty-five minutes.  The speed limits vary from twenty to twenty-five miles per hour along the way.  Yes, there were some insanely fast bicyclists out on the hill this morning.

I cannot, however, say that I was one of them.  When I registered, I knew I could finish the course, this from past experience climbing nasty hills near my home in south San Jose.  But I broke my shoulder falling from a cycle three years ago, and it made me shy about riding.  Apart from a few days on the stationary cycle this week, it was my first time back on the bike since my accident.  Heck, if you’re going to get back in the game, why not go big?  I figured the muscles were all still in there and that they just needed a little waking up.

I was kind of right about that.  It took me about three miles to warm up, but then I felt good for most of the race.  I was moving at a snail’s pace compared to the real riders, but I never stopped once until I was within the last half-mile of the summit.  I have a number of stories I could tell you about the race, but I thought this would be the most entertaining.  I am going to describe the events that took place as I closed the last few hundred yards to the summit.

save-diablo-challenge

I hope the map is fairly self-explanatory.  I traveled along the path of the red arrows from left to right in order to reach the summit, easily identified by the circular parking lot and the Google label saying “Mount Diablo Summit Museum”. 🙂

Pay attention to the numbers in parentheses.  Three is kind of hidden, but it’s the one to the left of four.  🙂

As I approached the summit, I was exhausted.  I had finally started to take some rests because I figured it would be better to finish with a slower time than really lay myself out trying to get up there as fast as I could.  The problem with allowing yourself to take a rest is that you then allow yourself to take another one.  And then a third.  Progress grinds to a relative halt.

Still, I did finally close in on the summit.  As I passed (1), I saw a most curious site.  About fifty cyclists were all poised to begin their descent behind a bit of police tape in a driveway at my right.  I remembered that the descents were to happen in waves, and realized this must be the first group to descend (I hadn’t seen anyone descending on my way up).  That means I had suddenly found myself face to face with the fastest cyclists on the mountain that day.

One cyclist called out to me:  “Great job!”  I was stunned, but managed a thank you.  Then a few more called out.  All at once, the whole damn group of cyclists erupted into applause.

I was shocked.  There was a steep bit of road right ahead, within the view of my fans, and I decided to punk it up as hard as I could.  Off I went, muscles screaming.

As soon as I reached the top of what really amounted to a minor uptick, I was heaving wind and ready to die. That would be at point (2) on the map.  The cyclists poised to descend could no longer see me, so I took a chance to have a good long rest and let my breathing recover.  I had no idea how much more nonsense the road had in store, but I was going to have to baby myself up from here.  That little bit of showboating had cost me.

On my next stretch, I made it to (3).  I was starting to despair.  This length road must have had more than a 15% grade and I was already exhausted.  Did I really have the chops to finish the race?  I heard later they call this last stretch of road “the wall”.  Aren’t things like this always called “the wall”?

Then I heard someone calling out to me.  I looked up the nasty hill of road and now saw a person waving at me from the top.  He was at (4) on the map.  It was the finishing line.  “Come on!” he said.  “You can do it!”  God bless that guy.

Indeed I could.  Indeed I did.

For the curious, saddle soreness was the most painful part of the ride.  Make sure your butt is ready for one of these, even if you think you’re tough.  I’m not sure I’m going to be able to sit down tomorrow.

 

DBM