Today was one of the long distance training rides with the bike club. Since the route came down south near the end, I planned to bike to the start. But that meant biking in the dark. I got up a 5 am and looked outside to see if it was raining, as the forecast showed. Nope, it was dry as a bone and when I looked up into the night sky it looked like patchy clouds.

I jumped on the bike at 6:15 am (sunrise was 7:18 am today). I met Gary F. on route and we headed up Santa Teresa. I thought I was so smart getting in the stretch from Gilroy to San Jose while it was dry. At least until we were approaching Bailey where we had quite a downpour. I realized that I would have wet and cold feet for the whole ride.

On Coleman Ave., Gary had a flat so I rode ahead and met the riders that were just coming up Meridian to let them know. We circled back to pickup Gary and headed on the route. Opps, Gary had another flat on Shannon. He decided to head back home so I gave him one of my tubes. He was the smart one, I think.

The weather cleared and as we started to climb Highway 9. It became sunny with blue skies. I thought I had brought too many clothes with me and was way over dressed for what looked then like a fine day. David had already gone ahead so it was now just four of us, Joe F, Peter, Kley and myself. By the time we reached the summit the temperature was now down to 40 degrees, but it was still sunny.

We headed up Skyline and I watched the temperature drop to 36 degrees and it started to get cloudy again. The descent down was super cold. I realized I had under dressed. Then on Summit we had a hail storm. My own thought was just to try to make it to the Summit Store. But by the time we got there it was sunny again.

On the way down Soquel San Jose it started to rain again but by the time we reached Soquel it had stopped. We finally made it to Corralitos where we were going to eat lunch. I was starved, having biked nearly 90 miles by that point. After we ate, we all decided to take the “short” option and after doing Hazel Dell we went up Mt. Madonna. Hey, I don’t remember it being that steep. Since we had wet roads for the past few hours we figured going down Redwood Retreat would be too muddy but when we reached the summit it was dry so that is how we made our way down. It was now dry and sunny (my wife told me it never did rain in Gilroy today). I rode a bit with the other 3 and as they headed back to the start before I biked home. I ended up with 112 miles total.  That brings me to 2600 miles so far this year.  That is a lot for the middle of March. This chart shows the comparision with prior years in terms of accumulated miles cycling.

Categories: Cycling Group Rides
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