Straight Up

Ice would have been nice. It was about 83F degrees at the top of Mt. Hamilton by the time I got there. My friends were drawing straws to decide who should be dispatched to look for me.

They know me; they know I am a slow climber. On the way up, I had suggested that they could descend the backside if they got bored waiting for me to arrive, but they were having none of that.

Down in the valley, it was about 10 degrees cooler than yesterday; which is to say, hot. The temperature at the summit was about the same. So much for the forecast.

After yesterday's adventure, what possessed me to climb Mt. Hamilton today? Well, it is past mid-June and I am not ready to end my climbing streak. So far, I have missed only the month of March. (Hmm, I need to double down once before the year is out.)

If you are looking for a good day to climb Mt. Hamilton, mark your calendar for June 16, 2013 (Father's Day). I have a hunch that, like today, traffic will be about as light as it gets on a dry weekend day. Bicyclists outnumbered even the motorcyclists, today.

I was surprised to find some wildflowers, still, near the top. I enjoyed the company of my friends, then lingered a while longer on the patio. After wondering what the SPF rating would be for the salt on my skin, I decided to slather on some more sunscreen of the conventional kind before heading down.

Ten minutes or so into my descent, I caught up to a knot of cars. I did not envy the driver of the minivan at the front, who certainly was not having a good time driving down the mountain. Technically, with only two cars stuck behind him (and one bicycle, of course), he was not obliged to pull over. But, still ... be polite, have some common sense, and pull over.

That is what I did, at Kincaid Road. I could not get a clear line of sight to pass all three of them, and I was not about to ride my brakes and eat their brake dust until the first uphill section (where they would, finally, pull away). I gave them a four-minute head start, and that was enough to be clear of them.

For the day, the usual 4,765 feet of climbing over 39 miles. My fitness has improved dramatically. I completed the ride in virtually the same amount of time as I did in April, but my heart rate was 18 bpm lower today (both average, and peak). That is huge! And, I did this one day after riding 53 miles and climbing 5,525 feet.

Average pace? 6.0 mph on the way up, 16.6 mph on the way down. I wonder what my pace is on the pure downhill stretches, excluding those pesky intervening uphill bits (where it dips to 5-6 mph)?

July is right around the corner.