Steady as She Goes

Years ago, a friend of mine met her (then future) husband while climbing Old La Honda Road. Being the benchmark climb of the Bay Area, it's enormously popular. I was bracketed by two club members today when a familiar voice rang out: a colleague was sprinting up the hill. After he reached the top, he came back down to ride alongside me and chat. “Don't fall over,” I joked. For me, this was the most convenient way to reach a particular section of Skyline; I was not riding for a personal best, just hard enough to carry on a somewhat breathless conversation.

It looked like a party at the top—I've never seen so many cyclists there. Surely they didn't all pass me? I had admired one guy, in particular, who flew past me with grace and no apparent effort. My best time on this hill was a few seconds on the far side of 30 minutes, and thus it will ever be.

I wasn't planning to line up all the climbs west of Skyline between Highway 84 and Kings Mountain on successive cycling weekends, but that is how it turned out. I would tackle the most challenging climb today: Bear Gulch West. After dropping gently through the redwoods, the road pitches down more sharply through rolling, open fields. A fog bank lingered over the Pacific, but the sea was visible at one point.

The key thing to remember about this climb is to shift into your lowest gear before you roll to a stop at the end of the road. My memory served me well: when I saw the sign warning about the blind curve ahead, I shifted down, down, down. Moments later I had plunged from wide open space into the small redwood grove that shades the gate at the end of the road. Even in my lowest gear, I waited until my fellow riders had cleared the road before I started to turn the cranks. I think I can, I think I can ...

Having climbed triumphantly back to Skyline without a pause, my reward was a fabulous car-free descent of Kings Mountain. I passed another cyclist near the top, and he seemed dispirited that he couldn't catch me. Whenever he was within range, his noisy freehub made it seem like I was being chased down the hill by an angry bumblebee. Near the bottom, he blew through a stop sign and (thus) passed me. A bit farther down the road, he managed to drop his chain and (thus) I passed him. Karma?

I completed some 25 miles with 3,385 feet of climbing in less than 3 hours—averaging 0.4 mph faster than a comparable outing three weeks ago. Pleased with my pace, I am.