It’s been a very long time since Kevin’s (younger Kevin, not ex-pilot) been on a Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride, much less a longer Sunday ride. His recovery from his knee procedure, where they painfully injected platelets into his problematic right knee, has been far longer than anticipated. I don’t even remember how many months ago the procedure was; recovery was supposed to be just 6 weeks and I’m guessing it’s more than twice that, so far.

The problem is that, even exclusively riding an ebike to try and limit strain to that knee, well, he just doesn’t know his own strength. After weeks and weeks without improvement, I finally convinced him, maybe two weeks ago, to install his power-measuring pedals from his regular road bike to his ebike, so he could monitor what he was doing and make sure to limit his own applied power. He resisted, but finally did it, and… yeah, he discovered he was pushing way too hard at times, even though he was on an ebike. He’d frequently get short bursts up towards 400 watts, and that’s just too much. I suggested limited power to a max of just 150, and… it’s been working! Fewer complaints of knee pain on his rides to and from work (about 9 miles each way; he lives in Foster City and the bike shop’s in Redwood City).

So this past Sunday was his first ride with me in quite some time. We didn’t dare overdo things, so it was pretty mild, about 40 miles, a non-enhanced (no extra climbs) loop down to Los Altos, stopping at Peet’s for coffee, and then back via Foothill and Sand Hil.

It’s admittedly a bit odd, riding my regular bike while Kevin’s on his ebike, and, setting the pace, I have to cut it back quite a bit so he keeps within his power range. At the end of the day it provided an interesting data point; my average power was 150 watts (about 25 watts below normal for this sort of ride); his was exactly 100. The important thing was that Kevin’s knee felt fine after. A major victory, especially with France just three months away.

With Kevin’s knee very slowly recovering, still not able to handle any sort of decent ride, I jumped at the opportunity to do a pretty challenging ride in the East Bay with the “other” (pilot) Kevin, along with Karl (a former regular Tuesday/Thursday-morning rider), and super-strong Dave and Scott. The timing was perfect; Karen’s doing well so I wasn’t worried about being away from home (or depriving her of the car I needed to drive to the ride), and the ride included Mt Diablo (which I haven’t ridden since 2011) and Morgan Territory Road, which I haven’t ridden since… the 70s?

Not much warmup; we started at Athenian School in Danville and started climbing almost immediately. Mt Diablo is a pretty easy grade for the most part, with only a few short steeper sections (plus the uber-steep and thankfully-short goat path road at the very top). It was really tough gauging my effort without a heart monitor though, going on feel and power alone. Eventually I let three of the four ride away from me, in that gradual, painful sort of way where you keep thinking, longer than you should, maybe I should just dig in and get back up with them!

It was a beautiful morning for the climb with mild temps, the slightest breeze and almost no cars. As the road winds its way around the mountain you’re captivated by gorgeous views and, thankfully, I am still climbing just barely fast enough to be surprised at how much elevation I’ve gained in a fairly short amount of time. As I’ve often said, life goes by at just the right speed on a bike!

The building at the summit of Mt Diablo is worth heading into; it’s literally built on the very tip-top of the mountain and inside, they actually expose the peak! There is a gift shop that sells cold drinks (you have to look hard to find them; they’re in a small fridge unit on the floor, to the left of the check-out). I fueled up with a $3 coke (yikes, summit cokes are just $2 in France!) and after admiring the north-bay views we all headed back down. And down. And down. It was strange; it seemed liek we descended a lot more than we had climbed. I wondered how much below sea level we must have been at one point. 🙂

I could do without the long stretch on Ygnacio Valley Road; three lanes in each direction for a good part of it and it’s not so much the cars flying past as it is the noise that bothers you. It’s also got a few “junk” climbs tossed in for fun, made even junkier by the road being so wide. And then, after a while, you find yourself in this idyllic little town square in Clayton. Really bizarre; it feels almost like a movie set or maybe, if you’re old enough, part of Frontier Village. Nice little part with an adjacent market for fueling up for the nicer roads coming up, Marsh Creek and Morgan Territory.

Morgan Territory from the north is an interesting climb; it’s a bit like an uphill roller coaster with little dips punctuated by a bit longer climbing sections. If you were really in shape, this would be a fun climb to power your way through! And maybe that’s what I did, last time I rode it back in the 70s. Near the top there’s a park on the right with bathrooms and water; water wasn’t much of an issue with the cooler temps (might have been low 70s at that point), and then, a bit further, the roller coast ride ends with a sharp descent down towards Livermore. This is one of those descents where you just can’t get the speed you’d like because the road is pretty narrow, you don’t know how the pavement’s going to be (any gravel in a corner would be a bad thing) and sight lines aren’t good enough to know, for sure, there won’t be an oncoming car.

Green. Green was the color of the day. Green like that old Microsoft screen saver from Window 98. No brown anywhere! Lots of poppies too.

From the bottom of Morgan Territory it was a bit of a slog back to the starting point, with a headwind and a trip through the gated community of Black Hawk. Fortunately, once out of Black Hawk, it wasn’t too far to the finish. It was one of those rides where, had it been another 10 miles tacked onto the end, it would have felt like a bit too much. But we had some strong riders with us who were willing to ride at the front, and, at least speaking for myself and Karl, we were very appreciative of their efforts to get us back to the start.