Had to meet with our Pearl Izumi & Shimano rep in Morgan Hill today, and decided that, obviously, there was no way I was going to do that if it got in the way of a bike ride. Too far to ride from Redwood City to Morgan Hill & back, and besides, the plan is for a tough ride tomorrow with Kevin. And since Becky (my daughter, who does the apparel ordering in Redwood City) needed to be there too, I decided a reasonable idea would be to go down with her in a car, then ride back from Morgan HIll to San Jose and take the train back to Redwood City. For the route, I used GoogleMaps and ridewithgps.com to chart a downloadable course for my Garmin.

First, let me tell you that heading north, in the afternoon, on a warm (93 degree) day, is probably the wrong direction. It’s a long, kinda lonely drag, along a trail that zig-zags from one side of the freeway (101) to the other. Once in a while you come across someone else on a bike, but for the most part, there’s not much to keep your mind occupied beyond the effort at hand. Sure, there are markers every half mile that you can use to gauge your progress, but in a hot headwind they seem more discouraging than encouraging. Doesn’t matter; you just pedal forward into it and try to keep your speed up. Which, apparently, I did because Strava thinks I’ve got the 6th-fastest time on the segment from the beginning in Morgan Hill to Heyller Park (location of the Velodrome) in southern San Jose.

But that Google Maps bike directions thing? Works fine if you’ve got a fairly long stretch of recommended bike route, but the convoluted route once I got into San Jose was impossible to follow. The routes shown below-

Wished I’d worn my heart monitor so I could have known my “suffer score” but had left it at home. Besides, the “suffer score” on Strava doesn’t take into account heat or headwinds!