Mt Diablo + Heatwave
35.5 miles, 3983 ft
This is a ride that I have been dreading most copiously since conceived of three weeks ago. The clue is in the name - literally Mount Satan. A co-rider assured me there was a mistranslation from the Spanish; apparently it should actually have translated as "Satan Thicket" from the origin story. Is that reassuring? It does still have Satan in it, though considerably less Mount.
Last week, I endeavoured to explain my Sunday plans to some co-workers. Having this discussion out loud really served to highlight that riding up a mountain in the apex of Californian summer is not what most people consider to fall within the scope of fun weekend activities. Apart from one co-worker who had actually done the ride in June and described it in particularly gruesome detail. Ah well, I rationalised, this ride would be excellent training, and provide undoubtedly fertile material to delight the readers of this blog. At that time, my puny imagination could not have conceived of the abundant fecundity of blog material today was to provide.
After awaking at the ungodly Sunday hour of 5.45 am in a futile bid to avoid the heat, perusal of the email account yielded a warning from a rider who was not planning to attend. The temperature was set to soar to 36 degrees Celsius! That is a heck of a lot of Fahrenheit for the unmetricised reader. My quitting at this point was only averted by a prior agreement to give a fellow rider a lift.
Seven riders grouped in Safeway parking lot in Walnut Creek at 7.45 am. Apart from the man shouting homophobic slurs at the male riders in lycra (he liked my style, however), the parking lot seemed an eminently reasonable location to leave our assorted vehicles and commence the journey.
The first few miles were flat and pleasant, and clearly no indication of what was to come. Shortly, Mt Diablo loomed tall, the ascent began, and the temperature shot upward. The first thousand feet ascending comprised a gruesome, sweaty, boiling struggle, with the pungent scent of unfiltered testosterone. Unless something changed with the external conditions, I would not be summitting that day. The rider with whom I had car-pooled turned back, heat-stricken.
The surviving team members ploughed on, pallid and sweaty, apart from our team captain who is immune to both climbing and heat (could he be a reptilian?), and I suspect was actively riding as slowly as he could to monitor his riders for signs of collapse. Or at least to retrieve the bodies. Mercifully, there was a hut with water and even toilets at the junction where the north and south roads converge on the summit road. Delightedly, I guzzled down water and a fistful of the captain's magic "salt" pills.
Renewed, we continued on up. The climb became a little less steep, there were smatterings of shade, and perhaps because the elevation was elevated enough, it was at last cooler and vaguely breezy. This part of the ride was almost pleasant, in the zone. But foreshadowed by the knowledge of the infamous final wall to the parking lot at the summit.
The base of the wall attained, I paused in the shade to rehydrate. Then... pushed. Heart pounding, stomach contents churning, thrashing on up. Desperation set in halfway up the wall, with every muscle fibre longing to stop. But it was so steep that I couldn't unclip, and as such stopping was not an option without incurring hideous injury. And then, delirious, I reached the top.
The four riders from our group who had made it up so far lolled in the shade, moaning, while another man who looked fresher than any of us gleefully recounted how this was his second ride up Mt Diablo today. After twenty minutes' glorious recovery I was on the verge of tottering towards up some steps to admire the view, when the team captain turn puce, and shouted "WHAT!" This had the distinct ring of ill news. Maybe someone had a flat tyre. Unfortunately the situation transpired to be rather worse.
The rider who had turned back earlier had called to say that all our cars had been towed from the Safeway parking lot. He had called the police per the somewhat unusual instructions on warning signs we had ignored that morning, and the police were on their way to help confirm where the cars were. We all sent our license plates so he could get to work tracking down the missing cars. Then we pointed downhill and went for it.
Avid readers of this blog will be aware that I am not a fast descender, but this time I descended the mountain a mere five minutes slower than our front runners, putting me in the bottom quintile of Strava riders on this segment but not literally the slowest person to ever ride down Mt Diablo, which constitutes a win.
Some of our scattered team reassembled at the North Gate, wherein the next text messages revealed that the police (who were very nice) had called the towing company and they did not have a record of our cars. Maybe they were still in transit to the car impoundment place. We gunned it back towards the sauna of Walnut Creek in a heroic bid to rescue the cars.
Then the team captain got another call. The cars had not been towed after all. In his heat stricken daze, our co-rider had just... er... not recognised them.
Great ride! Much better than expected!
This is a ride that I have been dreading most copiously since conceived of three weeks ago. The clue is in the name - literally Mount Satan. A co-rider assured me there was a mistranslation from the Spanish; apparently it should actually have translated as "Satan Thicket" from the origin story. Is that reassuring? It does still have Satan in it, though considerably less Mount.
Last week, I endeavoured to explain my Sunday plans to some co-workers. Having this discussion out loud really served to highlight that riding up a mountain in the apex of Californian summer is not what most people consider to fall within the scope of fun weekend activities. Apart from one co-worker who had actually done the ride in June and described it in particularly gruesome detail. Ah well, I rationalised, this ride would be excellent training, and provide undoubtedly fertile material to delight the readers of this blog. At that time, my puny imagination could not have conceived of the abundant fecundity of blog material today was to provide.
After awaking at the ungodly Sunday hour of 5.45 am in a futile bid to avoid the heat, perusal of the email account yielded a warning from a rider who was not planning to attend. The temperature was set to soar to 36 degrees Celsius! That is a heck of a lot of Fahrenheit for the unmetricised reader. My quitting at this point was only averted by a prior agreement to give a fellow rider a lift.
Seven riders grouped in Safeway parking lot in Walnut Creek at 7.45 am. Apart from the man shouting homophobic slurs at the male riders in lycra (he liked my style, however), the parking lot seemed an eminently reasonable location to leave our assorted vehicles and commence the journey.
The first few miles were flat and pleasant, and clearly no indication of what was to come. Shortly, Mt Diablo loomed tall, the ascent began, and the temperature shot upward. The first thousand feet ascending comprised a gruesome, sweaty, boiling struggle, with the pungent scent of unfiltered testosterone. Unless something changed with the external conditions, I would not be summitting that day. The rider with whom I had car-pooled turned back, heat-stricken.
The surviving team members ploughed on, pallid and sweaty, apart from our team captain who is immune to both climbing and heat (could he be a reptilian?), and I suspect was actively riding as slowly as he could to monitor his riders for signs of collapse. Or at least to retrieve the bodies. Mercifully, there was a hut with water and even toilets at the junction where the north and south roads converge on the summit road. Delightedly, I guzzled down water and a fistful of the captain's magic "salt" pills.
Renewed, we continued on up. The climb became a little less steep, there were smatterings of shade, and perhaps because the elevation was elevated enough, it was at last cooler and vaguely breezy. This part of the ride was almost pleasant, in the zone. But foreshadowed by the knowledge of the infamous final wall to the parking lot at the summit.
The base of the wall attained, I paused in the shade to rehydrate. Then... pushed. Heart pounding, stomach contents churning, thrashing on up. Desperation set in halfway up the wall, with every muscle fibre longing to stop. But it was so steep that I couldn't unclip, and as such stopping was not an option without incurring hideous injury. And then, delirious, I reached the top.
The four riders from our group who had made it up so far lolled in the shade, moaning, while another man who looked fresher than any of us gleefully recounted how this was his second ride up Mt Diablo today. After twenty minutes' glorious recovery I was on the verge of tottering towards up some steps to admire the view, when the team captain turn puce, and shouted "WHAT!" This had the distinct ring of ill news. Maybe someone had a flat tyre. Unfortunately the situation transpired to be rather worse.
The rider who had turned back earlier had called to say that all our cars had been towed from the Safeway parking lot. He had called the police per the somewhat unusual instructions on warning signs we had ignored that morning, and the police were on their way to help confirm where the cars were. We all sent our license plates so he could get to work tracking down the missing cars. Then we pointed downhill and went for it.
Avid readers of this blog will be aware that I am not a fast descender, but this time I descended the mountain a mere five minutes slower than our front runners, putting me in the bottom quintile of Strava riders on this segment but not literally the slowest person to ever ride down Mt Diablo, which constitutes a win.
Some of our scattered team reassembled at the North Gate, wherein the next text messages revealed that the police (who were very nice) had called the towing company and they did not have a record of our cars. Maybe they were still in transit to the car impoundment place. We gunned it back towards the sauna of Walnut Creek in a heroic bid to rescue the cars.
Then the team captain got another call. The cars had not been towed after all. In his heat stricken daze, our co-rider had just... er... not recognised them.
Great ride! Much better than expected!
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