Friday extra credit

I knew the heat was headed in to the South Bay and although my legs were still hurting from Wednesday’s trail excursion up St Joes I wanted to stretch it out a bit. First a warmup down the trail to Lark Rd at the campbell/LG border then a “tickler” up to Daves Ave — “tickler” being Borba’s phrase for tickling the heart rate up to threshold but not seriously pushing into the red. After I was thoroughly tickled, I got a little cool down through the Saratoga Real Estate tour. There’s all of these ridiculous houses through Sobey and towards downtown Saratoga, little mini-Versailles and maxi-Tudors for the elite arriviste. I like this route because it reminds me of the first group rides I did back in 2005 with Jake and Jeff from Wheel Away.

When I got to Saratoga/Hwy 9 I was faced with a decision. I knew I wanted to keep going but didn’t really feel like hitting the backside of Mt Eden with its short little f-off 18% stretches. The alternative was to keep heading up 9 to Redwood Gulch and descend into Stevens Canyon, so after a little internal debate, that’s what I did.

More “tickling” ensued, with a goal of keeping it steady, just below LT, and not lose intensity partway through. I got a little unexpected jolt of adrenaline as I got buzzed by, first, a blacked-out M3 blasting up the highway and then six motorcycle cops. Not sure what was going on with that, but sometimes the old saw that there’s never a policeman around when you need one isn’t true at all. (They’re all up on Highway 9!) I felt pretty good on the climb and several times I deliberately kicked up the cadence when I felt myself lagging. After a bit I noticed a guy sitting on my wheel so I swung out to say hi. His name was Dwayne, he apologised for his stealth wheelsucking and we had a nice talk about the upcoming weekend, keeping my mind off the fact that I was well past the “tickle” point and into the “sharp stick jabbing me in the ribs” zone. But all good, I made the turnoff and bid adieu to Dwayne and turned down Redwood Gulch into the shade and dropoffs.

I’m still a little sketched out at high-speed descending, due to post crash trauma, but I have been deliberately pushing my comfort zone and keeping my speed through the corners. Felt good today but it was still quite a relief to get down to the Stevens Canyon flats and head into work.

Sure enough, it got hot as hell later and I was happy I’d taken the time to get up into the woods. Something about being under that redwood canopy, pushing the cranks around, sweaty and sore, brings me a kind of meditative calm that’s otherwise damned elusive.