Wednesday, July 06, 2016

2016 WNR 17

Bad luck Wednesday!

Driving out to the start, Charlie's car got rear-ended on Ygnacio Valley Road.  Not too much damage but he did get jostled and thought he'd be in pain later.  He rode anyway but turned around at Diablo Ranch with a headache... I made sure he was OK before I continued up.

Before the Gate, near the horse farm, I heard the unmistakable sound of a tube popping.  I just put on a new tire Saturday so I must've stuffed it up... except my tire didn't go flat... I stopped to inspect and didn't find anything wrong so I kept going... weird.

New rider from work Haleh - enjoys riding but she hasn't done a Diablo effort before.  She turned around before junction but said she had a good time.





I'm not sure you can call it a #SwissDismount if you fall down trying to get ON your bike.



OK major props to anybody who rides Diablo on a fixed gear... THIS GUY!


Descending was kind of spooky with the sun at just the wrong angle and bad shadows hiding the road damage... but I let'er-rip at Moss Landing as usual - Strava says my max was 66.6 km/hr.  Then my front tire started to feel kind of lumpy and I remembered the tube popping thing from before the climb... got back to the truck and sure enough - I had pinched the tube on the new tire install - but when the pinched section popped, the tire bead kept any more air from leaking out - AMAZING!

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This evening I noticed that rider Cameron Piper earned a King of the Mountains Strava crown for
Д Mt. Diablo NGR: North Gate to Junction 
https://www.strava.com/activities/620504503#15140390738

This was during the time trial a couple weeks ago - interesting that he wanted this KOM bad enough to keep racing past the finish line all the way to Junction (another ~300 meters)... I'm not even sure how he did that because the barrier was down so he would've had to hop the bar to cross the line.

Anyway, Cameron is now only the THIRD PERSON to log a Strava time of less than 25 minutes to the Junction.  Damn.

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