Climbing into the foggy hills on San Andreas Lake bike path, Milbrae		Training Diary: San Francisco-Woodside Loop April 26, 2001 It wasn't nearly as difficult to convince myself to get up early and ride again today as I imagined. After yesterday's long and hard ride through Marin, I felt pretty good and was ready for more. Like I said before, I aimed to punctuate this week with my first back-to-back training rides. Today's ride from San Francisco to Woodside and back helped me accomplish that and meet a rather small group of terrific people who just might turn out to be a regular Thursday ride group in the remaining weeks before California AIDSRide. Having felt the heat of the sun from yesterday's ride in Marin County, I wrecklessly assumed that we'd be seeing more of the same today. I, of course, completely forgot that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where weather rules and patterns almost never apply... except for the morning fog. And, man, was there a LOT of it this morning. It made for a damp, cold and windy ride out of Golden Gate Park and on Skyline Blvd. I was so unprepared for the ride -- clotheswise. All I had on was a jersey, shorts and some arm warmers. I simply froze my butt off for the first hour of the ride and minimized the chill by riding faster and harder than my usual pace. Lin, a sweet and thoughtful rider in the group couldn't help but notice the agony I was enduring and offered me his vest layer, despite freezing himself even with four layers of upper body clothing. By this time, we had already reached Hillsborough and escaped all of the fog. I thanked him profusely for his generosity and consideration and we rode together for most of the ride. The course was ever so simple today. 90% of the ride was on just four roads: the Great Highway next to the San Francisco beaches, Skyline Boulevard, the Sawyer Camp bike trail and Cañada Road. The terrain consisted mostly of rolling hills on this ride, though there was one significant climb on Skyline Boulevard in Pacifica. These parts of Skyline got downright hairy as traffic was travelling at freeway speeds with no more 500 feet of visibility at best, and we had to cross over entrances and exits to the actual freeways with 20+ mile per hour crosswind gusts. Kind'a scary, but it sure kept us awake and alert. This ride introduced me to the Sawyer Camp in San Carlos/Belmont/San Mateo, whose paved trail offered stunning views of the San Andreas Lake (yes, it's the faultline), Crystal Springs Reservoir and the thick forestry of the peninsula hills. While this trail offered us relief from the preceding battle with cars on Skyline, it certainly had its fair share of traffic: hikers, joggers, bikers, rollerbladers and casual strollers. If traffic was as heavy as it was today, I can hardly imagine how populated the park and trail are on weekends. Our training ride leader, Michael England, was the only unfortunate victim of mechanical and/or tire problems today: two flats, in fact, on the outbound trip within 10 minutes of each other. While the group felt compelled to keep riding, I decided to hang back with Michael -- essentially being a sweep rider for the ride leader. How strange. Fixing the flats turned out to take longer than expected, so we caught up with the rest of the group when they were already chowing down lunch in Woodside. We chatted a bit about his gorgeous custom 70s model Jack Taylor touring bike, then shut up completely as we picked up the pace to Woodside. With the exception of a brief stop we made at the Sawyer Camp trailhead to put on our layers of clothing again (in my case, those measely arm warmers), all of us rode very quietly, seemingly hypnotized by the hum of our tires between rim and pavement. We had all hoped for a bit more warmth in the city when we returned, only to see the fog was even denser and the crosswinds even more vicious. Man, was I happy that I decided to drive in this morning and park the car in Golden Gate Park. I take a break from training tomorrow, unless I decide to take a short mountain bike ride. Saturday, training resumes with the Top Hat Classic ride in the East Bay.
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