Holstein Hundred, more or less

Today was the 14th annual Holstein Hundred century, which begins and ends in the tiny town of Tamales and does a couple of strangely-designed loops through Bodega Bay, Occidental, Valley Ford, and the general countryside around Petaluma. I had planned on doing the full century, but in the end I only did a metric. Not their metric, but a metric nonetheless. There are many reasons for this, but mostly I think it's the ride organizers' fault for giving me an easy out.

I woke up at 5am to drive up to Tamales, got there by 6:30, and was on the road by 7. One thing we lucked out on was the weather: it was sunny and clear, no marine layer at all. This was especially nice when we got out to the coast near Bodega Bay (where Hitchcock filmed The Birds if you didn't know). It's always nice to actually see the ocean when you're riding on the coast, as opposed to peering into a deep fog bank. Things were going quite nicely through the first 20 miles or so, until we turned inland again and began a climb up Coleman Valley Road.

I've never climbed this road before, and come to think of it, I didn't really climb it this time because I had to walk my bike up half of it. It's only about 1200 feet or so, but it's steep almost the entire way. Someone on the internets claimed that the grade was 9.5%, which is about 5% more grade than I generally enjoy. This climb was featured in one of the Tour of California stages, and it does afford some lovely views which I was able to appreciate during my long walk up to the summit.

Once we got passed this climb, the route mellowed out a bit and took us through parts of Occidental and Valley Ford that I had traversed on my Petaluma ride back in May. At this point I ended up latching on to some women from Livermore who had a little paceline going. I pulled for a while and they invited me to ride with them, but honestly their pace ended up being too much for me. They were going about 25 mph, and I just couldn't sustain that, even hooked on to the back.

At about mile 45 we turned west and that's when the headwinds began. Those lasted for about 10 miles until the route took us east again, past the starting point at Tamales High. I mentioned the strange loops that comprised the route.. basically we did a big figure eight, then passed by the starting point before beginning another loop to the south. Earlier in the morning I had thought, I can stop by my car to deposit my arm warmers, leg warmers, etc. But then after all the climbing and headwinds, and with the knowledge that another 40 miles and 3500 feet of climbing lay ahead, I was thinking, I can stop by my car, have some lunch, and call it a day! You see how this is really the organizers' fault? Because let me tell you, I wasn't the only one who had this thought. At any rate, I actually continued on a few miles passed the high school, spotted the next climb, and then backtracked to the start. So, I ended up with about 65 miles total. I'm sure I could have finished the course, but I don't think I would have enjoyed it. And as one of the volunteers said at the post-ride lunch, It's supposed to be fun, not torture.

Miles: 65
Time in the saddle: about 5 hours
Route for the Holstein Hundred: portion done and portion not done