Training ride: Bike Against the Odds (45 miles)

This weekend I did a relatively short training ride for an event I signed up to do on August 23, called the Bike Against the Odds ride. It’s a charity ride to benefit the Breast Cancer Fund and some local cancer support services. Plus it begins and ends in downtown Oakland and pretty much goes all over the Oakland/Berkeley hills where I do so much of my riding. So it seemed silly not to do it.

They have several different routes available, including a full century with 10,000 feet of climbing. That seemed a little much for me, in the middle of the summer, so I’ve opted to do the 72 mile route. For training purposes, I rode the itinerary for the 50 mile route today (the 72 route is the 50 miler with a “bears” loop tacked on).

The weather was nice for climbing today: it was overcast in the morning on the bay side of the hills, so no chance of overheating. Even on the Moraga/Orinda side where it was sunny, the temp was still mild, probably just in the mid 70s.

Riding up Old Tunnel to get to Skyline a guy passed me on a French grey Saluki. I yelled out, “hey it’s a Rivendell”, so he slowed down a bit and we chatted a bit about bikes. I noted that it was a different color combination from what I had seen before, and he said they had this frame in his size and offered a custom paint job for a big discount. I wonder if this is because they’re trying to get rid of inventory as they phase out the Saluki model? At any rate, it was a lovely bike, he had gotten the bar end friction shifters, and had put a 34 teeth cassette on for lots of low gears. That’s what I’m talking about.

After that initial climb up Old Tunnel (which I do all the time so it’s no biggie), the next climbs were a short climb up Redwood/Pinehurst (easy), a very gentle incline from Moraga to Orinda, a climb up Wildcat Canyon (kinda hard), and then a pretty easy climb up Grizzly Peak to return to Skyline. That climb up Wildcat is the only one that’s challenging, and the steeper parts are in the first mile. After that it evens out. The test next weekend will be to tack on the bears loop to this ride. I really don’t like the ride up the bears that much; there’s hardly any traffic but it’s really exposed and can get really warm in the heat of the day. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for fog on the day of the event.



Animules: deer, in Tilden Park
Rivendell sightings: 1 Saluki, custom paint
Total Distance: 45 miles
Elevation gain: about 4000 feet
Time in the Saddle: 4 hours 20 minutes