Sunday, March 8, 2009

Walnut Creek-Diablo-Moraga Loop (40 miles)

Yesterday I spent about an hour and 160 bucks on a new saddle for my Specialized Dolce, so I was anxious to put it to the test on a longish ride. I’ve had a really hard time finding a replacement saddle that works for me on this bike. The saddle that came with it originally worked fine for a couple of years, but then started causing some discomfort during long ride... mostly soft tissue discomfort in the pelvic area. Thus began the search for a replacement saddle. I tried two different Terry saddles, neither of which worked, and then briefly tried putting one of my Brooks saddles on the bike, but that made the soft tissue discomfort worse. So, yesterday went down to Alameda Bicycle to check out the Specialized saddles, figuring that the original Specialized saddle had been the most comfortable of the lot. I tried a Jett first, and didn’t like that much, then tried a Ruby Gel and it felt pretty good on the spin around the block. Very firm but with a good cutaway so I didn’t feel any discomfort in the soft tissue area. Naturally it was the most expensive of the lot, because that’s how my butt rolls.

For this ride, I started in Walnut Creek and headed up North Gate. It was beautiful day for riding, light clouds, some sun, cool temps, but no rain. The ride up North Gate is pleasantly green from the recent rains, but alas very few wild flowers this season.

About a third of the way up I came across a loose dog.. I guess it was maybe a golden retriever, but had a reddish coat. He had tags with contact info, so he clearly wasn’t a stray. I hadn’t brought my cell with me, but a couple of other cyclists stopped and the woman called the owner. Strangely the owner didn’t seem in any kind of hurry to come and pick up his dog! He apparently said to point the dog in the direction of the trail and say “Go home!”. Cyclist woman was all, “that guy’s an idiot”. Seriously. You live 10 minutes away, someone calls to say they’ve found you’re dog, and you can’t get in your fricking car and go pick him up? What the hell man? The cycling couple took the dog with them down the hill, I guess in the hopes of intersecting with the owner. Hope that worked out.

I continued up the hill with some aspirations of getting to the ranger station under an hour. 2 miles from the station I started shooting for 65 minutes. That came and went and I was just trying to avoid logging my slowest time ever. Which I did avoid, but only by tie-ing my previous worst showing: 72 minutes. Blech. However I will note that the last time I logged this time up Diablo was last year in May, after I had completed the Wine Country Century and when I really started my Death Ride training. So, I guess I’m right where I should expect to be. But still, disappointing.

After the ranger station, headed down newly repaved South Gate, which is truly luscious with its brand new asphalty goodness. From the bottom of South Gate, headed to Danville, through Alamo, Lafayette, to Moraga, where I turned around and headed back to Lafayette to hop on BART.

So, the good news with the saddle: I had basically no soft tissue pain with this saddle, which is great! The bad news is that my sit bones began to ache around mile 30, making the final 10 miles of the ride kind of painful. In fact I really could have put in a few more miles, but just couldn’t stand being on the bike any longer. I’m hoping that the sit bone pain will go away once I get used to the saddle. Otherwise, I’m going to be quite annoyed.


Animules: horses, one loose dog, one wild turkey
Total Distance: 40 miles
Elevation gain: about 2500 feet
Time in the Saddle: 3 hours 45 minutes