So today I dropped wrongTank off to have some touch-up paint work done in Corte Madera. Just like my trips to the local Apple Store, this means riding back over Camino Alto to get back to Mill Valley for work. Having been off the bike for any real efforts since Aids Lifecycle, and since I was feeling strong, I decided to take the steep, windy Chapman St. climb to the top of the Camino Alto pass instead of the usual route. It’s slower on fixed-gear but more interesting after doing Camino Alto 33,000 times, and anyway, morning rush hour, SUV’s swerving along Camino Alto looking for coins in their seats or whatever while on the phone? Who needs the grief I says! So, I climbed up that thing, and my body almost unanimously felt solid. Except for that Achilles Heel. Man that thing is still strained! Well, i got to the top, figuring the hard part was done, and I could ease my way down the other side and to work without too much hassle on the AH strain.

However!

Fire abatement! Road closed! MEH!

The Rangers were cool, toling me about a frontage road along the highway that would mean not needing to go all the way around Tiburon for the following hour, so I decided to look for it, since they weren’t sure exactly how to find it. I shot back down Chapman, informing several roadies working their way up past me that the road was closed (some even heeded the warning) and down Paradise until I found Casa Buena behind Peets, and took that.

This takes you up a series of hops before three big ones that get you to the top of the freeway grade. This is about 60% or so of the total elevation climb of Camino Alto. However, it happens in a very short distance. I don’t know the gradient. I would say 15-20%. I was forced to zig-zag on the second section. By now my Achilles was screaming but man, I pushed on through and it was a great, refreshing feeling to be out climbing and then bombing down the other side. A week off the bike is too long, I says.

Oh, side note: I was carrying my backpack with the laptop and a bunch of crap for work in it, which was roughly equivalent to the weight I’ve lost since Aids Lifecycle. That’s the best thing about weight loss: Pick up a 10 pound barbell. It puts things in perspective. Carrying it in a backpack on the bike seems like such a burden. I lost that amount. Take it off and you feel lighter than air. By the time I get back down to my optimum weight/muscle shape, I’ll have lost almost two Crooks. That’s surreal. In fact when I first slimmed down a few years ago (too far, not sustainable for my fitness needs) I lost 30lbs. It was ridiculous to hold a 30′ weight and imagine it.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TLTC Ride Report: The CthuLoop: One Last Grinder
2. TLTC Ride Report: ALC9 – Wrongrobot
3. TLTC Ride Report: Team Lope’s Youngest Member