Tierra Bella Century

Another beautiful (but cold) day in California and another century (100mile) ride under our belts. This ride is through Gilroy and Morgan Hill, covering both sides of the valley.

We began our day at Gavilan Jr. College and the first surprise was that instead of picking from wearing my vest or jacket I decided to wear both! It was cold! In fact, even though the jacket eventually came off, the leg warmers never did.

We began the ride through rollers on the west side of the valley, then crossed over to the east side and cruised into the aid station at mile 34 feeling pretty good. From there until the next stop however was quite a challenge.

We worked our way over to Thomas Grade (just the name is scary) and started to go UP. We had 3,000 ft of gain in 8 miles. Whew, it was work. At one point I asked Skip how much longer he thought we were going to climb and he said, "well, since we are going 5mph and we probably have about 5 miles to go, I'd say about 1 hour." I told him that he was a ray of sunshine!

When we got to the TOP of Henry Coe park it was very cold. They even had a fire pit going that many people were crowded around. It was beautiful up there however and the view was fantastic.

The decent was a bit scary due to the narrow 1 lane road, lots of cyclist, and hairpin turns. Once we reached the bottom it felt like we should be done, but we were only at mile 60!

We did a bit more climbing after that, but nothing so aggressive. Skip got a flat just before the last rest stop and it took both of us to get the tire off (I guess we were tired).

Once we got back to the valley, we headed north into a brutal headwind. For about 10 miles I was in my lowest gear, in my aerobars, on flat road, only going about 8mph!! NOT NICE. What was nice was getting across the valley and heading south on Santa Theresa Blvd back to the college.

All in all it was a good training ride, but not very fast. We certainly got our money's worth and earned the nice dinner we had with my sister Carol and her husband Mike afterwards. Not sure about signing up again next year.....

(Thank you Dave Stark for the photos!)