Tierra Bella.. in reverse.. sorta.

Last Saturday, April 18th, I did a ride with Mayor Bob and his group down in south San Jose. We met off Monterey Hwy and rode out on Coyote Creek trail. It was kinda early for me. I don't like getting up early, but I was excited to ride with other ALC folks.

As we were riding along, we started seeing a lot more people riding, but they were going the opposite direction from us. I thought it must be because of the beautiful weather we are having.

Then we started to climb.. ugh.. and climb. Mayor Bob was nice enough to stay behind me the whole way making great conversation, I wasn't talking much. Too hard when you can't breathe. I kept apologizing for making him go so slow and he said it was just what they do. No one gets left behind. It's really great and I know the sweep always says that, but I can imagine being stuck behind some slow ass that can't get up the hill when you just want to take off. Takes a lot of patience. I have to say that in the recent weeks when I have had patience issues, I think of the sweep riders and how wonderful they all have been.

Anyway..

So, we are riding, slowly, up hill, somewhere beautiful and all of a sudden crowds of cyclists start racing down the hill on the opposite side. Groups of 5 to 10 at a time.. flying by. I thought.. ok this has to be more than just nice weather. Then I remembered that the 18th was the day of the Tierra Bella Century.

I know a lot of people that were doing that ride and I kept looking to see if I knew anyone, but I didn't see anyone riding.

We came upon one of ACTC's rest stops for the Tierra Bella and some of our guys were using the porta potty, so we pulled over for a bit. As I pulled into the rest stop, I looked over and there were Karen and Steve from the ACTC Academy. They were instructors when I took the academy and Steve was leading our graduation ride when I had my accident.

I haven't seen them since the accident so it was really great to say hi and catch up a bit. I really do miss riding with them and I'm looking forward to possibly going back and volunteering for the academy in the fall.

Luckily seeing Karen and Steve really took my mind off of the fact that my legs were burning and we had only ridden 15 miles out of 40.

We took off from the rest stop and started some miles of rollers. It was so beautiful out, the company was great and the scenery was gorgeous.. it made me remember why I love to ride so much.

We stopped for lunch at a Starbucks somewhere (as you can tell, I'm kinda bad with locations). We had more good conversation and then headed off for some relatively flat miles. After about 30 miles we got back on the creek trail and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way back.

This time I was right behind the ride leader instead of the last rider back. Quite a difference from last week.

I know I still have a long way to go to be ready for ALC, but I'm going to do as much as I can in the next 39 days to be as ready as I can.

This Saturday is "Day on the ride". I'm going to attempt to do 67 miles. It will be the longest I have ever ridden. Wish me luck..