Yesterday was the Del Puerto Canyon 200k brevet, hosted by San Francisco Randonneurs. Luckily for me the day remained conflict-free and I was able to do it. It was the 26th RUSA event of my career of 200k or greater, and I logged my best time ever: 8 hours 18 minutes.
I woke up a little earlier than I needed to, at 4:45AM. I was able to pack light because of the amazing weather forecast. The Del Puerto Canyon 200k starts and finishes in Pleasanton, CA, just south of Mount Diablo. The ride goes out and over the hills that make up the Altamont Pass,meanders through the flat farm roads around Tracy and Wesley, and then returns out and over the same hills via Del Puerto Canyon. The forecast called for temps in the low 50s to start and venturing into the high 70s in some places. So I wore bib-shorts, a light base layer, short sleeve jersey, arm warmers and a reflective vest. The ride started at 8AM, which would be light enough to not require any lighting. Sunset would come at about 6PM, so I did bring lights just in case I went over 10 hours. I carried a little Cygolite Dart (from Riv), a battery taillight, and two elastic head lamps that could serve as backup head or tail lights. I also carried a USB battery stick in case I needed to boost my phone, Wahoo, or headlight. In my Ruthworks rackless Brevet bag went those lighting bits, a few bars, and a travel size sunscreen for when the armwarmers came off and the guns came out. I made coffee and breakfast, got lubed up and dressed and I was a good 25 minutes ahead of schedule. I had planned to catch the 6:20AM Bart train, and it's a 5-minute bomb down the hill to get to the Bart station. I went ahead and decided to grab the 6:00AM train instead and left early, and still had to wait on the platform for several minutes. The Fremont Train takes me down past Oakland to the transfer station at Bay Fair, where I transfer to a Pleasanton train to head over the hills in Castro Valley out to the start. There was a delay due to track repair, and a chilly wait for my Pleasanton train, but I was still at the start with my card in plenty of time. The turnout for this event was huge; the biggest ever for this event which was first run in 2011. ~150 randos had signed up, partially because of the great weather forecast, partially because there is always an uptick in participation the year before a PBP year, and partially because this is SFRs flattest 200k, with "only" 5300 ft of climbing. It was a huge bunch that started off. I didn't want to get sucked up with any of the 'too fast' groups, so I looked for familiar SFR riders who I knew were in my time-zone and hung with them for the first ~15 miles through the urban streets of Pleasanton and Livermore before the first climb began. That first climb was around 1200ft, with a gradually increasing grade all along its length, topping off at around 10% at the peak. This did a good job of stretching out the riders, and there was essentially no traffic so it was a great time to move up. I was feeling good, so I left the familiar group behind and passed a lot of slower riders. I was aiming for a decent time, and one way to make a good time is to not waste a lot of time at controls. The first control threatened to be a time sink if you arrive within a few minutes of a lot of other riders, because there would be only one volunteer to stamp your card, while a second volunteer checks your name on the roster. I was motivated to move up if I could, and I found a great rhythm on Leo. Checking my Strava, the majority of the climb is captured in the "Tesla Topper" segment. That 8.24 mile segment climbs 981ft, and I averaged 13.3mph for that segment. If I could average >20kph on one of the few climbs, a sub-10-hour ride and finishing before dark was looking good. I found a partner to paceline with on the fast descent, who noted "we should get the miles in NOW, while we have a tailwind". The descent and the flat farm roads on the valley floor felt like cheating, we were moving really fast. I found another group of strong riders to work with on the farm roads, which were thankfully quite smooth and almost car-free. I noticed another rider up the road a bit, so I pushed harder to bridge up to him, and looked back to find that I'd left that group of ~6 behind. I stayed with this faster rider until we hit the first control at mile 44 at 10:30AM. That control was filled with roadie types, who I assumed were the tail-end of the 'fast' group on our ride. I got my card stamped, cut/augmented my home-made gatorade with a bottle of water, and got right back on the road with a roadie group. Turns out, they were on a different ride and I followed them in the wrong direction. I only lost a couple minutes on my detour, and quickly got back on the right course. It was another 15 miles to an open control in a small town at the beginning of Del Puerto Canyon road. I got more drinks, this time my Tour de France formula of Coke mixed with OJ, and cut with water. Del Puerto Canyon Road is one of the longest continuous climbs I know of in the Bay Area. For roughly 25 miles, you are going up-hill, gradually, almost without letup. It's only 2200 feet, but it is definitely relentless. This day was somewhat harder because the winds were strong, and in some stretches it was a fierce headwind, in others a strong crosswind, and in others you were protected by the canyon and kind of baking. Again, it was beneficial to find a rhythm and stay on it. I was able to do that well on Leo. I was largely solo, passing a few riders along the way. The last stretch of Del Puerto Canyon is quite steep, 12-15%, and on that final grind I caught Rob Hawks, our RBA just as we were reaching the final intermediate control at mile 85, The Junction Cafe. The 'fast group' had left by then, and this wave included more randos who would treat themselves to a beer and/or a burger. Rob Hawks got himself an IPA, but I was still holding out hope for my first ever 8-hour (wall-clock) time, so I did not tarry long. After getting my card stamped, I grabbed a purple Gatorade and a water, ate a Clif bar and headed back out. After The Junction there are two smallish but mean little climbs before the LONG Mines Road descent. For roughly 25 miles continuously you are riding down hill. Very gradually down hill, but downhill all the time. This was kind of frustrating because the headwind that had pushed me south earlier in the day was stopping me from really getting going now that I was heading north. I would have needed to average ~22mph to get to the finish in under 8 hours, and the wind was clearly going to make that impossible for me, despite the grade. The one steep downhill on Mines Road is quite twisty and I really opened Leo up on that stretch. It's a really fun bike on twisty descents. It's got long chainstays and a long front center, so it really rails stable and fast around sweeping turns. It's not a nervous, twitchy 'race bike'. It's a fast cruising road bike. It's not sprightly, it's swift. I noticed the difference between an evolved road bike and a traditional 'race bike' in the final 10 miles or so back in town. The stops and starts at all the traffic signals might have been more fun with a bike that was 'quicker off the line', but at mile 115, I was feeling I had made a good choice with a machine that had put me in a position to work in comfort. I was partially resigned to miss my stretch goal of sub-8-hours, and sort of cruised in to the finish at a moderate effort. The traffic was insane anyway, so getting in safe was a higher priority than shaving those last couple of minutes. I pulled into the finish-Starbucks at 4:18 and turned in my card. The first finisher, Brian, had set a course record exactly one hour faster than me, at 7:18, and he was still there, waiting for a few of his friends. I hung out for a short while chatting with some fellow randos and then rode back to BART for the return trip home. Strava gave me credit for 126.5 miles, 5144ft of climbing and 7:45 moving time (16.3mph average). That's a splendid day on the bike for me. So, while lots of vocal people very sincerely and very stridently indicate that they strongly prefer, or even require the very thinnest lightest tubing in order to enjoy a bicycle, I can definitely say that the fit, handling and build are far higher priorities to me. I love a bike that is light, don't get me wrong. If there was a 'gravity knob' on my bike, I'd turn it down. If I could wave a magic wand and make my Leo Roadini 17 pounds instead of 22, I would. That said, if I swapped out my $900 Leo Roadini frameset for a $2600 Roadeo frameset, I would get some things. I'd get about a pound lighter bike, that has more pretty lugs. I'd get thinner tubing, but I still have no idea what thinner tubing would give me in any objective sense. How many minutes faster would I have been off my personal best? 2 minutes? 5 minutes? I would not have been an hour faster and hung with Brian, that's for sure. There's no chance I would have been fresher, or happier or safer. It may have been infinitesimally 'better', and almost certainly would have been no worse, but there was no characteristic of the Leo Roadini that got in my way or prevented me from having a great day on the bike. There is a HUGE swath of road bike owners that I see on my rides, many of them as I passed them yesterday, that look like they could be having a much more pleasant time on a bike like the Leo Roadini, and a lot less like the 'racer-wanna-be' machines they were on. Many of those riders can't even reach the drops or the hooks, and spend all day on the hoods or the tops. Shouldn't that tell them something? I feel like it could tell them they are on a racing bike and they aren't racers. I'm the last person who would ever tell somebody that they shouldn't like the bike they are on, but at the same time, whenever I hear somebody diss the Roadini, what I hear is "I don't want a fast, stable, comfortable road bike for long athletic road rides. I want a bike that looks more like a racing bike". That's totally cool if that's what you want. I know I could have done yesterdays brevet on a Roadeo or a Roadini, and I think I would have had the same day on either one. If a Roadeo frame is 1 pound lighter, then I estimate I would have been a few whole minutes faster. If I had not carried any of the lighting that I didn't need, I could have been another few whole minutes faster. Maybe I could have made my 8-hour goal, had I shaved every extraneous ounce. Those ounces and those minutes would have not changed the fact that I had another great day on the bike. Bill Lindsay El Cerrito, CA -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
