The day started cool and foggy. We got up at 6, the official start of the ride, but didn't actually get dressed, over to the check-in, checked-in and on the road until 8 - quite a bit later than last year. The course was the same as last year:
100 kilometers (60 miles), relatively flat (~3,000 net elevation gain/loss), through miles and miles of gorgeous vineyards on mostly high-quality roads with good shoulders. The weather was fantastic - it cleared up after an hour or two and became sunny and cloudless but not hot.
Rebecca and Kacey were nervous about the length of the ride - it crippled Rebecca last year and Kacey had never done anything remotely that long before, so they took it easy. All seemed to be going well for them until we started hitting some hills - still quite flat by Bay Area standards, but by Sacramento standards they were big. Kacey did not like the hills, and I felt bad for selling the ride as "totally flat."
Our average moving speed dropped from 14 down to the 11's after the hills entered the equation, and Kacey and Rebecca decided to take the out provided at 37 miles, leaving me and Brian to finish the ride. I could tell that Rebecca was stronger this year than last, and she felt the same way, but she was worried about spending so much time in the saddle and also getting back in time, and I think she also wanted to keep Kacey company. But we're confident she could have done the full century with far greater results than last year's debacle.
Brian and I were feeling like we had some real catching up to do in order to make it back in time for lunch, so we put the pedal to the metal for the last 23 miles...well, I might have pushed the pace a little more than Brian was expecting, but he was a really good sport and did an excellent job of keeping up, despite a broken spoke making his rear wheel rattle and ping like a crushed clown car. I tried to keep it over 20mph on the flats and around 16-17 on the uphills...though by the end we were both feeling pretty beat up and that number spent more time in the 15mph range. We polished off the last 21 miles after the rest stop in 1:20, and it felt like quite a workout. We agreed we could not have held that pace for the entire 60 miles.
After a tasty, olive-saturated lunch at the end of the road, we went back to the cottage to shower and change, and decided to hit up a winery before dinner - Seghesio has a tasting room near downtown. Some nice wines, but they didn't have the one I wanted (their Sonoma Zinfandel) in stock, so I'll just have to look for it at BevMo.
Dinner was tricky - we were idiots and didn't make reservations anywhere, and everywhere that was recommended by Yelp was booked or had long waits for bar seating, so we eventually settled on a trendy-looking restaurant called Zin. Not too bad. They had the obligatory single vegetarian entree of pasta and vegetables, which was REALLY heavy on the olive oil but, since I basically was eating a bowl of carbs, I decided at least the fat would help prevent an insulin spike. Any restaurant that has a vegetarian entree with actual, genuine protein in it will earn my eternal gratitude. Anyway, lesson learned: if we go back, we need to think ahead and make reservations!
Here's some pics of the happy couples in the saddle:
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