Ride report: South Bay/Peninsula early-bird ride #5

Go, riders!

I keep saying that the weather can't get any better for our rides, and I keep getting proven wrong. With perfectly sunny skies, light winds, and temperatures near 70 degrees, one can almost forget about all of the rain that we should be getting this time of year. In the meantime, however, we'll keep taking advantage of the amazing conditions. (And no, we didn't have a rider on this bicycle, although it was parked with ours at the Starbucks rest stop in Saratoga.)

That's what 17 of us did today as we took our second trip of the season up to Saratoga -- this time, the "not-so-gentle" way up and over Mount Eden. We had a uniformly strong group of riders today, and everyone made it up and back down without incident.

That said, this is a good time to talk about descending -- not your own technique, but how to ride in a group of mixed abilities just like you'll experience in June. Some experienced riders live for the thrill of the descent, and ALC offers plenty of chances to build up some truly significant speed. Other riders -- including some experienced riders -- take descents more slowly, for any number of reasons.

Either way is perfectly fine! But whether you're fast or slow on the descents, you have responsibilities to the riders around you. If you're the slower rider, stay as far to the right as safely possible, ride as much of a straight line as possible, and expect to be passed a lot, often by riders going very fast.

On the other hand, if you're the faster rider, expect to encounter slower riders, give them plenty of notice that you're approaching, pass only when it's safe to do so, and give the other rider enough room in case they do something unexpected.

Here's a case in point from ALC. Near the beginning of Day 6, there's a long, moderately steep descent on Highway 1. The shoulder is wide and smooth, and riders easily can exceed 40 mph. But the shoulder also has several bicycle-eating grates along the right edge! This means that slower riders tend to ride down the middle of the shoulder, so that they won't weave in and out. (This counts as "riding predictably.") Sometimes a faster rider gets upset and doesn't know that the slower rider is riding safely by going down the middle of the shoulder. Remember: Some riders will have never encountered hills this big, and you have no way of knowing the ability of the rider next to you. So it's always best to ride in a manner so that unexpected actions on anyone's part don't cause a multiple-rider incident.

(And a legal note: Speed limits apply to bicycles as well as other vehicles, and you can get a ticket for exceeding the speed limit on a bicycle, particularly in several Bay Area communities.)

Let's talk about route sheets for a minute. I've apparently acquired a bit of a reputation for having impeccably accurate route sheets. (Thank you!) But if you took the restroom detour at the bottom of Mount Eden this morning, your odometer probably differed from the official mileage by about 0.2 to 0.3 mile.

It's only logical that if you ride a street not on the official route, your actual distance won't match the route sheet. But how should you deal with that? ALC route sheets generally do not list the incremental distances from point to point, so if you go on a short detour, you should remember the extra distance and adjust the remaining distances accordingly.

That said, route sheets are rarely 100% accurate -- and more important, bicycle computers are rarely calibrated perfectly. It's not unusual for there to be an error of 1% to 2% in a route sheet -- and over a 100-mile ride, that can be a significant margin of error! During most training rides, I often do lots of arithmetic in my head, like this: "Last turn said 25.0, next turn is at 28.5, but my odometer said 25.3 at the turn, so the next turn will be at 28.8 for me." Interestingly, such mental gymnastics are a useful sanity check for me; if I ever get to a point where such simple arithmetic becomes difficult, it's a good sign that I've not been eating and hydrating properly.

What's up next? We're riding every Sunday for the next few weeks, so we're back on Sunday with a 35-mile ride to Newark and back. The biggest hill on this ride is the Dumbarton Bridge, which we'll do in both directions, so it should be a fun day for everyone. (If you've never cycled on the bridge before, this is a great time to start.) And the weather forecast is already looking fantastic for next weekend as well. Details and RSVP are here.

Finally, remember that Monday is World AIDS Day. It looks like the ALC website will have some content related to the day, so be sure to check aidslifecycle.org. And at some point during the day, please take a minute to reflect on the pandemic, how you have been affected, and why you are riding. Thank you so much for riding, and see you next Sunday.