Best of the Primarvera Century (2010)

(April 10, 2010) The Best of The Primavera Century, 96 miles, 5160' climbing & 12-17 crosswind, w/ Ward, Stephen, June, Jack, Todd., 16.4 mph

No sun out so Ward could't complain about bad lighting, so no photos--only route data.

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At the start of Paris Roubaix weekend Spring hit the Bay Area hard—on Friday night I was out working in the yard in the warmth. Something changed overnight—on Saturday morning it was in the 50’s with no sun anywhere and a wind whipping around. A relatively short ride (60 miles) was on the schedule and we didn’t want our #*$$’s kicked by the feminists from Mills College riding in the (women’s only) Cinderella ride, so we stayed away from their course.

Our Club ride was Palomares, and tomorrow is the Primarvera Century, which goes from suburb to suburb with a few nice spots in between. One is Palomares. The other is Calaveras.

**********PRIMAVERA BICYCLE TOUR

Beautiful scenery including the Calaveras Reservoir, Palomares Canyon, Coyote Hills Regional Park, and the Altamont Pass Wind Farm with over 4900 turbines

So it seemed like a nice theme if we’d do the two best sections of the Primarvera, which would give us two gentle but long climbs.

Before that we had our usual club ride down to Sunol where tempers were raised over tactics as we raced over the last hill. Luckily the aggravated parties all rode together in the bonus mile group, everything was soon ironed out. We used the same tactics successfully on our last sprint point when someone we didn’t know ran a light to get away and then tried to take out the sprint, where Ward and Stephen came off my wheel and held the red light runner off. The hi-jinx of earlier today and last week paid off today.

Essentially the weather was never freezing (like last week) but was almost always cool and depressing. (Sunol had winds of 12-17mph all day***, 52-58 degrees.) We lost a lot of good bonus milers at Sunol because the weather was so blaaaaah. But we had a good paceline through Calaveras—and a little after the turnaround point Ward and I incorporated a short bonus—going down and then back up the "wall."

(***We had Roubaix type wind: The 2010 edition of the “Queen of the Classics” covered 259km from Compiegne to Roubaix, with 52km of cobbles in 27 sections, beginning at the 98km mark. There was a slight chance of rain, but an absolute certainty of wind — it was blowing at 22kph from the northeast, with stronger gusts. Velonews)

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We ran into someone we casually knew at the end of Calaveras who was leading his own group, which had started their ride close to the start of the climb, and he said "well at least you didn't start at Heather Farms," which is our traditional Club starting point in Walnut Creek. We all kinda nonchalantly looked at him and said, "oh yeah-we did, and now we are going to do Palomares and make it a 100 miler."

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Fast back to Sunol, down Niles Canyon in the headwind, and Palomares was a lot of fun as on every right bend we had a sudden favorable breeze, and every left bend had to get down low when the wind hit head on. I went up hard on Palomares trying to get "stressed" for Alta Alpina training.

At the start of San Ramon-Danville Blvd we saw the achtervolgers of the Cinderella Ride. Now while I think it’s a crock of shit to have an event for just one sex—for these beginning riders having fun getting on their bike as part of a rolling masquerade party, the Cinderella was perfect. ***

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After the last two rides which were seemingly done on course with quicksand, this 100 miler with “only” 5000 feet of climbing was over much too fast.

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Tomorrow should be a great Paris Roubaix with two all time cyclists involved--unfortunately all we'll hear on sports tomorrow night will be "Green jacket, green jacket, Tiger, Tiger, green jacket, Tiger, green jacket, Phil, green jacket, Tiger, Tiger..."

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Though Ward Industries did not get any photos of this Century--they did capture the contentious run in to Sunol on video:Sterke Cancellara gaat er alleen vandoor