Mt. Diablo and the San Francisco Zoo

On June 12, Randy and I decided to go to Mt. Diablo again. Hey! It's 11 miles of pure climbing and great training for the Death Ride with some elevation gain and an eff-load of wind (at least that day). It was a fantastic ride, to say the least. Two repeats up Diablo. The first time we didn't stop at all. We climbed the whole thing in one go, no rest stops, which is good if I want to do the Mt. Diablo challenge this year. It wasn't hard to do the whole thing at one go, though there were parts with a lot of headwind which really slowed me down (from 9/10mph to about 7mph). We climbed the south side of the park then up to the summit due to a time trial being held on the north gate by the Wells Fargo team.

The second time was a little more of a "Death Ride pace," so I took my time, spun on the places that I had to, and took a rest stop at the second ranger station, where the North and South Gate routes meet. I talked to some cyclists there and they asked my training program and why I "was doing repeats up Mt. Diablo" and that I was "a bit crazy," all in good nature and fun, of course.

Going to the summit a second time was a great feeling. We took a bit more of a rest at the top, filled our waters since it was pretty warm, and headed back down. We didn't do a third repeat since we got there later than I wanted, but still got a great workout!

On Sunday, June 13, we went to The San Francisco Zoo, which was great! I hadn't been to a zoo in a long time, so it was even more fun! Add the fact that I was with the best boyfriend in the world and it made the experience one of the best I've had! There were a lot of great and funny animals. It was a bit chilly at first, but it warmed up as the day went on, and the more the sun came out, the more animals we saw either basking in the sun or being silly.

It was a great weekend. I had a lot of fun and it was cool and breezy. Coming back to the valley, where it was 20 degrees hotter, was nice, though, and we're back to our regular routines of living life and riding!