I went on the Luna Chix ride today up Page Mill and Old La Honda Rd. with CindySue. We started at the Woodside Town Hall, we went over Mtn. Home Road to Sand Hill, Portola, down Alpine & Arastradero to Page Mill. That in itself is a really nice route, very pretty scenery especially along Arastradero.

We then climbed Page Mill Rd. to Skyline, a first for me. That's a tough climb! It's about 8 miles and averaged 7% or so, with some delightful sections of 10-15%

Once we all reached the top, we headed north on Skyline to Sky Londa. This was really nice, there were some fabulous views of the East Bay & Mt. Diablo, and we got to enjoy some long, shallow, swoopy downhills. Nice.

We stopped briefly at the zoo that is the corner of Skyline & Rt. 84 to refill our bottles - the motorcyles and the cool vintage cars were out in force today - and then headed down Rt. 84/La Honda Rd. towards Woodside. At the bottom of the descent we hung a right onto Portola, and then proceeded up Old La Honda Rd, another classic climb in the Woodside area.

OLH is about 3 miles or so, with an average grade of 7%, but it doesn't get much steeper than that (except when it does). I started out reasonably OK but faded over the last half. A lot of people time themselves going up OLH, and unfortunately I did so as well. A good time is 30 minutes, an excellent time is 25 minutes, and Stud Muffin racer-types go up it in 20 minutes or less. Well, my time was 36 minutes! ptooey! :-p " " Once upon a time I did it in a hair under 32 minutes, and I hope someday to break the ellusive 30 minute barrier, but not today, I wuz whupped.

We rode north again on Skyline (a much shorter distance this time), and down 84 again (whee!), and back into Woodside.

All told it was a bit over 40 miles. My very nifty Bikemaster program shows this route has 4570 ft of climbing, but I'll go with my computer's reading of 4210. Either way, I was *tired* afterwards. It was a fun yet challenging ride.



Hey V, I'm starting to have second thoughts about Perpetuem as well. I'm not sure if it agrees with me on hard climbs, my stomach felt a bit off. Maybe I consumed too much of it at once? I bought a Polar bottle to keep it cooler, but the downside is the bottle is opaque so it's hard to gauge how much I consume. Well, I'll try it again on Cindy's rideup Mt. Tam next week, and consume it more regularly but in smaller portions. If it still makes me queasy on the hard climbs, it'll get the heave-ho. It seems to work well for me on long rides without a lot of climbing, though. Eh, we'll see.