Thanks everyone for your support !

The knee's doing well, I was aware of it's existence going up Diablo but it never actually hurt. I kept my gears as low as possible and tried not to put much stress on the knee - that's why it took me so long to reach the summit, yeah, thats the ticket And in general I'm trying to 'round out' my pedal strokes, my pedalling technique is not all that great so this was a good wake-up call.

I'm still on the fence whether I'll do the 50 mile or the 75 mile ride for the Top Hat on Saturday - the 75 looks mighty hilly ... yeah, in theory I suppose I could do it, but I'm such a wuss, I really don't enjoy suffering