California "Training Camp"

The 2010 Tour de France starts in just three weeks, and I'll be arriving in France on July 15 for a third consecutive summer of watching and riding parts of the Tour route. In preparation for the trip, I traveled to California last week on a family visit, and took my bike for a week of riding and training.

My training was based in and around Berkeley, where I've been visiting and riding for about five years now. The various climbs described in the Berkeley Hills Death Ride have challenged me over the years, and this time I finally mustered the nerve to attempt the only one that I had never tried before: Death Climb 1, the ride up Marin Ave..  This climb goes literally straight up a hill in N. Berkeley, climbing 625 feet in a distance of less than a mile.  I followed that immediately with a repeat ride up Death Climb 2, riding up South Park Dr., then whizzing back down at speeds that hit 48.5 mph. 

Another day, I took my bike on the subway to the Embarcadero, and repeated a route that I took last year. Here is map and some graphs showing the route that I took from San Francisco, riding across the Golden Gate Bridge up into Marin. After passing through Larkspur, Ross and Fairfax, I rode all the way up to Mt. Tamalpais, then down to Sausalito and back to S.F. Here's a view looking down from Mt. Tam at San Francisco in the distance.

Of course, this wasn't quite the same as riding in the Alps or the Pyrenees, however I'm glad to know that I'm in good form for France next month.