Rides on one of my four Alpine routes have been of tremendous importance to me since my move to California in 2017. In my second post after moving to California, I identified a 23 mile long ride near my new home, a ride I called The Alpine Ride. Within a month, I had identified an extension I could ride when I felt like going longer, the 34 mile long Alpine-Cañada ride. When I moved from San Carlos to nearby Emerald Hills, I was able to continue on two almost identical routes that differed only in being a mile shorter. I accumulated hundreds of rides on these four routes. As a result of this accumulation of data, I was inspired to use my speed over these routes as a measure of my cycling ability (a metric known as Form) and did a statistical analysis to show that was justified. Recently, however, I have stopped riding those routes. Why did I abandon them? Is my abandonment permanent? Does it matter that I have abandoned them? What does it even mean to say that I have abandoned them?
In response to that final question, the bar graph above shows the number of Alpine rides (rides over one of the four above routes) I have ridden during each month since I move to California in 2017. There is a lot of month to month variation, including the occasional month with no Alpine rides, but overlying that is a larger trend. Starting in August of 2022, there is a fairly steady decline in the number of my Alpine rides until February of 2023 when there were none. It is not until September that there are some Alpine rides again, then another four more months with no Alpine rides, then an eight month return to those rides, and finally and most recently, I haven't ridden on an Alpine route since October of 2024, nine months and counting.
Why did I stop riding on the Alpine routes? My reasons fall into two general categories. Some months I didn't ride my Alpine rides because I wasn't riding at all, or was only doing very easy rides on my trainer. This is not so much an abandonment of the Alpine route as it is an abandonment of cycling, and for the purposes of this post, I am less interested in those months. Other months I was riding, but on routes other than the Alpine routes, and it is those months that I want to focus on here.
At the same time the number of my rides on Alpine routes started going down, in August of 2022, the number of my rides on another, similar route, the Cañada route, started going up. As I noted in an earlier post, the Cañada route is prettier and has less traffic than the Alpine routes which is why I switched.
So why does this matter? I found a new route that I liked better than the Alpine routes and I switched. That's all good, right? Not entirely. The current version of the Alpine route is 22 miles long and the current version of the Alpine-Cañada route is 33 miles long as compared to the Cañada route which is only 17 miles long. It is relatively easy to adjust my schedule so that my total weekly mileage is about the same as it used to be. What is more difficult is to find longer rides, especially rides as long as the 33 mile Alpine-Cañada route. Two 17 mile long rides on Monday and Tuesday do not have the same fitness benefits as one 33 mile ride on Tuesday. And in fact that is the explanation for the reappearance of Alpine Rides first in September of 2023 and then again in February through October of 2024. My fitness goals at both those times required the longer Alpine rides, especially the Alpine-Cañada rides.
The length advantages of the Alpine routes are especially important when I am preparing for group metric centuries, rides like the Art of Survival, Golden Hills, or Ride the Rogue. In May of 2024, I struggled to keep up during the Art of Survival, and as a result, I have recently decided it is time for me to give up group metric centuries. Without the stimulus of preparing for these rides, the need for me to ride the Alpine routes is largely gone.
There is another advantage of the Alpine routes and that is the large amount of data I have about my speed over those routes. If I am riding one or another of the Alpine routes regularly, there will be ride to ride variation in my speed that are not meaningful, but looking at the pattern of my speed over multiple rides and comparing that to what I was doing in the past gives me a sense if I am getting faster, slower, or staying the same. Of course I can do the same thing with my Cañada rides, but there is less total data and it does not go as far back in time so is less useful.
Given the advantages of doing at least some Alpine rides, might I ride these routes again in the future? Absolutely, but it is also possible I might not. Might the fact that I haven't done an Alpine ride for nine months suggest that it is more likely I might not? Maybe, but that brings me to one more factor that has reduced my enthusiasm for the Alpine routes. The least attractive part of these routes is the five to six miles near the start which are on Alameda de las Pulgas. Although most of this stretch has a decent bike lane, the traffic is somewhat heavy and there is a lot of cross traffic due strip malls that make this stretch uncomfortable and dangerous. Recently, this stretch has been the site of construction by multiple government entities which have made these problems significantly worse. That's the bad news. The good news is that this construction won't go on forever, so I could imagine a time in the future when the construction has been completed, I grow nostalgic for these routes, and restart riding them, at least occasionally.
