Twin Peaks Bike Ride: Mt. Diablo and Mt. Tam

123 miles and nearly 10,000 feet of elevation over 12 hours. Those stats do not do justice to the experience of the 2024-04-21 bike ride when my friend and I summited Mount Diablo in East Bay and crossed over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to summit Mount Tamalpais in North Bay, all in one ride. We had several roadblocks along the way - things that went wrong, were plain undesirable, or delayed us enough times to where we were unsure that we would finish the ride in daylight. Yet, we persevered and didn’t use anything as an excuse to bail. What made the experience even more rewarding - and even more incredible that we accomplished it and made it home in one piece - was our (mostly mine) under-preparation scrappiness in the face of such a massive undertaking. It tested our perseverance in the face of doubts and the urge to call it quits because it was getting to be “too much”. It was truly one of the most rewarding, living-in-the-present, and challenging experiences of my life, one that I don’t know how or when I’ll be able to top.

The day started off all wrong. I got only three hours of sleep, mostly attributed to my nerves - I never sleep well before a big day, no matter how early I sleep or how relaxed I think I am before bed. I woke up at around 0500, tossing and turning until 0630 when my alarm went off. I finished my big carbo-loaded oatmeal breakfast and got ready more quickly than anticipated, so instead of pacing back and forth in my apartment too much I took my rental road bike to the BART train station in San Francisco, getting there thirty minutes early. Up until my friend arrived at the station, I twiddled my thumbs in silence as my anxiety ramped up, thinking about what the fuck we were just about to do.

We were supposed to arrive at the Walnut Creek BART station at around 0830 so that we could knock out Mount Diablo first, but there were delays and we got there closer to 0900. Okay, no big deal, a 30 minute delay wouldn’t make or break our ride. Except, after biking for a grand total of 100 feet, we had to stop. The problem? My bike configuration just didn’t feel right when I was pedaling. I was able to adjust the seat height the night prior with no problem. That’s good, it means I should ride comfortably, right? Mostly yes, except not for a ride like this. A ride like this requires perfect ride comfort in the horizontal domain too, especially on the uphill. Since we hadn’t already gotten in a groove, we stopped to see if we could adjust the seat to move it forward. However, we ran into a problem - the little tire repair kit pouch that sits below the seat was blocking it from moving any more forward. Okay, whatever, screw it, let’s just ride and see how it goes.

And so we began our adventure a second time, riding for about 15 miles on flat and well paved terrain. I was feeling a bit sore in the thighs already, which I attributed to having been general lingering soreness over the last couple days. I thought that as we kept moving it would subside since I find that with cardio getting started can often feel like it’s a drag and expending too much energy until the body acclimates and gets in the zone. We then got to the base of Diablo and started climbing. There my thigh soreness became an immediate issue. During that first part of the climb I was pushing pretty hard even at the lowest gear. My heart rate was getting up to 150-160bpm, which is in my Zone 3. I shouldn’t be in Zone 3 within the first ~20 miles of a 120 mile ride. Not good. I was checking in with my friend pretty often, so after the first couple times I complained about it, he had enough and convinced me to take the risk of wasting time yet again to see what we could do to fix the issue. We still couldn’t move the seat forward because of the tire kit, but he had the genius idea of trying to swap my tire kit and his tire kit. The mechanism with which each tire kit is attached to the bike is different, and it turns out that, luckily, his fit on my bike and mine fit on his bike, so we were able to move my seat forward! I hopped back on and literally immediately felt the difference - my thighs were back to normal. I sighed with deep relief - while I was banking on my sense of perseverance to keep me chugging along until the bitter end, deep down I knew I couldn’t have done another 100 miles on the uncomfortable old configuration. He completely saved the ride, no question about it.

Now that I was outputting a normal wattage of energy to move make acceptable forward progress, I felt great and excited again. Doubt subsided and we made extremely consistent progress up the mountain. The view on the way up was gorgeous. The mountain, at least on the road we biked up, was super exposed with very little green overhead, which made it a bit warmer than preferable but allowed us to see the beautiful, green rolling hills of the East Bay completely unobstructed.

Some time after 3000 feet of elevation, maybe about a mile or two away from the peak, I felt like I was dying. This time it wasn’t because of my legs, but because when I drank water from my squeeze bottle I inhaled at the same time… I coughed my intestines out, my throat was dying, and my nose felt spicy and became runny. I couldn’t talk properly for the entire rest of the ride up Diablo - something about the water messed with my voice box. Luckily it didn’t affect my lungs much so I was able to breathe properly, but man did it make me feel like death. It wasn’t the biggest issue in the world and it wouldn’t have stopped me from completing the ride even if it persisted, but it was the third incidence in a string of experiences that very slowly chipped away at my mental but would over time add up.

Anyways, we climbed up the final bit to the peak, which is topped off by quite a long steep section that really pushed us, but we summited, fist bumped, and soaked in the accomplishment of reaching our first big checkpoint. We took in the views, drank, ate, applied some sunscreen, but didn’t overstay our welcome. The job wasn’t finished. We had work to do.

The descent down Diablo was fantastic and absolutely worth the summit. Descending on a road bike is consistently one of the most pure experiences I have the privilege of experiencing. There’s nothing like letting gravity do the work, speeding you up to the physical limit that your bike and aerodynamics allow, then zipping through the curves and hairpins mostly by leaning and only braking when necessary. You’re going so fast that you literally can’t do anything except live in the present moment and focus on how you’re moving; if you don’t, it’s game over.

Back down near sea level, we continued on the grind. At this point I had eaten over half of my granola bars. I wasn’t being stingy with them - I would eat as much as I felt I needed and more - but I was aware that we would have to do a pit stop somewhere to get more before summiting Tam.

From Diablo it was a mostly flat ride to get to the Richmond bridge. The most brutal thing physically was simply the sheer number of miles we had to cycle, since the bridge would end up being about 70 miles into the ride. San Pablo Road, which connects the Orinda/Lafayette/Walnut Creek area to Richmond, was completely exposed to the sun and not completely flat, so it was not the most comfortable and easy ride, and it was slightly too draining. While we had fixed my configuration hours earlier, my thighs were now beginning to feel worked again, this time simply because of the number of miles. My friend was zooming ahead of me, seemingly putting in much less effort, so I pushed to keep pace. This road also required us to ride in the shoulder on a sort of single-lane expressway, which, while being safe enough, meant that there was nothing super interesting going on since the views consisted mostly of asphalt and cars. Again, my mental was being chipped away at by fatigue as I was decently drained, tired, and hungry. I was beginning to feel the effects of not having stopped for a proper lunch and a 30 minute break. It’s often easy enough to persevere and power through a task that requires only a few minutes or hours of effort, but with an endeavor in which any tangible progress amounts to a small percentage the total endpoint, you simply can’t rely on willpower because it’s too short-lived. On that note, the most important mental tool I used to keep me going was my ability to segment and break things down into atomic steps. For example, I didn’t really think much about Tam until we were descending Diablo. And when ascending Diablo I didn’t think much about it’s peak, I was thinking about just getting through the next straight, and then the next, and then the next. That way, I was able to focus on digestible goals where my efforts actually felt like they made a difference and I could get a small dopamine hit that kept my mental state positive.

Having gotten to the 50 mile mark, this was my new outdoor cycling distance PR, though I probably hit more miles during my training on the stationary bike. The prior week I had done a six hour stationary bike ride at Zone 2 heart rate to boost my confidence that I could physically survive that many hours. While it did help my confidence and genuinely did improve my endurance, it simply did not and could not prepare me for a ride that takes double that six hours, is in the sun, and has actual elevation. However, the most important thing it gave me was the belief that physical ability would not prevent me from summiting; if we failed, it would have to be due to some other factor.

After we finally got off San Pablo Road, we were at about 60 miles in, just about halfway. It was beginning to feel truly real and doable. And at the same time it was around 1400 or 1500 and we knew that sunset was at 1930. Given the rate we were pushing, even if we had the energy and dedication to summit Tam it was not looking probable that we could complete the ride before dark. Did we want to bike either up/down Tam and then back to San Francisco in the dark, with no night gear? To make matters worse, we were dealing with yet another impediment that was never a direct hinderance to completion but instead slowed us way the hell down and ruined momentum countless times: navigation. We already had some navigation problems from the start, but nothing too terrible. We were using a mix of GPS from my friend’s Garmin bike computer, loaded with the gps route we mapped, and Google Maps. I was only using my phone navigation when we were stopped because I didn’t have a phone holder on the handlebar, so we were mostly reliant on the Garmin. It worked well enough on long stretches but as soon as we got into local streets it would struggle to give us precise turn by turn navigation. Furthermore, we probably screwed up the route on more local streets when we were planning the night before because neither of us had ever ridden in the East Bay. This meant that we just went on Google Maps, verifying that the street view “looked good enough” and that the route wasn’t overly complicated, before agreeing that we could add that segment to our ride plan. Up until this point, we had to stop a couple times to backtrack or to take a look at Google Maps to see if we were going on the most efficient or correct route. While it did ruin our momentum and was getting agitating, it wasn’t too bad and was still early in the ride. Plus, I welcomed the small breaks that saved me from the shame of having to ask for the breaks myself…

However, the navigation gave us much bigger problems in Richmond. Instead of taking us on a bike path that would lead us directly to a Ralphs, where we planned to refuel and go to the bathroom, it took us the long way around through the extremely local streets of Richmond that had absolutely terrible roads. Those roads would have hurt my ass under any circumstance, but after 60 miles on a road bike with zero suspension and a rock-hard saddle, along with not wearing padded biking underwear? That’ll do it. Because of how bad the asphalt was and how many turns we were making, we were going way slower than we wanted to. The navigation didn’t even ever lead us to the Ralphs - we just kept going through local streets until we hit an expressway. The expectation of getting a nice pit stop and instead getting what we did simply felt bad and defeating. To make matters worse, this expressway was without question the worst leg of the trip, despite being maybe three total miles of our entire route and being recommended by all our navigation devices. We were in the expressway shoulder minding our own business and keeping as much distance from cars as possible before hearing what must have been some sort of fog horn directly behind us. It was from some driver in a gargantuan raised truck with some sort of clearly non-standard horn installed who decided to give us a scare. It really shook my friend and scared me too - it physically jolted us both but also reminded me of cases where people roll coal on cyclists; they could have done a lot more than honk. We sped the fuck up and got off the expressway.

Despite being mentally awoken by the honk, it wasn’t a pleasant jolt. The entire Richmond portion should have just served an intermission but instead it was a terrible experience that never allowed us to rest nor get into a mindless flow to just fast forward and get to the beauty of the North Bay. Because all the aforementioned factors (hunger, fatigue, soreness) were paired with that experience, I was slipping into a more negative agitated mood instead of staying in a neutral one. If we had one more incident like this, I’m not sure what would have happened.

Thankfully, somewhere close to the edge of Richmond we found a Peet’s coffee. I don’t even go to coffee shops much nor do I ever drink coffee, but I was never more ecstatic to see such a beautiful establishment. We refilled our water, went to the bathroom, and I got a muffin. I swear that was the best tasting muffin I’ve ever had, I don’t know what they put in it. It was pure bliss. Anyways, I set a timer and we rested our legs for 10 minutes. While we may have been up at the Diablo peak for ten minutes or so, this was the only time that we actually sat for an extended period. Sitting in such a pleasant area after nearly six hours of movement and the several issues we faced gave me a much needed mental reset. It was a good reminder that knowing when to rest is just as important as knowing when to push through pain. Once we got going again I felt alive and well.

We took some pretty okay roads and bike paths, reaching the Richmond bridge in what felt like no time at all. From the start of the bridge we could see Mount Tam looming in the distance just teasing us with how far away and tall it was. It was just sitting there, waiting. It was a beautiful sight that left me in a bit of awe and got me to instantly lock the fuck in. I was convinced we were going to summit. There’s no way in hell we would do 70 miles and go through so much just to give up now. Plus, the ride in North Bay was sure to be a more pleasant environment than East Bay, especially on the ride up. The bridge itself was nice as it was a decent uphill and then a long downhill, which I welcomed as an opportunity to cruise and rest my legs because I knew the incline we were about to face.

Somewhere in North Bay we stopped at supermarket before beginning the ascent. I was happy to get some snacks because I had maybe one granola bar left, but they had no “proper” energy snacks or granola bars. So instead I got a ten pack of Hostess Ho-Ho’s and a Redbull to drown myself in caffeine before ascent. The funny thing is that I had been religiously avoiding processed sugars as much as possible in my daily life for a forty day challenge (what the friend that challenged me calls a philosopher’s month), but on this ride I threw all that out the window. I would eat anything and everything of any quality so long as it gave me the energy to physically push the pedal just enough times to get me to Tam’s peak.

While we were in the North Bay, it still felt like a million years to reach the base of Tam. And while I had restocked on sugar, I wanted a proper meal after skipping lunch. We reached a checkpoint near the base where we knew there was a nice dinner place to load up on carbs, but we looked at our watches and became very nervous about the time. Alas, we would not get a dinner that day either. As opposed to how a lack of lunch affected my mental, this time I was so locked in and we were so close to starting the next climb that the disappointment very quickly melted away.

We finally reached the base of Tam from the northern side, so to reach San Francisco we would have to head south, the direction that Tam’s three peaks stood anyways. This meant that there was no skipping at least some sort of ascent now, and with a few hours of sunlight still left bailing was no longer even a thought in my mind. All the doubt and worries that I had on the eastern side of the Richmond Bridge just seemed so far away. That said, the Tam uphill was brutal. It had intense incline that felt way worse than Diablo’s (which is a biased feeling because of how fatigued I was after 80 miles of biking) and there were several downhills, which meant that half the incline we gained just went to waste. But my goodness was it a gorgeous and 10/10 section of the ride. I don’t know if it’s because we were on the backside or going up near sunset when everyone has gone home, but there were very few cars going in either direction, so we got the road mostly to ourselves. Because of the lack of distraction, lack of noise, the beautiful woods surrounding us, and no start/stop navigation woes, it was such an extremely serene leg of the trip, which created the perfect condition to get us in the zone and cruise at a consistent speed.

As serene as it was, I cheated death twice there, first on a downhill where I had forward momentum over a big bump but the road veered left, and a second time when a driver heading downhill towards us was speeding in our lane, almost kneecapping me. But besides those two fiascos, it was beautiful. We also got to a really cool dam that rejuvenated me mentally. Unfortunately, even there we didn’t stay put for more than two minutes because we truly did not have a minute to spare.

We continued on some more uphills, still locked in and moving consistently. We reached a “peak” at the Seven Sisters, which are seven rolling hills that gave us a clear view of the ocean. This part, while not as steep as what we had just biked, was tough and felt like it never ended. Nonetheless it was a set of gorgeous rolling hills which, with the sun going down, created such a majestic vibe. To be quite honest, besides stealing a couple of glances to my right, I did not pay much attention or soak in the views because I was becoming so depleted of energy that I could do nothing but focus on moving forward. We were here for a reason - to summit Tam’s East Peak, the second mountain peak of the day - and that was all that mattered to me.

At around 1830, we got to the final climb. At this point my thighs were not only burning but were also getting exhausted to the point where no amount of Redbull chugged and no amount of sugar consumed could change the fact that the cells in my legs were feeling overworked. Sunset was only an hour away but we were in too deep. No fucking way we bail. So we continued. The climb to West Peak was genuinely brutal. It was reminiscent of the first leg of the trip with the bad seat configuration; I was putting in a lot of effort and not getting much forward movement out of it. My thighs felt like they were nearing their true physical limit. At least, that’s what my legs were telling me. But as I knew from watching and analyzing Whiplash in this article, this was a perceived limit, not my true physical limit.

We made it to the West Peak, but I felt no sense of accomplishment, fulfillment, or finality. I knew that wasn’t our stopping point. There was one more brief downhill and then the final however many meter climb uphill to the East Peak summit. At this point I felt 99% depleted of thigh power; it felt as if I had to climb for another 50 meters of such a steep incline I would have fallen sideways off my bike. But I didn’t. Instead, we summited. It was truly one of the most exhilarating feelings I’ve ever experienced. I was so unbelievably proud. I felt like the king of the world. It was surreal that we summited two mountains in one day, with only minutes to spare until sunset. No other physical or mental endeavor has ever given me such a high. Nothing I did in cross country and nothing I’ve biked before. There’s something different about the journey taking so long and about there being two peaks involved. Just one peak with the same distance and elevation would feel great but I’m not sure it would have the same effect. With two mountains you finish the first and know you haven’t even scratched the surface. After the first, you have to go back down and start from zero.

I also felt a wave of relief that we did not use so many different little things that nagged at us throughout the ride as excuses to bypass Tam and re-route directly back to San Francisco. If we had, we still would have completed over 50 miles, I would have hit my distance PR, and we would have both experienced Diablo for the first time. But because we set such a lofty goal that by some standards was highly improbable given the lack of preparation in regards to gear and navigation, actually hitting it gave me a feeling of true bliss.

On East Peak we finally rested for a few minutes, sitting on the steps. However, even here we couldn’t loiter as much as I would have liked because it was 1930 and we had to speed down the mountain while there was still residual daylight. The downhill was an absolute 11/10 experience, the best one I’ve ever had on a bike. For the first two-thirds there were quite literally no cars and it was still light. I was zooming and had fantastic form in finding the racing line and anticipating how to handle various turns (10 mph, hairpin, 15mph, 20 mph, left and right banks, etc) in regards to braking, speed, and leaning. I am not the most experience cyclist, this having been my second ride on a road bike and my third mountain descent ever, but I felt incredibly confident and comfortable. I was in a complete flow state, one that I want to chase and experience again.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, meaning we were at the southern base of Tam. We reached a 7/11, ate some snacks, drank, then got back on the road. This was one of the least enjoyable parts of the trip given that it was pitch black outside and we had already done all the fun and difficult-with-a-purpose parts; just as with hiking, once you summit, the journey back home is not as great. Not to mention we were getting nervous because we didn’t have any lights nor fluorescent gear and had to share the road with cars or ride in the shoulder for over 10 miles back to the city, giving us flashbacks of the Richmond expressway.

That said, we had to tough it out and just pray for the best. As soon as we left the 7/11 there was a wind chill and it was genuinely cold. My ritual of morning cold showers actually did train me for this, despite not doing them for the purpose of this ride; yes it was cold but I called back to the dozens of cold showers and knew I could and would get through the discomfort. We had some doubts but I said we should just bike very hard for a bit to warm up and see how that goes. Luckily, in that process we ended up somehow hitting a warm wind and continued for many miles. We were actually going pretty damn hard on flats and slight uphills. It’s kind of funny how much effort we were putting in now compared to how absolutely depleted I felt during the East Peak summit; my thighs were back in commission despite the countless times I’ve mentioned that they were deteriorated. Again, this is the importance of rest. This ride taught me that so long as you keep fueling, hydrating, and resting, you can basically go on “forever” if you don’t believe your body when it says it’s hit the perceived limit… spoken like a truly naive endurance amateur :)

We finally saw the Golden Gate Bridge and a wave of relief hit me with one thought in mind: home. It was like seeing a boat that was about to pick you up from a deserted island. On the bridge I was getting so incredibly excited to go home. I literally could not wait. The ride through the city was a victory lap, and as my friend and I departed I finally began to reflect on what we just accomplished. I have never been so present and in the moment for so many hours at a time, so long so that it felt like a blur and a dream - did we just do that?