Went to the races last night again. This time I decided to take the Max at a stop closer to my house so I didn't have to ride so far before racing. But I get to the Max station and I sit there for something like 10 minutes waiting for the light rail train to get there, I'm thinking, I could just ride up to where I normally go and be there faster. I get on the Max and sit there, thinking, I could have ridden there by the time I get there. Seems ironic for a guy dressed in racing clothes with a nice bike to be sitting on a train for 30 minutes, but I sit through it, and eventually make it to the race.
On the way home I ride back to the stop just before the hill and get ready to wait a little bit, pull out my phone and check when the next train will be in. Currently tracking is unavailable, and the next train may be in 30 minutes, but they aren't sure where it is. I see that normally the train runs every 10 minutes. So not trusting that if I wait 30 minutes that the train will come I decide to just ride home. I tell my Garmin to make a route from where I am to my house, which looked to be about 13mi, but it gave me a route that was 16.8mi, okay, no biggie, I'll start riding.
I get past the freeways and it directs me up this little road and I see it's a bit of a climb, not long, and averaging about 6-8% grade. I get to the "top" and it says turn right, and I'm thinking "no fucking way", start going up the hill and see 14%, 16% even up to 18% grade, switch back, keep going, and just as I think I reached the "top" it says turn right, and there is yet another hill. This repeats a couple times before I hit a short downhill part, after about 1.5 mi with an average of 7.3% grade, but really the last 0.8mi averaged 10.8%. I get a little respite, a short climb up, a little more downhill then a last 0.5 mi to the real top at 6.6% grade, then I finally get the downhill. Having never ridden this descent I took it a little slow, but managed to get down. Finally make it back to familiar territory and start fighting against a 13-15mph head wind the last 9 mi home. At this point I'm not sure it was faster, really depends on if they found the train or not, but the miles made up for the missed miles on the way there.
The best feeling was being able to climb that hill without too much trouble, even after having raced just before that. It felt pretty badass.