As in I was assaulted by Mt. Diablo. The turn out was pretty huge. Guessing around 50 people. The forecast was warm and sunny but no one expected it to be so foggy (and cold) at the start. There was a point on the way to Mt. Diablo when the wind stopped (or turned into a tailwind) and it was no longer cold. Shortly after we started climbing Mt. Diablo, we climbed out of the fog and it got hot. I should've stopped to take off my vest but I didn't want to get dropped. I went into this ride knowing I was going to pushing hard and probably suffering. This morning was also the first time in months that my asthma wasn’t affecting me. 🌬💪🥳 At one point Ollie caught up to me to shephard me to some good photo ops. It was nice to just take off the vest. I did most of the climb by myself. While I was going harder than I've been riding most of this pandemic it wasn't like I was going fast and hard. It was definitely slow and hard. :P With around 500' to go, my lower back was starting to bug me but luckily it never got that bad. The legs were the problem. I was too tired to even sprint The Wall. Towards the top it got pretty windy too and a couple times it was blowing me off the road. I bombed the descent so I could stop to take photos. Way more fun than the climb as I did photo intervals, leap frogging back passed the people I photographed to find other spots. There was a short, punchy, climb on the way to the South Gate booth that I sprinted up to pass a couple people and I could feel the muscles wanting to cramp. Once we got off Mt. Diablo, the ride to Third Culture was quite spicy. Some road racing/crit action for the front group 15-20 people. I decided to skip the mochi and headed straight to Gott's Roadside for a cheeseburger and fries instead.