I had a great time, although it was long for my level of endurance, and the ups (steep path up to Crown Road after Barbara Springs, and Indian Fire Trail) were really painful on the calves and lower back.

I think my route was pretty standard-stuff:

Up: Bike path, Madrone, Baltimore Canyon, path after Barbara Springs, H-Line to Blithedale Ridge, Blithedale Ridge to Indian Fire Road to Indian Fire Trail to Verna Dunshee, turn left, do top of Hillclimb Route to tower.
Down: Path down back of East Peak to steps, go through parking lot to the road that goes behind Middle Peak, drop down Lagunitas Fire Trail to Lake Lagunitas, turn left, go to the dam (cut off the 2 curves by dropping down and cutting straight across), go down next to spillway, cut across meadow to Sky Oaks Road a ways past top of Fish, take road to Concrete Pipe Extension, drop down the trail in about 2/3 of a mile that goes into Cascade Canyon, turn right and go to the house.

I made 3 strategic errors:
1 - Judy Rabinowitz missed the path after Barbara Springs and was heading back looking for it. She asked where it was and I kept quiet, but we (Karen Steele and I) were almost to it, Judy turned back around to head back up the canyon (wrong way), and I tried to duck quietly up the path, but she looked back and saw us and followed us and of course passed us within 30 seconds.  I should have pretended to follow her farther and turned around to go back when it was safer! Of course she would end up passing me at some point even if she ended up doing hoo koo ee koo... but, it's unfortunate for my slow-pokey self to help one of the fastest women kick my sorry butt!
2 - We were spotted dropping down Lagunitas Fire Trail by Rob Flatland (I could not tell who it was at the time).  I guess there's not much I could have done about that (skipped my drink of water in the parking lot might have helped, or the detour to throw gu wrapper away in the trash can!), but then at the lake when he finally passed me (he had followed us down), I figured when I saw who it was that he had known where the trail was anyway, but then later he said he had not known, and would have missed it if we had had not gone down it (darn!).
3 - The last couple of miles I was w/ Tomas Pastalka (he passed me after the cutting across the meadow to Sky Oaks road (I did not see him in the lake, unfortunately, that would have been a sight to see)).  I was right on his heels going down the last single track into Cascade Canyon, and he dropped off the trail to go straight down.  I did not follow him because I was thinking that I could continue just on the trail and that it was going to be almost the same, and I did not think anyone was close behind, so I'd stick to what I had planned rather than following him. It turned out that I had to do quite a large loop to get down (I think normally I DO drop down where he did, but I forgot), and I lost a lot of time and got passed by Dave Covey at the bottom! And Dave did NOT pass Tomas Pastalka, so I blew it, I could have stayed with him and moved up one place. Oh well!

That's my story. Very fun! Plus the investigations of various options of parts of the route leading up to it, all very fun!

Diane