Call Me Pokey

On hiatus

2010-11-21T09:56:00.000-08:00

Hello, you might be wondering what's become of me.

A lot has happened to me in the weeks before and especially after the Death Ride. My life has changed some, in many respects for the better. Make that in most respects.

Rest assured, Lee and I are fine.

One offshoot of all this is that I'm just not all that into cycling right now. I still toodle around a bit, but that's about it. I read about the epic rides some friends & acquaintances go on and I think "eh, whatever". Maybe it's just a phase, and I'll be raring to go again at some point. We'll see.

My Death Ride report

2010-07-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

At long last, here's my report; hope you're not in a hurry. :D

Our group (about a dozen of us, including me and Coach Sarah) started out from Turtle Rock Park at o'Dark Stupid. By which I mean 3:45 am. I kid you not.

Despite the hideously early hour, I really enjoyed the ride through Markleeville before the sun came up. It was very peaceful and serene, and the miles flew by. Before I knew it we were making the turn to Monitor Pass.

Heading up Monitor I was still feeling good and had my sights on a five pass finish. I knew I wasn't going to be quick about it, but our last long team ride two weeks ago had given me a lot of confidence. That last long team ride included two -- count em, two! -- ascents of Mt Tam and a climb up the infamous Marshall Wall. I rode about 109 miles that day with nearly 11,000 feet of climbing. Between that, our altitude camp over a few of the Death Ride passes the the weekend before that, and the excellent coaching and training rides throughout the season, I had a good feel for what I needed to do and how to deal with things when the going got rough, and I was borderline optimistic about my chances of making all five passes by 8 pm.

It was lovely to witness the sky lightening with the approaching dawn as we climbed up Monitor. But somewhere along that first climb I realized I was losing energy and my legs were feeling like lead pipes. OK, I thought, I’ve got this covered, I’ll just keep up the hydration, nibble at the Ritz Bits & Wheat Thins in my bento box, take a swig or two of Hammer Gel, kick back a little, and I’ll feel better in a bit.

But I didn’t. If anything, I felt more lethargic over time, and it felt like my bike weighed 50 pounds. I watched the rest of my group turn into tiny specs up ahead of me. I figured, eh, this is just a phase, I’ll settle in, and I’ll either catch up to them or I won’t, it was no big concern for me, I had tons of time. One of our coaches, Onnie, was keeping an eye on me, and all was fine.

And then the headache started up. It was nowhere near as bad as the ones I experienced at Altitude Camp; this time around I had hydrated well throughout the week, both with water and electrolyte drinks, and I took an ibuprofen before we headed out. I glanced down at my Garmin to check the elevation, and sure enough, it read around 7480 feet. I had to laugh at that -- at altitude camp my headache had ramped up at around the 7500 ft mark. I’m nothing if not consistent. :D

I pulled over briefly to down another ibuprofen and to take a brief rest. That helped some and I continued on. The headache soon diminished -- it didn’t go away entirely, but it was manageable. My energy was a whole ‘nother story, though. Whenever I tried to pick up the pace just a little, my heart rate would soar. I wasn’t wearing an HRM, but my chest was thumping pretty darn hard. OK, just ease up a bit. Trouble was, I was already climbing fairly slowly, so easing up meant crawling.

I finally reached Onnie who was waiting patiently for me. I was staying pretty calm and I wasn’t worried about holding her up. We finally reached the summit and I got my First Pass sticker. That perked me up a lot, and I looked forward to the descent down the backside of Monitor Pass, which I’d been told is spectacular.

And that descent down the backside of Monitor did not disappoint!! Since we had started out so early, not many people had reached the summit of Monitor just yet, so there weren’t all that many people on the descent. My Descending Mojo was present and correct, and I had an absolute blast. The vistas opening up ahead of me were simply gorgeous. Although dozens had passed me on the climb, I was able to pass some of them on the descent, which gave me a little ego boost. Mind you, I didn’t take any risks -- there was a helicopter ambulance parked at the summit of Monitor which reminded me of where I’d been and where I never wanted to go again! -- but the road was for the most part fairly wide and straight and in good condition, the sight lines were good, and the idiot quotient was pretty low, so I had loads of fun. And I tried not to dwell on the fact that, even though I was exceeding 35 mph on much of the descent, and got up over 42 in some places (heh, amateur to some), it seemed like it was taking a reeeaaaly long time to reach the bottom. Ergh.

At the eastern base of Monitor I got my Second Pass sticker -- woo hoo! -- and I handed off my lights to Gerry, the husband of one of our teammates who had driven over from Nevada to be our drop off guy (thanks Gerry!), and dealt with necessities.

Our bunch regrouped and headed off for the return trip up the backside of Monitor. I hung in there for a bit, but soon I started to fall off again. Coach Sarah hung with me for quite a while, but we eventually got separated. I slogged on. I was reflecting a bit on some advice Sarah gave us at our pre-ride dinner the night before, the bit about the chicken and the pig, the chicken being “interested” and the pig being “committed” – ask Sarah for the gist. Well, slogging up the backside of Monitor, I knew I had no choice but to Keep Calm and Carry On. I was committed, all right -- I felt like a slab of bacon on a frying pan, which is pretty darn committed. Not too remote of an analogy, even though it was still pretty early in the morning (well, early by my standards), it was already getting freakin’ hot on the climb.

You know you’re going excruciatingly slow and looking kind of pathetic when people passing you call out in really cheery, well-meaning tones: "You’re doing great!" and "Hang in there!" and "You’re almost there, lookin' good!". I also got lot of very upbeat "Go Team!"s. So many that I was beginning to wonder if people assumed I was a very recent leukemia/lymphoma patient, that’s how slow I was going (absolutely no offense intended to our honorees, many of whom can and do ride circles around me and many on our team!!).

After a while I realized that five passes were not in the cards that day, and four passes were also starting to look very iffy from a time standpoint. I was staying upbeat, and occasionally chatting with people on the way up. I had to stop a lot, if only for a minute or two, after which I felt better. But even so I couldn’t get any momentum going, especially as the elevation passed 7000 feet again. This ride was starting to become Most Decidedly Not Fun.

Starting out that morning I had three big goals for the day:

* First and foremost, I wanted this day to be fun. I wanted to be able to look back on this day fondly, with a smile, not a grimace, and I sure as heck didn’t want my love of cycling to diminish in any way from this experience.

* Second, I didn’t want to mess up anyone else’s chances to finish all five passes, if that’s what they wanted to do. Sarah had already reassured me a couple of weeks before that it didn’t matter to her one bit if she finished all five or not; she’d been there, done that, and had lots of 5-pass jerseys to show for it. She convinced me that it meant more to her to see me do well and be happy with what I accomplished. Is she cool or what??

* Third, and this may sound hokey, but what the heck: I wanted to honor the TNT jersey. I was wearing our team’s event jersey, and I wanted to represent the team and the organization in a positive manner.

Crawling up the backside of Monitor, I had hoped that my energy would come back, but that simply wasn’t happening; if anything, I was getting more and more worn out.

My reaction to the altitude and the heat was, on that day anyways, beyond my control. The brief rest stops and keeping up with the hydration and the food wasn’t working that day. But what I could control was how I dealt with it. Sure, ending the day with only two stickers was kind of embarrassing, but it would be a lot more embarrassing to try to push myself more for one or two more stickers, and in the process wind up a sniveling cranky whiney heap at the side of the road. And be a burden to my other teammates. And I sure wouldn’t be a good reflection on my team or the TNT organization that way.

So as I approached the top of Monitor, I had pretty much decided to cut my losses, call it a day, and head back to Turtle Rock.

At the summit, there was Sarah patiently waiting for me.

We had a fun descent down the west (front) side of Monitor Pass. By then it was a lot more crowded than the east side descent. I stayed clear of trouble, but I saw a couple of near misses ahead of me that rattled me a bit. Although I was very confident in my own descending, I couldn’t say the same for a lot of the people sharing the road with me at that point. :p

When we reached the base of Monitor and the intersection (Ebbetts to the left, Markleeville & Turtle Rock to the right), Sarah talked me into giving the climb up Ebbetts a go, at least as far as the rest stop about a third of the way up at Scozza’s Cow Camp. I was feeling rested and exhilarated from the descent so I figured, heck, why not?

But as we were heading up the very shallow grade towards the campground where the lunch stop was located, my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. I was tired. So when we reached the lunch stop area, I said my goodbyes to Sarah and to Kurt, another team member who had come down with a cold early in the week and as a result was also having a bad day. Sarah knew better than to give me any grief (I told you, she’s great), but she did ask me to consider at least giving Ebbetts a try, pointing out that I had all day to do it.

I hung out at the lunch stop a bit, and I did feel a lot better. After a while I figured what the heck, it’s not like I had to rush it, so I set off up Ebbetts after all. Once again I went at my own leisurely pace, but since I had no time cuts to make, I relaxed and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Ebbetts Pass has some of the loveliest scenery on the entire ride. After a bit I saw Sarah and Kurt who passed by me heading back down – Sarah looked very surprised and happy to see me continuing on!

As I pulled in to Scozza’s, one of the volunteers was shouting out to riders that it was the last rest stop for seven miles before the top of Ebbetts. Ugh, seven more miles to climb. I refilled my bottles and treated myself to a few Oreo cookies. Nowadays I only allow myself Oreos when I donate blood, but I figured I deserved them today. I headed off, thinking I’d go as far as the cattle grate or maybe the fake 7000 foot sign (which is actually at 6800 feet) and re-evaluate.

When I reached the cattle grate a couple of miles up the road, I looked ahead and saw the road kick up a lot. Argh. I also noticed that hardly anyone was descending at that point – the bulk of the riders were still up ahead, either reaching the top of Ebbetts, heading down the far side or climbing back up the far side. So if I turned around right then and there, I’d be ahead of the teeming masses and have the road nearly to myself. I pondered that for maybe another nanosecond, turned around, and set off back down the mountain.

And it was very very good. There were a few other riders descending with me but by and large they were fast uber-studly riders with good sense and excellent bike handling skills. And I held my own quite nicely.

I got back to the lunch stop where Sarah and Kurt were visiting with Lorri Lee Lown of Velogirls. Sarah and Kurt were waiting for the rest of the team to reach the lunch stop to help pull them to Turtle Rock and points beyond, but I knew I wasn’t going to be much help, so after a fun lunch I said my goodbyes (again) and headed off for Turtle Rock.

As I approached the infamous Grassy Knoll at the edge of Markleeville, I heard someone calling my name – turns out a few team members (Leah, our team manager; Amy, a team member who had a crash a few weeks back and couldn’t participate in the ride; Ken, one of our SAG guys who also volunteered earlier that day up on Monitor), and a couple of teammates’ spouses had set up a cheering section across the road from the Knoll. I stopped and joined the cheering section for a couple of hours – what a blast!

After most of the team passed by, I set off again for Turtle Rock and the finish of my own ride. There I met up with Lee (who, after dropping me off at 3:30 that morning, headed back to our hotel in Minden to catch a few zzz’s before heading back to Turtle Rock much later in the morning to hang out at the team tent and wait for us to roll in), and a few others holding down the fort. Eventually, the rest of the team rolled in. The heat & the altitude took its toll on a few who managed “only” four passes, while a good many of the team did all five. I’m pretty sure I was the lowballer with only two completed passes, but that’s OK.

I ended up having ridden about 64 miles with around 7800 feet of climbing. I reached over 40 mph a few places on the Monitor descents, maxing out at a shade under 44 mph (some did closer to 50-55 or more; heh, I may be a confident descender, but not THAT confident!!). On the flip side, I averaged about 4 mph heading up the backside of Monitor, oy.

So there you have it. I accomplished all three of my goals for the day: I think I represented the team well, I didn’t interfere with anyone else’s goals, and, most emphatically, I had a great time. Can’t ask for much more than that. 8^)

Won't be long now!

2010-07-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

OMG the Death Ride is this weekend.

And, OMG, I am ready and I am psyched!

And so is DoughBoy -- here he is modeling his own purple Team jersey, made specially for the DR. Stylin', eh? :)

All DoughBoy has to do is hang from my saddlebag, look perky, and wave a cheery hello to everyone who passes me. Such a deal.

To start off this grand weekend, LeeBob and I went out for dinner with Nancy (the glorious, infamous Pansy Palmetto) and her hubby Randy. The Railroad Shrimp at Tahoe Joe's lived up to expectations, yum! It was great to see Pansy and Randy; Pansy showed off her svelte figure -- thighs like a teenager's, jeeze! -- and told us about her plans to participate in her 24th consecutive Eppie's Great Race next weekend. Awesome.

Heading on to Markleeville tomorrow, and then meeting up with the team in Minden NV. G'nite.

I gots my Descending Mojo back!

2010-05-20T17:15:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest changes to my riding after my bike crash last year was that I became a tentative descender.

I've always enjoyed descending, and over time I became pretty good at it. Up until right before my crash I'd only ridden Rivendells which are rock-solid descending bikes. Then I got my MidLife Crisis Bike, my lovely titanium Lynskey, and proceeded to crash it on a descent 10 days later. I was off my bike entirely for about 3 months, recovered well and gradually got back in the groove. I didn't remember anything about the crash, but once I started riding for real again I realized I wasn't having fun on descents.

I wasn't being fearful, exactly, although there were some descents early in this year's Death Ride training that made me wonder if I was devolving from tentative to fearful.

And, face it, half of the Death Ride is descending. While some people take solace from that fact, I was starting to wonder if that would be my big obstacle. Ridiculous but true.

Well, I'm happy to say I done gots my Descending Mojo back!

Here's how:

1. For starters, I abandoned my RetroGrouch sensibilities and switched out th bar-end shifters on my Lynskey to those newfangled :D brake/shift levers. I went whole hog and got the nifty new Ultegra carbon levers, which look very nice indeed (I always disliked the look of brifters, but these actually look nice). They took me a bit of time to get used to, but I really like them now. There are times it's nice to not to have to take a hand off the bar to shift, especially on bumpy descents (which could have contributed to my crash in the first place; but no-one was with me at the time and I don't remember it, so we'll never know).

2. Probably the single most important change was switching out the Shimano pads that came with my brakes for KoolStop brake pads. The Shimano pads didn't brake all that well, and over time they performed even worse, which could be why I felt less secure descending over time. I felt much more confident in my descending almost immediately after the switch to Kool-Stops.

3. The icing on the cake is that I'm now very flexible. Soon after I stopped wearing the back brace I took up yoga to help strengthen my back and regain some flexibility. I'm not going to classes right now, but I've kept up with it at home. I can now easily lay my palms flat on the floor in a forward bend, and after a few moments I can even bring my nose to my knees. So now I can very easily ride way down in the drops, which I wasn't able to do before. That makes a big difference in stability and security while I'm descending.

So there you have it. I's a happy camper.

My BigAzz Big Basin ride report (a work in progress)

2010-05-17T06:53:00.000-07:00

I know those of you who read my blog (both of you, one of them being me) are eagerly awaiting the report from my Big Day on Big Basin and Beyond. Rather than keep putting this off as I usually do, I'll just add to this as inspiration strikes or repressed memories resurface.

To cut to the chase, or, as they say at My Fine Workplace, the Executive Summary cuz Executives are far too busy to be bothered with the trivial and mundane:
It was a great ride. Nothing was thrown – that includes sandwiches, bikes, or hissy fits. I had a couple of Are We Freakin’ Done moments and one really low point, but I managed to get through them. I had to walk a couple of places on stinky-steep climbs but I didn’t mind. I did not Meet My Maker riding up Rt 84 as I had feared. Awesome descents, I think my descending mojo is back. Got to know some of my teammates a bit more and they are a grand lot. I finished DFL, but not too far FL, and what’s important to me is that I finished, and I’m really really proud of that.

Here's the route. My Garmin crapped out on me so I have to settle with the drawn route, not the GPS trace, you'll just have to take my word for it. I have witnesses.

The general consensus is that the honest-to-god total climb was between 10,500 and 11,000 ft.

Things I learned (and where I learned them):

You know a climb is freakin’ steep when you think it’s leveling off some, and you glance down at the grade indicator on your computer and it shows yeah, the climb is leveling off, it’s down to 10%. (on Redwood Gulch)
You know you're climbing really slow when your GPS goes into autopause mode while you're still moving forward. (on Redwood Gulch and Jamison Creek)
You know a ride is freakin’ long when you’re going up a 3% grade in your great-granny gear. (on Rt 84)
When a bug flies into your mouth on a big gasp for breath and lodges into your windpipe, it dissolves eventually. (back on Redwood Gulch)
Follow up a stinky-steep long climb with a fabulous descent and you’re less likely to want to strangle the coach. (Jamison Creek / Pine Flat and Bonny Doon)
It’s really hard for me to chew and pedal at the same time. (anywhere past mile 10)
I have fabulous teammates.(Portola Valley to Portola Valley)
I ~~really think I~~ can do this. (Various places, but especially cresting Rt 84 at Skyline)

That's it for now, check back later.

I did it I did it I did it!

2010-05-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

That was the chant running through my head as I reached the top of Route 84 at Skyline Blvd on my DR team training ride yesterday.

Like I mentioned in my last post, the training rides on the Death Ride team were going to get a lot longer and a lot tougher.   This one was about 110 miles and somewhere between 10,000-11,000 ft of climbing.

I was *really* worried about this ride.

I had a crappy ride a couple of weeks ago on the Grizzly Peak century.   About 20 miles into the ride I simply Did Not Want To Be There.   It was so strange; I was riding with Maggie and Lori, two friends from the DR team, and I was really looking forward to this day. But for some reason, my brain and my body were telling me they were just not up for this. I started to get a pounding headache -- cause or effect, I do not know -- and after a miserable slog up McEwen Road I decided "screw this".   I told Maggie and Lori not to wait up for me anymore, I was out of there, and when I reached the turn for Pig Farm Hill and the Bears, I turned the opposite way and headed for Lafayette.   I took BART and rode home (Lee was surprised to see me), laid down and conked out for three solid hours. So, maybe I was coming down with something, who knows.

But my motivation for the DR took an absolute nosedive.   Coach Sarah, who gleaned so insightfully that I was having a crisis   (could have it been all my posts on facebook saying that I was miserable and thinking of quitting? :D), exchanged a few emails with me and then we had a long phone conversation.

She let me know that while she really believed I could do it, and she was hoping I wouldn’t give up on it, she’d understand if I wasn’t up for it this time around.   She told me if I wanted to continue but not train so hard I could scale back on the training and aim for only a few passes rather than all five.   She even sent me her ride report from her very first Death Ride, where she did only(!) four passes, but was eager to do all five the following year (which she did, no surprise there!).

That all helped a lot.   At the end of our conversation I told Sarah I’d stay with the team, and play it by ear regarding the scaled-back training.   Getting it through my thick skull that it really would be OK if I didn’t do all five passes, and having the option to scale back on the training if I wanted, took an awful lot of pressure off me -- pressure that I didn’t even know I was feeling until it was gone.

I kept up with my training, including commutes to work and good times with Evil Coach Troy. The following weekend I had a really fun ride with Maggie and another teammate Tricia; it wasn’t an official team ride, it was what we call a buddy ride. It wasn’t epic as our usual training rides, but it had a decent amount of climbing, and I felt great. It helped me remember why I love riding in the first place. And the fact that a bakery stop was involved didn’t hurt matters.

So, that’s the lead up to the Big-Ass Big Basin team ride we rode yesterday. More on that later. I’m heading out soon for a recovery ride along the Alameda Creek Trail & Coyote Hills Park.

Recovery ride? Heh, more like a victory lap. :D

My toughest ride to date ...

2010-04-27T22:22:00.000-07:00

... and I can’t believe I rode the wholllle thing!

On Saturday the Death Ride team's training ride started from Steven Kent Winery in Livermore. From there we took Mines Road and rode up the backside of Mt. Hamilton to the summit. At the summit we turned around and retraced our route back to Livermore. All told it was about 93 miles and about 8000 ft of climbing.

I’ve ridden many centuries, and I’ve even done 5 or 6 double metric centuries (~125 miles). But I don’t think I’ve ever done 8000 ft of climbing on a ride, so I’ll venture to say that this was my Toughest. Ride. Ever.

I actually went back through my journal & blog to see if I've ridden anything comparable. The only ride I've done that comes even close to this in terms of climbing was the Calaveras-Mt Hamilton Whupfest I rode with Veronica a few years ago. I know the training rides are going to get steeper & longer, but this one is sort of a stake in the ground. As it were.

Here’s the trace from my gps – I forgot to start recording until a couple of miles into the ride, and the gps stopped recording partway up Mt Hamilton (it must have been reading my mind, heh heh), so it shows a few miles short. Oh well.

I’ve only ridden Mines Road once, many years ago, but never past the Del Puerto Junction. So after the Junction Cafe it was all new territory for me. Mines Road became San Antonio Valley Road which took us up the eastern side, also known as the “backside”, of Mt. Hamilton.

Well. Now I know what all the fuss is about that backside. It’s a much harder climb than the San Jose side. Presumably the road up the eastern side of the mountain was not built to accommodate horse-drawn wagons lugging telescopes to the observatory. Not to mention a middle aged slightly overweight woman on a bike equipped with a triple chainring and a dinner plate cassette. Oy. But I made it to the top, eventually – no small thanks to Coach Sarah who hung back with me. My pace still slows to a crawl when the grade goes above 6% or so, and the backside of Hamilton was at least 6%, often well above that, for over 5 miles. Gahhhhh.

But I made it to the top, eventually, and met up with the rest of my group at the summit for the return trip down. Soon after starting the descent we passed by my friends Veronica and Thom who were setting up their rest stop for DMD. I yelled out my hellos and kept going – great folks, they understood. More about DMD in a moment.

I'm (almost) never anxious on descents, at least I never used to be, but the descent down the backside of Hamilton put the fear in me. It was a combination of steep and curvy, with gravel & bumpy pavement in all the wrong places, and I needed to stop just before the cattle guard partway down to gather my wits. I even toyed with getting SAGed down the rest of the way. But after a little while I felt better and continued on.

Near the base of Hamilton, a great big jackrabbit ran alongside me for a ways. Maybe it was a jackalope. All I could think was “Pul-eeze don’t be darting into the road Mr. Jackalope!” If those big ears got tangled up in my spokes it could have been ugly.

And somewhere on Mines Rd, a deer bounded into the road in front of our paceline. It missed Susie by inches, inches I tell ya! :o

Two major organized rides were going on today along that same route – the Mt. Hamilton Challenge and the infamous Devil Mountain Double. The routes for these rides went in opposite directions; as we approached and climbed Mt Hamilton we passed the MHC riders descending and heading towards Livermore, and as we were heading back to Livermore we passed the DMD riders heading towards Mt Hamilton. Our group got lots of "go team" shoutouts, and occasionally we'd see someone we knew riding DMD or the MHC. Many of the riders were wearing jerseys from past epic studly rides -- I saw lots of DMD jerseys of course, but many Death Ride, CA Triple Crown, and TTwo jerseys (to name a few) were present & correct.

It was really lovely out on Saturday, clear and sunny, and not too warm -- especially by Mines Road standards! During the ride our group was trading stories about past rides we've done in this region when the temps were near or well into triple digits. Those of us who were on or witnessed last years' Mt. Hamilton-Sierra Road team ride (where, as Janet put it, Coach Sarah tried to kill off the entire team :D ) were especially grateful for the nice weather. The wildflowers were blooming, the streams were gurgling, the hills and pastures were a lovely green. Nice. I could have done without the bugs swarming around me as I was climbing, but hey.

The last few climbs on Mines past the junction heading back to Livermore really sucked. They don’t look like much on the elevation profile, but by the time we reached them I was pretty tired. Happily, they were over eventually, and then we reached a nice long stretch of slightly downhill grade which perked me up a lot. One thing I can say for myself, I seem to recover fairly quickly.

And the final descent into Livermore was wonderful - it helped me get my descending mojo back, and helped me forget how miserable I was about 20 miles back.

The ginormous Cadillac margarita I had afterwards at a taqueria in downtown Livermore helped even more ...

Back in the Groove

2010-04-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been updating this blog lately. Not for lack of things to say, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to say them out loud.

I’ve been having a really tough time with my Death Ride training this time around. My Inner Voices have been in full-on “who are you kidding” mode and getting on my case for being the slowpoke.

What was really bugging me was that, on account of my being so slow, the coach and the other people on the team who were stuck riding with me have had to start out at a stupid-early time, and continuously wait for me on the top of climbs, that sort of thing.

Well, to cut to the chase, after a particularly miserable ride last Saturday, I think I’ve finally gotten over that.

Last Saturday’s crappy ride, coincidentally (or not), was over the exact same route that I crashed on exactly a year ago, starting from Olema and heading out to the Pt Reyes Lighthouse and back by a very meandering, very scenic and very hilly route. It's a gorgeous ride, but this time around, I felt like crud from about mile 10 -- which, since it was a 68 mile ride, made for a very long day. I seriously wanted to pull out at the first SAG stop about 25 miles into the ride. Coach Sarah (filling in for Coach Peg), my mentor Maggie, and the incomparable DHK managed to find the right combination of sweet-talking and taunts to keep me going. Actually, what really did it was Sarah’s direct order: “You start my ride, you finish my ride”. Uhhhh, okay.

And it actually did get better. I’ve been noticing that on long rides I seem to get stronger over the course the ride. Well, relatively speaking. Since I was nearly at rock-bottom at mile 25 that’s not saying a whole heck of a lot, but it was enough.

Mount Vision near the end of the ride was pretty hideous, but I eventually made it to the top. I was very worried about the descent – down a steep, curvy road with bad pavement. My confidence in descending is still lacking, and this wasn’t looking good. A SAG driver (not Lee) pulled up just as I reached the top, and I asked him if I could get a lift to the bottom. Just then Coach Karen appeared, and she encouraged me to give it a try. Which I did, and it wasn’t that bad after all, although I was braking a lot and had a lovely case of crab hands to show for it by the time I finally reached the bottom. Yay for my new KoolStop brake pads, they were champs.

After Mt Vision, the only part remaining was the short, moderately steep descent down Sir Francis Drake Blvd towards Inverness. Which is where I crashed last year.

Our group was pretty much back together by then. First we passed by the clearing where I’m told the helicopter ambulance landed to take me to Santa Rosa (nope, still no memory of that). Then the descent started. Wow, the pavement WAS really chewed up there – I got a bit of perverse reassurance from that; maybe I wasn’t a total klutz! :D I was very cautious on that descent, but I wasn’t scared, I just stayed in the moment and didn’t dwell much on what happened last year. Partway down the descent we passed Kurt who had pulled off; come to find out later, he hit a pothole (they were hard to avoid) and had flatted both tires, ugh. Maggie pulled off to help him but I kept going, I wanted to be out of there.

When I reached the bottom of the hill and onto smooth pavement, and it was pretty clear I was going to finish this freakin' ride on my own power, I gave my companions a thumbs up. And then I got a bit teary-eyed. I managed to keep that under control, no way in hell was I going to crash at that point! The last few miles were blessedly uneventful, although they seemed to take forever. But I finally finished, booyah.

Here's last Saturday's ride:

Although I was very very happy to have completed that ride in one piece, I still wasn’t sure I was going to stay with the DR team. It took a bit more soul searching to finally come to terms with the fact that, yeah, I’m fairly slow, but not horrendously so, and my group members are OK with starting out early and hanging back with me. They're a super-supportive, fun bunch of people and I really enjoy riding with them (that includes DHK, but don’t tell him that, OK? He has enough of an ego already and he doesn’t need to know that he’s one of the reasons why I recommitted). So, here I am.

As it turns out, yesterday’s ride went really well for me. Oh, it was freakin’ hard, no mistake about that. I was still slower than snot, it still put the hurt on me, but I dealt with it much better. More on that later.

In the meantime, suffice to say it’s good to be back in the groove. :)

TNT DR team ride # 3 -- where some confidence emerged

2010-02-28T10:21:00.001-08:00

The Death Ride team ride yesterday started in Marinwood, headed out Lucas Valley Road, Nicasio Valley Rd, Pt-Reyes Petaluma to Hicks Valley, over the infamous Marshall Road and down to Highway 1, though Pt Reyes Station and then back inland on SFD, Platform Bridge, back to Point Reyes-Petaluma and onto Nicasio Valley Rd where we retraced our route back to Marinwood.

At the end of the ride we had a potluck at the Marinwood Community center to celebrate our TNT Honorees.

I approached this ride with a lot of trepidation.

It was going to be my longest, toughest ride since the end of last March. I had visions of me continuously holding back my group, and our group arriving at the Community Center late in the afternoon after practically everyone else had left and the last scraps of the potluck were being packed up. Or worse yet, I'd need to be sagged back. Gahhhh.

It was raining like stink all day the day before, and the weather report called for rain at least for the early part of the ride. And then there was the possibility of a tsunami, yeesh (OK, I'm stretching it here, the likelihood of a tsunami was very very low where we were, but it didn't help matters :D)

And then there's The Potluck Curse. My crash occurred the day of the DR team's Honoree Potluck last year. I was briefly on the Solvang team this past fall, and on the ride preceding that team's honoree potluck, there was also a very scary crash (not me this time, but still). Does bad luck really come in threes? We shall see.

Well. To cut to the chase -- I completed the ride, I didn’t hold up my group (well, not too badly, anyhow), and I felt fine at the end, woo-hoo! There were lots of people to chat with and lots of great food to enjoy at the potluck. It was rainy and chilly at the start of the ride, but thanks to Appropriate Attire, it wasn’t bad. No sign of a tsunami descending upon us.

And no word of any crashes, horrific or otherwise, occurring on the ride. The Potluck Curse is broken!!

I have to admit, I had some very low points during the first part of this ride. Once the grade on a climb kicks up around 8% (aw heck, 6%) I still get very, very slow. And it takes me a while to get into the groove. So, I had a grand old time on our first climb on Lucas Valley Rd, only about 4 miles into the ride. My “who am I kidding?” mantra promptly kicked in. I was already thinking to myself “I SO don’t belong on this team!” and “maybe I should switch to the STP team” and “no, I’ll just quit and help out with SAGing on this team”, and so on.

I got a bit of a respite from the negative singsong in my head heading up Nicasio Valley Road, but it all came back in full force on the slog up Pt. Reyes-Petaluma Rd heading towards the Cheeze Factory. I was so down on myself I almost started crying, pathetic but true! I was in my great-granny gear (a triple crankset with a 32t mountain cassette, oy), trying to maintain a reasonable cadence, trying to pedal in reasonably smooth circles, with my speed dropping under 5 mph, 4 mph … gahhh.

Our wonderful SAG guy Ken was parked on the side of the road at the top of that climb cheering us on. When I finally reached the top he couldn’t help but notice how slow I was going, and he cheerily called out “you need to be in a higher gear there!” or something along that line. Luckily by then I had pretty much gotten over the urge to spontaneously burst into tears, but I might have shot poor Ken the Jobob Death Glare(patent pending). He didn’t spontaneously combust, so either I didn’t shoot it at him after all, or I was just too whupped to zap him full force (in which case I hope his jacket wasn’t singed).

My companions -- Susie, Maggie and coach Peg, all Death Ride veterans -- were great. They gave me lots of encouragement and helpful suggestions. Peg would occasionally have us pull over and give us really good tips, checking on how much we were eating and drinking, that kind of thing.

The self-defeating noises in my head receded by the time we reached our first SAG stop on Hicks Valley Road. There, Nancy and Grace had a fabulous spread of food waiting for us right by the Lincoln School. It was so awesome to see Nancy again, I first met her during the Crater Lake Century, when I reached the rim of the crater – which was my first significant ride since my crash (this one being the second, I suppose).

Hmmm. There’s now a link between Nancy and the good outcomes of my significant rides. Hope she comes to the Death Ride. :D

The climb up Marshall Road was of course hard, but not as demoralizing for me as the climbs up Lucas Valley Rd and Pt Reyes-Petaluma Rd. Go figure. I took the descent down the Marshall Wall very cautiously – didn’t want to push the Potluck Curse!! – but all went well.

Once I made it over Marshall my self-defeating mantra was pretty much gone. Heading down Highway 1 I started having some fun with coach Peg and the rest of my group, plaintively whining every time we passed some landmark known for its good eats – the Marshall Store and the clam chowder, Tony’s and the BBQ oysters, the Bovine Bakery and everything in it, the bar in Olema… Coach Peg would just smile every time I kvetched about the snack opportunities we were missing.

We had an excellent time pacelining and riding the rollers on Highway 1. But, perhaps I was having too excellent a time, I kind of forgot about keeping up with the all-important eating and drinking. I was so busy whining about Missed Snack Opportunities that I neglected to refuel – and yes, I get the irony! :p

So, once we were heading up the relatively shallow grade on Sir Francis Drake towards Platform Bridge, I started feeling what I call a “pre-bonk” coming on. It’s where I feel a little jittery and lightheaded, and, based on past experience I know when I feel that coming on I must stop immediately and refuel to avoid a full-blown bonk. Seriously, I have maybe a five minute window to chow down or suffer the consequences. I pulled over and sucked down some vanilla Hammer Gel from my flask and swallowed some more Spiz drink, and was good to go again within a few minutes. But clearly I’ll need to stay on top of my refueling a lot better than that!

The rest of the ride went fine. I was starting to wear down a bit by the time we reached Nicasio, but the short break we took there helped. And by then the rain was long gone and it had cleared up considerably so we had some beautiful scenery to enjoy.

The climb heading up Lucas Valley in the other direction was yet another long slog, but by then I knew I could manage it. And I had a blast heading down the other side of that climb – I went down it ahead of the rest of the group and had the descent essentially all to myself. I didn’t take it at breakneck speed, but I did it at a good clip and felt pretty relaxed and confident. That’s huge for me, I’ve been a tentative descender since last year and it looks like I’m getting better at it.

I slowed down a bit at the bottom of the descent to let the others catch up, Coach Peg got us into another paceline, and we cranked it back to the finish. Peg gathered us for a short and informative post-ride debriefing, and then we headed off for the potluck.

By the end of the ride I was thinking, hmm, maybe I really can do this!, which is a big about-face from what I was thinking during the early part of the ride. Many thanks to Maggie, Susie and especially to Peg for helping me through my self-doubt, and for making it fun.

An excellent day!

Nemesis repeats, whee!

2010-02-20T20:01:00.000-08:00

Nemesis is the name I've given to a hill out in Coyote Hills Park, near the Dumbarton Bridge in Fremont.

It's a short climb, only about 1/2 mile long, but it's a steep little stinker. The climb is in two parts, both about 8-12% grade, with a short rest in between of about 3-5%.   It then levels off at the top, and for extra credit I can continue on, past a shooting range used by the Fremont police and a former Nike missile control center (cool, eh?), and up a last short bit of another 10-12%. There it dead ends at a gate at the very top of the hill, past which there are cell phone towers and lord knows what else. :/

I call it Nemesis because it took me *weeks* to get up that stinker for the first time, back when I first started riding. I was such a happy camper that day when I reached the top -- until I realized it wasn't really the top and there was still that last section. Ack!

Nowadays it's much less of a nemesis, but I like the name. And it can still kick the crap out of me.

The view up there is really nice -- you get a vista of the southern part of the SF Bay and the Dumbarton and San Mateo bridges.

And it's a good hill for repeats. Which is what I did today. I could have gone on a "buddy" ride today with my TNT Death Ride team, but I really wasn't up to driving all the way out to the Presidio for the start of the ride, especially since the weather was iffy. And after the long week I had at work, a sleep-in was in order. So it seemed like a good a day as any to start up the masochistic ritual known as Nemesis repeats.

My initial plan is to just do a few of them at a time, maybe a couple of times a week, and not worry about my speed yet - just get up the sucker. I figure over time, hopefully my strength & stamina will improve and the climbing speed will follow. I hope.

And since what goes up must come down, this'll also be good for my descending. I'm a much more tentative descender since my crash last March. I'm not fearful, but I do take descents a lot slower than I used to. I may never again be as fast a descender as I used to be, but I would like to get my confidence back.   Although the trail on Nemesis is paved, it's bumpy in parts, and there's a bit of gravel on it. I think the more I descend it, the more assured I'll be, and that's a good thing.

So, today I warmed up slowly and deliberately, first heading out to the bay and back around the park, getting about 8 miles in before I reached the climb the first time. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't all that difficult for me. I kept in my lowest gears and spun reasonably well heading up. Just before the top it kicks up to about 14% so I was a bit labored, but still, not too shabby. I turned around, headed down and along the trail to the parking lot on Patterson Ranch Road where I looped around and headed back.

There were a few other cyclists doing repeats on Nemesis today. We'd nod to each other as we passed, but we were all in our own little worlds. It was that kind of day out; on really nice sunny days the park is teeming with people but today, notsomuch. Nearly everyone I saw out there seemed to be doing some sort of training.

I managed to do four repeats, and I wasn't whupped at all, which was great. On the last two I headed up to the very top by the cell towers to take in the view. On the fourth climb it starting sprinkling and the wind was picking up some more (made for some nice crosswinds heading down, yikes) so it was time to pack it in. Heading back to the Alameda Creek Trail I met up with Lee who had been out on his own ride out to Shoreline Park, so we rode home together.   A good day.

TNT Death Ride SF team ride - one climb down, waaay more to go!

2010-02-13T17:52:00.000-08:00

Today was our first long-ish training ride on the TNT Death Ride team. For the early training rides we're split up into 2 groups, the SF/East bay group and the Redwood Wine Country(RWC)/Marin group. Last year I rode with RWC but this year I'm sticking closer to home. So today's ride was with the SF/East bay group, headed up by Mistress Karen and her crew.

It wasn't wasn't much compared to what we'll be doing in the upcoming weeks, but hey, it's a start!    I was really happy with how I did, after 50 miles I wasn't whupped. Yeah, the bar is set kind of low... :D

The climb up Palomares road was kind of ugly, and I was having one of my "who am I kidding" episodes. As evidenced by the fact that I yelled out WHO AM I KIDDING at least once. And by at least once I mean at least five or six times. But Coach Peg stayed with me and gave me encouragement and advice (and none of it was along the lines of "give up now and spare us").

So I finally made it over Palomares -- the Hard Way, mind you! -- and the rest of the ride went really well. Communist Captain Amy quipped, "Well, that's one climb down. Wonder how many more climbs we'll do before the Death Ride?"

I'm proud to say I resisted the urge to tip her bike over.

We had a time trial up Calaveras Road to determine what groups we'll be placed in. I told Coach Karen that we could skip with the formalities and just put me in the slowest group, but she wouldn't go for that.

On Calaveras Road we passed a big group of Solvang Team TNT riders -- so nice to see them! They were looking great.   The Solvang Century is only a few weeks away, booyah!

After the ride up Calaveras we turned around at the false summit and headed back to Welch Creek SAG stop where we entered our times. Then we headed back to Sunol and on to Castro Valley via Dublin Canyon.

All told it was 50 miles and about 3400 ft of climbing. So far, so good...

Ohboyohboy, Puppy Cam is back!

2010-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

Yay!

Video clips at Ustream

Calaveras to Sunol – the Wall won, this time

2010-01-24T12:34:00.000-08:00

On Saturday there was a break in the rain & wind storms, so I took the opportunity to head out on a real ride – birds & trees & hillsides instead of Coach Troy & Universal Sports Network, yay!

I took Pokey the Sherman Tank because even though it wasn’t actually raining at the moment, the roads would likely be pretty soggy, and the rain could come back.

I wanted to head out towards Calaveras Road & Sunol. Earlier in the week there was a mudslide on Niles Canyon Road so I decided to bypass it and take the long way, heading up from the south side of Calaveras towards Sunol (generally known as the counterclockwise Calaveras route).

And OMG it was beautiful out! The hills were turning a lovely green after all the rain, and Alameda Creek was full of happy geese, ducks, & egrets. I snapped some pictures on my cell phone camera – not great, but they’ll do.

I headed up Mission Blvd and stopped at Mission Coffee for a chunk of banana bread, yum. I ate half of it and saved the other half for a stop at Ed Levin park, partway up the Calaveras Rd climb.

Argh, Calaveras Road put the hurt on me. I hadn’t ridden the counterclockwise direction in quite some time, and I was kind of whupped by the time I reached Ed Levin, which is only partway up. Oh dear, this does not bode well for my Death Ride training. I hung out at Ed Levin for a while, finished the banana bread, topped of my water bottles and such, and wandered around a bit. So pretty.

Then I set out for the Calaveras Wall. The Wall is thankfully only about a quarter of a mile, with an average grade around 12%. On one hand I was glad I had Pokey since he has the lowest gears imaginable; on the other hand he’s pretty heavy and I felt all that weight and then some heading up that freakin’ wall. I was in my 26f/32r gear (told you it was low!) and climbing at a speed, as it were, of 3 mph or so -- I even saw 2.2 a couple of times. I was kind of amused that I could remain upright at that speed. I thought I was doing OK, plugging along, taking it easy and trying not to implode. But then I rounded the bend and saw the wall was still heading up, up, up. Oh crud, this just wasn’t going to happen today. So I got off and walked the rest of the way. Gahh. Turns out I was very near the top, but so it goes. Wall 1, me, ½. Next time.

I was commiserating myself with the fact that Pokey is so heavy, when it occurred to me that I’ve ridden this bike up Sierra Road, for cryin’ out loud, and there’s video to prove it. So much for that excuse. My how the mighty have fallen. Not that one could ever call me mighty … :p

Continuing on Calaveras I was still marveling at how lovely it was out – I know I’m being redundant, but it really was that nice out.

Riding along I saw a very large brown bird perched on a tree branch along the side of the road just up ahead of me -- wow, a golden eagle! I came to a very quiet stop and reached carefully into my back pocket for my cell phone, and managed to snap a couple of pictures of him before he took off. Neat!

I took the descent on Calaveras a bit cautiously since the road was still wet in places, and it was cold enough for ice underneath the trees. It all went fine. Lee was waiting patiently for me in Sunol, and he drove me home. Turns out Niles Canyon was in pretty good shape, but I’m glad I took the long route anyhow. All in all, and awesome day. I’ll ride all the way up that wall next time.

A good ride with good friends

2010-01-11T08:23:00.000-08:00

I went out for a ride on Sunday with Maggie and Laurie, two friends from last years' Death Ride team -- and they're going to be on this years' DR team as well, yay!

Maggie is even my and Laurie's TNT mentor this time around. Poor Maggie, whatever did she do to deserve us? Oh well, sometimes life throws challenges in one's path ...

We did the reverse of the route the Solvang team rode on Saturday, so we got to ride up Pig Farm Hill the easy way. neener.

Gerry joined us for a bit of the ride. He hasn't ridden in quite a while so he kept it to Moraga Way. It was nice to see him!

Speaking of our Esteemed Mentor, seems she's been doing this absurdly strenuous-sounding rowing thing lately. She insisted that she was going to be plodding up the hills on account of some crazy-hard workout she did a few days ago. Right. She no sooner finished whining about how slow she was going to be on the hills (I take that back, she never finished whining), when she took off on Laurie and me on the first climb.

Someone should really clue Maggie in on the role of mentors -- to provide support and encouragement to one's mentees, not leave them in a heap of dust and self-loathing on each freakin' climb. Yeesh!!! :p

Anyhow, when Laurie and I finally caught up to said Esteemed Mentor, we gave her the verbal thrashing she so rightly deserved. Laurie had a good head start on that -- since naturally Laurie was way ahead of me -- so when I finally showed up all I needed to do was say "Yeah, what Monster said". Laurie is so good at verbal abuse, may as well leave it to the professionals.

It was an excellent ride, can't wait to go out with them again!

(looks like there's some sort of glitch on RideWithGpS which makes distances show up in metric. Eh.)

Here I go again ...

2010-01-04T06:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I’ve gone & done it, I’m now officially signed up to train for the Death Ride again with TNT.

Some of you know that I had signed up with the Solvang Century TNT team a couple of months ago. I found out soon thereafter that I might be away in mid-March, so I might wind up missing that event altogether.

Plus, to be honest, training for Solvang didn’t really motivate me the way training did for the Death Ride. The Death Ride is a huge challenge for me. Solvang, eh, notsomuch. Granted, I’ve never ridden the Solvang century, but I’ve done a bunch of centuries and double metrics (well, OK, none recently, and thank you so much for pointing that out) and preparing for Solvang gave me that been there, done that feeling.

The way I see it, my first completed event with TNT should be a significant personal achievement. The Death Ride is all that, plus it’s unfinished business for me. Not to mention the DR team always has such awesome jerseys. I’m all about the jerseys.

So here I am, right back where I started last year. Wish me luck!

I'll let you know how it goes. It'll be an adventure, that I know already {gulp}.

Here's my fundraising page if'n you're so inclined. Thank you so much for your faith in me, and, for your support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Pokey, my trusty sherman tank, er, bike

2009-11-27T19:59:00.000-08:00

Rain was predicted today so I figured it was a good a time as any to pull out Pokey, my very first road bike, and give him a spin.

Pokey is a Rivendell Romulus. Rivendell doesn't make them anymore, alas. It's a great all-around bike. Nowadays he's my funky weather / touring bike, with plenty of room for fenders, wider tires, and all the junk one could ever want to carry.

This picture was taken nearly five years ago, just before Lee & I set out on our first (and so far, only) bike tour. We started out from Port Townsend, WA and went along the Puget Sound, over to Vancouver Island, the San Juan Islands, Whidbey Island and back to PT. Day One of our trip, from PT to Sequim, it was raining like stink (heh, Rain Shadow of the Pacific Northwest, my ass). Pokey performed great that day and he's been a trooper for many years since.

Today I took Pokey (sans front rack, paniers, bags & banana) out to Sunol and back, along Niles Canyon Road. The heavens opened up on me about halfway out to Sunol, but thanks to Pokey's fenders and all the wool I was wearing, I stayed sort of dry and pretty comfy. Retro-grouchitude has it's advantages.

Lee and I are talking about doing that Washington/Vancouver tour again next year. More than likely, I'll bring Pokey again.

Training rides

2009-11-11T15:11:00.000-08:00

I've started doing early morning training rides and occasionally I'll be keeping track of my time over a set course to see how I'm improving. The course is a mostly flat loop of the Alameda Creek trail & Coyote Hills park, starting from the bridge at Union City Blvd and first heading out to the bay, turning around and heading back to the trail around Coyote Hills, once around the park then back onto the AC Trail to the bridge, a bit over 11 miles. It's another couple of miles to & from home which works well as a warmup & cooldown.

Today I recorded my best time so far of 43:40, which works out to around 15.3 mph. I hope to improve on that.

Right To Life

2009-11-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

Although this blog is primarily about my cycling life, this poem moved me...

A woman is not a pear tree
thrusting her fruit in mindless fecundity
into the world. Even pear trees bear
heavily in one year and rest and grow the next.
An orchid gone wild drops few warm rotting
fruit in the grass but the trees stretch
high and wiry gifting the birds forty
feet up among inch long thorns
broken atavistically from the smooth wood.

A woman is not a basket you place
your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood
hen you can slip duck eggs under.
Not the purse holding the coins of your
descendants till you spend them in wars.
Not a bank where your genes gather interest
and interesting mutations in the tainted
rain, any more than you are.

You plant corn and you harvest
it to eat or sell. You put the lamb
in the pasture to fatten and haul it in to
butcher for chops. You slice the mountain
in two for a road and gouge the high plains
for coal and the waters run muddy for
miles and years. Fish die but you do not
call them yours unless you wished to eat them.

Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.
You lay claim to her pastures for grazing,
fields for growing babies like iceberg
lettuce. You value children so dearly
that none ever go hungry, none weep
with no one to tend them when mothers
work, none lack fresh fruit,
none chew lead or cough to death and your
orphanages are empty. Every noon the best
restaurants serve poor children steaks.

At this moment at nine o'clock a partera
is performing a table top abortion on an
unwed mother in Texas who can't get
Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die
of tetanus and her little daughter will cry
and be taken away. Next door a husband
and wife are sticking pins in the son
they did not want. They will explain
for hours how wicked he is,
how he wants discipline.

We are all born of woman, in the rose
of the womb we suckled our mother's blood
and every baby born has a right to love
like a seedling to sun. Every baby born
unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come
due in twenty years with interest, an anger
that must find a target, a pain that will
beget pain. A decade downstream a child
screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,
a firing squad is summoned, a button
is pushed and the world burns.

I will choose what enters me, what becomes
of my flesh. Without choice, no politics,
no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.
You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold shares
in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you
I want it back. My life
is a non-negotiable demand.

From The Moon Is Always Female by Marge Piercy

A grand weekend in Markleeville

2009-10-27T08:48:00.001-07:00

Well, I finally rode my bike up in Markleeville, and it was good.

A bunch of us got together a couple of weekends ago for the BikeJournal "mini-reunion" -- I saw a lot of homies up there (Kim, Glenn, Daniel & Julie), a lot of friends that I haven't seen in quite some time (Twain, SloJoe, Pansy, Randy, Nancy, Edna, Dave) and met people whom I only knew online until now (Jana, Steve, Steve). A really great bunch of people.

Riding up there was pretty challenging, especially the first day. We were over 5000 ft elevation at the base of the climbs, and since I live at about a dozen feet about sea level, I got out of breath pretty quickly at first. It was noticeably better after a day or two.

It was absolutely glorious up there. Twain warned us that this time of year is a real crapshoot in the Sierras, and the weather leading up to that weekend really bore that out. Still, we lucked out in a big way. It was sunny and warm all day Friday and Saturday and most of Sunday. And the landscape was a leaf-peepers dream.

I'll post pictures sooner or later. In the meantime, here's a bunch of them.

6 months ago today

2009-09-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

Six months ago today, I started the day out on a training ride around Pt. Reyes with the TnT Death Ride Team, and ended the day in intensive care at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

It was a freak accident, I must have hit or run over something that caused me to go over my handlebars while I was descending fast down a short, steep hill. To this day I remember nothing of it, and have only a vague recollection of my four days in the hospital.

I've been incredibly fortunate, and I'm deeply grateful for that good fortune.

I had immediate care from passers-by trained in emergency medicine, and I was helicoptered to the hospital. My helmet did what it's supposed to do. Over the last several months I have come to learn that I have excellent health insurance, and the fact that I wasn't laid off early this spring (like many of my co-workers) meant that I still had that excellent health insurance when I needed it. My wonderful husband waited on me hand & foot during my first few weeks out of the hospital, and ferried me to work and doctors' appointments for a few weeks after that while I still couldn't drive. And he's been here for me and taking great care of me to this day. My dear friends have been here for me too, with lots of encouragement and lots of laughs.

I'm very happy to say I'm pretty much all recovered!

I still have the funny bump on my back from the T7 vertebrae compression fracture, but it's not hindering my activities. My new motto (w. thanx to Tall Sarah) is "What hump?"

Heh, perhaps I should rename my blog Call Me Igor...

The only real difference I notice is that my back & shoulders are stiff and achey in the mornings (they didn't used to be), but stretching and early morning bike rides help that a lot. I've taken up Iyengar yoga which is really great.

And I'm biking again and enjoying it immensely.

So, all is well with my world. :D

Earning one's keep in the world, part 2: Join the Be The Match Registry

2009-09-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

My friend Vernon, who was one of my teammates on the Team in Training cycling team I was on before my untimely bailout this spring, posted this to Facebook the other day:

"12 years ago today I received bone marrow, which saved my life from Leukemia. I encourage you to sign up for the National Bone Marrow Registry. It is painless procedure and you could save a life, like mine."

Veron is one of those studly people who rides double centuries, and this year he completed all five passes of the Markleeville Death Ride while helping other friends accomplish this mighty feat. But my guess is, 12 years ago he was just hoping to survive another year and couldn't dare dream of doing what he's doing today.

Like Vern said, signing up for the National Bone Marrow Registry -- now known as the Be The Match Registry -- is painless and easy. And you could even save a life. It's all spelled out here on their website. Jobob sez check it out.

Come to find out, I might not be able to join the registry right now on account of my vertebrae fracture, but at least I'll be able to register in April of 2011, 2 years after my accident (but I'm checking to see if I might still qualify for certain types of donations -- thanks Jim!). Oh well, in the meantime I can at least spread the word ... :)

Crater Lake was wonderful! (vol. 2)

2009-08-17T18:29:00.000-07:00

Lee and I and a bunch of friends rode the Crater Lake Century this past weekend. Unlike the godawful heat last year, the weather this year was fabulous.

I only rode from the start in Fort Klamath up to the Rim Village and back, which worked out to about 48 miles and roughly 3,000 feet of climbing. So you can call my ride the Crater Lake Half Century.

To put it mildly, I'm thrilled to bits with what I accomplished!

This was an absolutely fabulous weekend.

More later -- I have to unpack and do some laundry. :^)

Earning one's keep in the world

2009-08-06T08:45:00.000-07:00

Fatty wrote this in his blog:

"Susan’s part in the battle is over, but she didn’t lose. She led the charge. She showed the rest of us how to fight: with determination, focus, creativity, and outrageous endurance.

Now it’s up to the rest of us to Fight Like Susan."

I like to think of it as earning one's keep in the world. Doing things -- little things, big things -- to help carry on Susan's legacy.

What things?

Well, there are the obvious things (obvious because I can think of them off the top of my head, that is):

Donating money to a cause

Donating time to a cause (there are lots of creative ways to do this but I'm still mulling).

Give blood

I gave blood yesterday. It had nothing to do with Susan, it just happened to be yesterday. It was my first blood donation in many months. I'm occasionally turned down on account of low iron levels, and then I let it slide. I'm not the easiest one to draw from either, I like to joke that I have no veins. I gave this time around because I got a couple of phone calls from the blood center. Okay, okay, I'll go, said I.

I made sure to take my vitamins for a few days beforehand and consequently my drop of blood sunk in the copper solution - they didn't even have to do the centrifugation test, yay! And the nurse found the vein after only a minimum of poking -- it sure helped that I drank lots of water for a couple of days beforehand. I had to squeeze the rubber ball constantly, but they got my pint. And I felt very good afterward. And as an added bonus they had Oreo cookies :D

So, for starters, I'm going to be more conscientious about giving blood, in honor of Susan and to help earn my own keep in the world.

So Sad

2009-08-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

Susan Nelson, the wife of Elden "Fat Cyclist" Nelson, died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. She put up a good fight.

I'm glad that her ordeal is over, for her at least. I'm sad for Elden and their kids and their family and friends who must go on without her. Wishing them strength to cope and to carry on.

Win Susan.

Back on my bike for real ! :)

2009-07-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

Free at last !!

So I went to my neurosurgeon yesterday -- Dr. Desmond Erasmus, a really great guy -- and he told me I could finally Lose My Stupid - !@$#^%$! Back Brace and I was free to resume my normal activities!

Yeee - Freakin - Haw !!!!

To commemorate this auspicious occasion, Lee and I went out for a short ride along the Alameda Creek Trail (~ 10 miles, elevation gain about 20 feet ) out to the bay & back. Hey, it's a start. :)

It felt strange being back out on the road on my bike at first, and my coordination felt a bit off, but it felt better as I went along. Where we enter & exit the trail there are very short stretches of gravel path to ride over, which I used to think nothing of, but today I walked those bits. I figure my coordination & confidence will be back soon enough.

It was mighty windy heading out to the bay, naturally, so I took it really easy. Surprisingly enough, despite that I managed a pretty decent clip into the wind. Nice.

Lee told me that all in all I didn't seem to lose too much fitness over my three month-plus layoff (heh, I didn't climb anything though ...).

And the tailwind back was a bonus. Whee!

Well I am jazzed to bits to be back out on my bike.

Not to worry, I'll be building back reeaallly slowly. But at least I'm back!

Back on the bike (um, sort of ...)

2009-05-24T11:34:00.000-07:00

Today was my first ride on the trainer, and my first time on a bike of any sort, since my crash at the end of March. Woo-hoo, I rode it for twelve whole minutes!

It was at a very low intensity, and I maintained a cadence ~70 to 80 rpm. I was able to ride OK in the drops, keeping my back very straight (thanks to the brace).

I figure I'll try to ride on the trainer every day and increase the duration by a few minutes each day. Then when I finally get my stoopid back brace off, my muscles will at least be accustomed to riding again.

I'll still be wearing my brace for perhaps another month, and I don't plan to ride out on the road until I get the brace off. So hopefully I'll be riding for real in late June or early July.

In the meantime, small steps, grasshopper.

I guess this means my training for the 2010 Death Ride has officially begun :)

Back to the rat race :)

2009-05-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

I was off work for an entire month after my bike crash, and started up again this week.

Look what was awaiting me on my office door Monday morning!

Do I have great co-workers or what??

And look what was awaiting me inside my office ...
AACK!

Only kidding, I'll get to it all in due time.

It's good to be back.

April, my month that wasn't

2009-04-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

(photo of Emmaline by Sarah)

First of all, I want to thank everyone for their well-wishes after my bike crash. I received lots of cards and some awesome gifts in the mail, and lots of emails and PMs on TE and messages on Facebook. Thank you all so very much. I cannot begin to tell you how moved and grateful I am.

I think I gained a pound or two on Tim-Tams from Australia, courtesy of Leslie. Those things are so good they are evil, and should be categorized as banned substances.

And Sarah knitted for me the most adorable doll, wearing a cycling jersey-like sweater with back pockets. Inside one of the back pockets is a little green jewel shaped like a turtle – yep, it’s the infamous Amici Veloci inner tortoise! And the front of the jersey has a heart, reminiscent of the Amici Veloci design. I named her Emmaline. She has maaaagical powers. ;)

My crash was one month ago Tuesday. I find it hard to believe its been an entire month now, it certainly doesn’t seem that long, April simply flew by.

I think I’m going to call April 2009 "the month that wasn’t". :p

I still don’t remember a thing about the crash, nor about an hour or so beforehand. I don't even remember being taken by ambulance to the clearing at a trailhead in Pt. Reyes National Park, nor being flown from there by helicopter to Santa Rosa Memorial hospital.

Lee and I actually drove out to the site of my crash (on Sir Francis Drake Blvd near the eastern edge of Pt. Reyes National Park) a week ago Sunday. Nope, nothing, it was like I had never been there. It was a moderately steep downhill section and the road was fairly bumpy there. At the time of day I passed through it last month, it was partly shaded by trees, somewhat speckled, so the irregularities in the road were probably harder to see. But to be honest I’ve ridden over worse pavement! So no great revelations, I’m still assuming I must have hit a pothole badly, or maybe some pavement came loose as I went over it, or I rolled over something that wasn’t pavement. Perhaps I was distracted by something (darn those shiny objects!), but since no-one was riding with me at that moment, it’ll just be one of life’s little mysteries.

I was at a team get-together last Saturday. I was speaking with one of the assistant coaches who told me that day he was riding with me a ways before the accident. We were carrying on a conversation in which I told him about my work. I even met his wife, who is a park ranger in the national park we were riding through and who was on duty at the time and stopped to say hello. It weirds me out a bit that I remember absolutely none of that!

Anyhow, enough of that. Although I naturally wonder how my crash occurred, and what I could have done to avoid it, I’m actually very glad that I don’t remember the crash or the immediate aftermath. One less bit of baggage for me!

I was in the hospital for four days, two days in the ICU and two days in a regular room. I remember very little of those first couple of days, and the next couple of days, well, I guess they weren’t all that memorable.

I only found out a couple of weeks ago that, for the first day or two, there were some real concerns about my recovery! I had hit my head very hard on the pavement (yep, I was wearing a helmet) and, although I was more or less conscious, I wasn’t really “there”, and they had no good way of knowing how much of my mental acuity would return. I’m told the folks in the ICU were relieved when I got on the phone with my boss on Monday morning and described to him, in reasonably good detail, the patent papers that were due that day that he had to file in my absence (I work as a patent agent). I still think that’s pretty funny, actually – that they revised my prognosis on account of my recall of my patent docket.

My husband Lee was great through all this. He admits he was scared sh*tless those first couple of days, but everyone I spoke to afterwards told me that he kept his head and was a real champ. He stayed at home at night while I was in the hospital, and he had a long drive to and from the hospital each day. He said that the drive, and being at home at night, really helped him keep it together. I cannot imagine what I put him through...

When I got home from the hospital Lee dragged our spare bed downstairs and into the living room, so I could watch TV if I wanted to, and so I wouldn’t need to use the stairs (we have a guest bath downstairs).

Lee took a couple of photos of me a day or two after I got out of the hospital – wow I looked like crap!! The right side of my face was badly scraped up and covered with scabs, yech. I slept a lot for the first couple of weeks, and yeah, surfed the web, but that’s about it.

I’m doing MUCH better now, particularly over the last week or so. I’ve been getting out and seeing friends and basically getting re-acquainted with the world.

My shoulder is almost all healed, it still doesn’t have the complete range of motion back, but it’s close. My face is pretty well healed up and I had the last few stitches removed a couple of days ago. I’ll probably wind up with a bit of scarring on the side of my face near the eye socket, but nothing dramatic – just a small momento.

I still have a bit of double vision, but it’s still going away. I had slightly damaged my fourth cranial nerve, which controls the muscle that points my right eye downward diagonally towards my nose. That particular nerve damages easily, it is a common injury among cyclists, motorcyclists, boxers(!) and others who experience any sort of trauma to the side of the head. When it’s damaged the muscle can’t move the right eye in concert with the left very well, especially if one is looking level or downward (interestingly, I almost never got DV while looking upwards). I saw my opthamologist last week and he says its recovering at a good pace and he thinks it should be pretty well healed within a month. I actually experience DV nowadays mainly in the morning when I wake up, and at night when I’m tired; my vision is generally fine for the rest of the day.

My back – eh, I don’t really know yet. I had a mild compression fracture of the T7 vertebra, and a compression fracture supposedly takes a long time to heal (weeks to months). I’ll be seeing the neuro dr. in a couple of weeks to get some new x-rays taken so he can gauge its recovery. Thankfully, my back has not been painful at all, the worst is that it gets a bit uncomfortable when I’ve been sitting or standing a lot, but that goes away very quickly if I lay down for a few minutes. I last saw the neuro dr a few weeks ago and he said the prognosis for my recovery was very good, and he thought at the time that surgery wasn’t needed. I have no idea yet if I’ll have any sort of chronic back problems coming from this, but time will tell.

I’m wearing that stylin’ brace practically all the time, and I'm relieved to report that no-one has inflicted their Inner Picasso on it yet.

My memory is back to normal, more or less. The doctors had warned Lee that I might be a bit forgetful for the first couple of months, and they were right. I have a bit of trouble remembering names of people I don’t deal with often, names of streets that I don’t frequent, directions to places I don’t go often, that sort of thing –- things that I used to have much less trouble remembering. But that should improve with time. I hope. :D

I’ve been off work ever since the accident and I start back again this coming Monday, although I’ve made a few very brief cameo appearances over the past couple of weeks. Luckily for my boss, I remember my work pretty darn well (although I did have a bit of trouble remembering where on our network I had saved a computer file he was trying to find. Heh heh )

And now, for the really important stuff. I still have no idea when I’ll be biking again, but hopefully it’ll be in a couple of months. And I was getting so strong, darnit!! But I guess I’ll be starting more or less from scratch. Eh, small steps, grasshopper.

And who knows, perhaps I’ll give the Death Ride another try next year.

My bike & I are doing well :)

2009-04-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

LeeBob & I took my Lynskey over to wheelgirl in Berkeley yesterday (Sunday) to get it checked out after my crash.

(FWIW, wheelgirl just moved to the corner of San Pablo Ave & Camelia St. in Berkeley, near REI & Gilman St. )

The Lynskey is in remarkably good shape. We were joking over the fact that I took the brunt of the fall to save my bike (heh, yeah, I meant to do that).

The Lynskey R230 frame has replaceable rear derailleur hanger which is a nice feature since mine will need to be replaced - much better than repairing the entire frame, that's for sure! - and a couple of spokes may need to be replaced on the rear wheel, which will need to be re-trued. And the cable cover on the rear der has to be replaced. The Brooks Team Pro saddle is a bit scuffed up on the right back side but that's mainly just cosmetic, and can be fixed w a good leather polish/protectant.

Apart from that though, not much else! The XTR rear derailleur is a bit scuffed up and Kurt (mechanic extraordinaire) will double-check it once the der hanger is replaced, but apart from that everything else (including the frame, the fork and seatpost) have a clean bill of health.

The bike came through this much better than did I. :D

As for me - I'm resting up, not rushing anything. I still have some double vision which is a real PITA, but that is getting better gradually. I'm under an opthamologist's care, no worries. My right shoulder is still a bit achey but it's on the upswing. My back is healing fine, no problems as far as I can tell. I'm off work for another couple of weeks. My return to biking will be sometime after that, I suppose. :p

I'm still wearing my removable vest-like brace most of the time. I hum the "I Am Ironman" tune to myself when I wear it. (If you saw the movie with Robert Downey Jr. you'd know where I'm coming from :D ) I'm halfway tempted to get a plastic facetted bowl to wear on the front to complete the Ironman look, but so far I have resisted the urge...

I'm getting so envious reading about other peoples' rides though! Especially all of the great rides my TNT Death Ride (ex-)teammates are going on. Oh well, them's the breaks.

And it's still sinking in that my Big Plan for the summer -- riding All Five Passes of the Death Ride -- won't be coming to fruition. I hate to admit that I put so much of my psyche into this one ride!

But hey, there are plenty of other rides. I hope to be ready for the Crater Lake Century in Southern OR in mid-Aug, or at least be able to ride a good part of it. The double century the weekend before my 50th birthday (the Solvang Autumn DC in Oct.) is in the big fat "perhaps" column; I was hoping to shoot for that if I managed the DR. My new motto nowadays is "vee shall see". :^)

Woo hoo, Brian & Roberta!

2009-04-09T04:37:00.000-07:00

Heere's Brian, a Death Ride TNT team member and last years' SF area LLS Man of the Year, chatting it up with Roberta Gonzales of Ch. 5, a candidate for this years' SF area LLS Woman of the Year.

More info about the LLS Man & Woman of the Year is here.

And here's more about the SF Bay Area LLS Man & Woman of the Year campaign.

Cheers, you all!

Thank you so much Susan & Fatty!!

2009-04-05T11:27:00.001-07:00

A couple of months ago Elden Nelson, aka Fat Cyclist, posted on his blog that his fabulous wife Susan was making wonderful bracelets and those who donated X dollars to his Livestrong fundraiser might get in line to get one.

Well being a big fan of Fatty & of Susan I was totally in on that! They are freakin' lovely bracelets, and my cheers and support go to Susan, as well as my good pal Cyndi, who I posted about a couple of weeks back.

Now of course Susan could only make these when she was up to it, so I more-or-less got it out of my head, hoping that maybe I'd receive one by mid-July in time to wear on the Markleeville Death Ride, which I've been training for with TNT.

Well, as Alanis would say, Isn't it ironic? (dontcha think)

Much to my surprise, my own beautiful, wonderful bracelet arrived in the mail for me this week, while I was still in the hospital recuperating from my crash last Saturday. The crash that's gonna keep me from riding the Death Ride after all. Dammit! :p

and Yay!!! The bracelet is beautiful, and means so much to me.

(hee hee, ignore the road rash, it'll go away soon enough..)

Waaay cooler than a yellow wristband, indeed! Win Susan! Win Cyndi!

I'm going to wear it all the time (within reason of course).

I'll wear it during my recuperation over the next few weeks, on my first tentative pedals back on the bike (probably on the trainer), and my baby steps back on the Road. And I'll of course wear it on my first big event, possibly the Crater Lake Century in mid-August; hopefully I'll be back up to snuff by then. And Susan and Fatty and Cyndi will be there every step of the way. :)

Thanks for motivating me a little bit more. Susan and Fatty totally rock!! And Cyndi too. :)

Hugs, - Jo

I'm off the bike for a while :(

2009-04-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

Hi all -

I had a crash in the last few miles of my DR Training Ride last Saturday, so I'll be off the bike for at least another few weeks. I'll elaborate a bit more, later. In the meantime, more info is here:

Thread on bikeforums

Thread on Team Estrogen

Thanks so much for all the well-wishes!

- Jo.

My midlife crisis has arrived!

2009-03-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

You hear about people entering their (ahem) middle years and doing crazy things like having liposuction, taking up parachuting, tooling around in fancy sports cars, getting a girlfriend or a boyfriend half their age, that sort of thing.

Well, to commemorate my midlife crisis, I bought a bike.

Not just any bike mind you, a titanium-framed beauty, custom built for meeee by Lynskey Performance Designs in Tennessee.

Why a Lynskey? I thought for a while that my next bike was going to be a Ti frame, so I researched some of the well-known Ti builders – Seven, Moots, IF, Serotta, Merlin, Spectrum, Litespeed, Lynskey, just to name a few.

I then checked out some local dealers, and I really hit it off with Elizabeth and Kurt at wheelgirl on 4th St. in Berkeley, who are Lynskey dealers.

The Lynskey family originally owned Litespeed, but then sold the business and retired. A few years later they came back and started producing Ti frames under their own name. One of the things that appealed to me about Lynskey was that I was able to get a frame built to my measurements using one of their stock tubesets - what they call a "Houseblend Custom" - for not a whole lot more than the cost of an off the shelf Ti frame (plus, as luck would have it, they had a great sale going at the time on their Houseblend Customs, which sealed the deal for me).

Elizabeth & Kurt at wheelgirl were great to work with. They spent a lot of time talking to me about what I like about my current bikes, and what I would like from this bike. I told them I was looking for a comfortable, moderately lightweight bike for long, hilly rides, especially the Death Ride. I wanted a fairly relaxed position, not too bent over but not too upright either. I wanted lots of gears – definitely a triple, and probably a wide-range cassette as well. And, retrogrouch that I am, I wanted bar-end shifters and a Brooks leather saddle. They didn't bat an eye over my bizzaro bar-end shifter request, they understood my desire for low gears (although hopefully by the time of the Death Ride I won't need them, it's still nice to have a bailout or two), they recognized that I'm not a racer wannabe by any stretch of the imagination but that I still wanted a great ride. They got me. :^)

I told them I really liked the fit of my Rivendell, so they set it up on a trainer and looked at my position on the bike, and they agreed it was a great set-up for me. They measured my frame and my position on it in order to duplicate my position on the Lynskey R230 Houseblend frame. We discussed components at length (Kurt is a walking component encyclopedia!), figuring out what set up would work best for me. Then Elizabeth wrote everything up and sent the information off to Lynskey. After only a couple of weeks Lynskey sent back a detailed plan which Elizabeth & Kurt & I went over. I gave my final approval for the frame specs at the end of January, and Elizabeth placed the orders for the rest of the components.

And then I waited, keeping my fingers & toes crossed that it would be finished by early May to give me a couple of months before the Death Ride.

But much to my delight, Kurt called me in mid-March. My bike was already assembled & ready for pick-up!

And I’m thrilled to say that Lynskey and wheelgirl totally delivered. I love this bike!

The first thing I noticed was how light it is compared to my Riv, even though I didn’t go weight-weenie with the components. It was built up with a mostly Ultegra groupset, with the exception of an XTR rear derailleur and an IRD wide-range 10 speed 11-32 cassette. It has Dura-Ace 10 sp bar end shifters, and Nitto Noodle handlebars. And of course, a Brooks leather saddle, although it’s Ti-railed so it’s not as much of a brick as it could have been. And Elizabeth & Kurt built up a lovely set of wheels, with pretty White Industries H2 hubs laced with Sapim spokes to Velocity Aerohead rims – reasonably lightweight and very sturdy. The bike weighs in at about 18.5 lbs, despite some of the heavier components, which is a very big difference in comparison to my almost 23 lb Riv. I want to giggle every time I pick it up.

The other thing that really struck me was how effortless it was to get up to and maintain speed on the Lynskey. I’m finding I’m almost always in the big ring on the flats, while on my Riv I’d usually be in my middle ring.

And it’s stunning. I opted to leave the frame unpainted with a brushed finish. Instead of decals, the Lynskey logos are etched into the titanium frame. I love how the etched decals look, they’re very subtle. I'm glad I went with the silver Ultegra components rather than the gray Ultegra SL, the sliver looks nice with the Ti finish. I’ve lowered the stack height by one 10 mm spacer since these pictures were taken, and I might lower it a bit more over time. Once I have the stack height set, I might liven the palette up a bit and put a purple spacer in amdist the black ones, or wrap the bars with purple tape, in honor of TNT. Or, maybe I’ll leave it as is.

Here are a few photos, and more are here.

I took a couple of short test rides on the Alameda Creek Trail and Coyote Hills park, including my nemesis hill which is about 1/2 mile with much of it on the order of a 8-13% grade (many call it Nike Hill because it's the site of a cold war-era Nike missle control center; I call it nemesis because back when I first started riding it took me several tries before I could finally make it all the way). Nowadays I can climb it just fine but it still involves some huffing & puffing. But on the Lynskey it was (almost) easy! Crazy.

And the bike is very comfy. After my first longish ride (over 30 miles) I noticed my arms were a bit achey and I realized they felt a little cramped. No problem, we had set up the bike with the maximum stack height so I simply removed one 10 mm spacer and it feels great now. And I feel very comfortable riding in and braking from the drops. I’ll vary the stack height some more until I hone in on the perfect height.

The big test came when I took it up & over Palomares Road a few times this weekend, a four mile climb averaging around 5% with some fairly steep bits. While I wish I could say the Lynskey magically transformed me into a speedy climber, alas, that’s not the case – I’m still pretty pokey on the hills. But a bit less so!

The rest of course is up to me. Or, as a friend put it, "the most important part of the bike is the nut that holds down the seat". :^)

But at least the Lynskey will help this nut get up the hills a bit easier. And with style.

LT testing at Endurance PTC

2009-03-08T09:42:00.000-07:00

On Saturday some teammates & I went for body composition analysis and lactate threshold testing at Endurance Performance Training Center in San Francisco.

We started out with a body composition analysis, where we stood on a scale-like contraption which used electrical impedance to determine the amounts of lean body mass and body fat we're carrying (or, in my case, lugging) about.

I found out that my body fat percentage is 33.9. Lovely. Now, the good news is, my muscle mass is appropriate for my height, so at least I'm doing something right. I just need to loose the flab ... surprise.

After that exercise in self-loathing, we hooked our bikes onto Computrainers and rode a long steady state interval, where the initial intensity was set at 50 watts and was increased by 30 watts every 4 minutes. Near the end of every four minutes, a vampire disguised as a trainer came to draw a bit of blood from our earlobes to test for the amount of lacate. It was pretty easy going at first but at the intensity approached 200 watts the pedalling got tough! I got 230 watts but I cried uncle soon after and I didn't complete the full four minutes, so my last reading was at 200 watts.

Then one of the trainers took us through a brief on-bike seminar on pedaling technique. He showed us the importance of a smooth, round pedal stroke, and how to isolate and work on the various parts of the stroke. After some one-legged drills he also showed us how to improve our pedalling techinque while standing.

After a brief break to freshen up, we then had a discussion about our test results and how we can use them for our own training.

All in all a fun and worthwhile experience! I'm going to do this again in a few months to see what effect the Death Ride training had on my LT and my body composition.

My friend Cyndi

2009-03-02T08:33:00.000-08:00

I whine about how "tough" a bike ride is, but this is tough. Strong work, Cyndi!

Tough ride!

2009-03-01T18:36:00.000-08:00

Our 3rd TNT DR training ride was pretty hard. Evidently it was re-routed from the original route on account of some road construction.

We started out from Sonoma and headed up Trinity Grade, then went through Saint Helena and up Spring Mountain Road. Trinity Grade and Spring Mountain are both steep climbs, with sustained grades on the order of 12-15% or more. Many of us (including me!) had to walk a bit up Spring Mtn. But we'll get stronger as the season progresses.

View Larger Map

I hit a very low ebb at around mile 45 as we were riding on Route 12 back to Sonoma in a headwind. I had about had enough by then! One of our coaches, Paul, hung back with a couple of us slowpokes and towed us back through the wind. My hero! Somehow I managed to get past that low point and I felt a lot better once we got out of the brunt of the wind, so I managed to finish fairly strong.

It was about 60 miles and about 4800 ft of climbing, with much of the climbing on grades in the double-digits. Woot!

I'm really pleased with how I did, all in all.

DR Team buddy ride - Woodside / OLH

2009-02-22T18:10:00.000-08:00

Saturday I joined the San Francisco DR team's buddy ride, which started from Cañada Road at Rt. 92 and went through Woodside, Los Altos, Portola Valley, up Old La Honda Rd and down Rt. 84, back through Woodside and Cañada Road.

View Larger Map

I bonked on the climb up OLH. So embarrassing, you'd think by now I'd know when and how much to eat on a ride. Gahhh. I need to start using Spiz again ...

It was about 48 miles and 3700 ft of climbing (with a couple of bonus miles from overshooting a turn mis-marked on the route sheet).

Better to feel good than to look good

2009-02-15T10:08:00.000-08:00

... or, my second TNT Death Ride team ride.

Lee and I drove up to St. Helena very early yesterday morning for my second DR training ride with the Redwood/Wine Country group. Guests were allowed on this ride, but Lee was going to play it by ear. If the weather looked too yuck he was planning to do a short ride on his own, or just hang out in St. Helena until we returned.

Once we arrived at the start area we found the weather forecasts were pretty much accurate. Rainy & cold. Lee decided to not join in on the fun. Instead, he wisely took Ken, our SAG captain, up on his offer offer to join him in the warm & dry SAG truck.

I had layered on the wool and broke out my trusty Castelli rain jacket, which is usually too warm to wear during the day (although it's great on my early morning commute rides). For maximum dork effect I also wore one of those Saran bowl covers (the ones that look like shower caps) over my helmet. I suppose I'm the anti-Fernando, I always think it's better to feel good than to look good (and if you saw my closet you would agree). Ken was taking photos so if I come across a picture of me with the Saran bowl cover on my helmet I'll be sure to post it for everyone's amusement. Even with all that wool I was very cold as we started out. I was hoping I'd warm up once we started climbing.

We HTFU'd and headed out in the rain towards the Silverado Trail. There was one mishap early on when one of the guys rolled over something slippery and went down. He was a bit shaken up but got it back together quickly and soldiered on.

View Larger Map

After a few miles we regrouped at the intersection of the Silverado Trail and Rt. 128 (Sage Canyon Road). We were going to have a time trial to determine how we would be grouped for subsequent rides. I could have told the coaches they could put me in the slow-but-steady group, but, whatever. We all started out together and I fell off the back almost immediately. I stayed fairly close to a couple of guys up ahead of me, they were my rabbits. I would almost catch up to them when the grade kicked up over 10% thanks to my super-low gears, but when the grade was under 8% they were able to pull well ahead of me again. Oh well. At least I was warm by then, almost too warm. We all continued up Rt. 128 for nearly 8 miles, until just before the turnoff to Chiles Valley Road where we all regrouped, and Ken & Lee were taking down our times.

We all set off again and headed along Chiles-Pope Valley Road. The faster folks vanished in no time, and I was in a nice group going at a manageable pace so life was good. The rain backed off some although the roads were wet so it really didn't matter whether it was raining or not (I had thought about bringing my Romulus with fenders but since I assumed on one else would have fenders it seemed sort of pointless). It was relaxing watching the arcs of spray come off of everyone's rear wheels. And the scenery was lovely, green hills with mustard flowers everywhere. I love riding up in Napa, even in the rain.

We soon reached Ink Grade, a four mile climb. I was getting tired so right off the bat I kicked it into my "great-granny" gear and spun on up at a snail's pace. Surprising to me, I wasn't alone on this climb. A guy who was doing his first ride in months(!!) and so wasn't in shape yet had to stop a few times along the way, so I would gradually catch up to him. This was one helluva ride to do after you haven't been riding for a while, Tony, so kudos! Will, one of our mentors, stayed with us to keep us company. I picked on Will mercilessly and bless his masochistic heart I think he enjoyed it. :)

Ink Grade was actually a nice climb and it was almost pleasant in the misty cold and damp. Considering the last time I did that climb it was hideously hot out, this was a nice change. After what felt like hours we finally reached the top where the SAG guys and a surprising number of riders were gathered. Some of the riders looked really cold so I'm glad they headed out shortly after our arrival.

Will, Tony & I headed off again soon after, at which point the heavens poured down upon us. On a downhill. Lovely. By then it was getting seriously cold and I was ever so grateful for all the wool and the excellent rain jacket I was wearing. One of the coaches, Theresa, waited up for us at a confusing point on the route sheet to make sure we were headed in the right direction down Howell Mtn Road. She's my hero. So the four of us continued down Howell Mtn, usually a pretty good descent (albeit bumpy) but with all the rain it was a bit dicey. But we made it fine and before long we were back to the start in St. Helena, where the rest of the team was packing up, trying to dry off, and giving us high fives. Go team.

All in all, it was a good ride and an epic Personal Growth Experience. :D My Garmin (uploaded to Sportracks) showed we rode a bit under 40 miles with about 2800 ft of climbing.

Mel, Amy, Lee and I then headed off to Tra Vigne Pizzeria for warm minestrone soup (ahhhh) and great pizza, washed down with some well-earned beers.

The first TNT ride

2009-02-07T16:19:00.000-08:00

The first TNT Death Ride team ride was short & fun. We met up at the Mill Valley community center where we first had some brief talks and demos on riding in groups, and on braking & descending skills, and they checked to make sure our bikes were in decent working order.

Then we headed out on the Paradise Loop which took us around Tiburon & Corte Madera back to Mill Valley. I hooked up with some women from the SF group (Gabrielle, Lori & Elizabeth) and we had a really pleasant ride. From Mill Valley to Tiburon we followed much of the multi-use trail and there was a TNT group of runners heading in the opposite direction. Lots of "go teams" were exchanged, and big cheers as we passed their rest stops. That was fun! Past Corte Madera, Gabrielle took us on a bit of a shortcut which took us up to Camino Alto via some quiet back roads. We had a deer cross the road and jump a fence (more like scramble over it) maybe a dozen feet ahead of us, quite the sight!

The ride was only about 22 miles but it was nice to get out & meet the group. As coach Sarah put it later, "This was sort of a lull you into a false sense of security ride." She's a riot sometimes, that one.

Afterwards many of us met up at Maria Maria for eats & conversation (a few of us partook of their excellent margaritas as well).

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

2009-02-01T21:03:00.000-08:00

This is a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt which kind of sums up how I feel about the Death Ride. I might need to tattoo it on my wrist or something. :)

Today I rode up Mt. Hamilton with Mel & Amy. I was surprised to find I was feeling pretty good for the most part, and I kept it in the middle ring for longer than I think I ever had before (granted, I have a touring triple so my middle ring is only a 36, but still). Not that I was going any faster than normal -- Mel and Amy left me in a cloud of dust, as usual -- but I didn't seem to tire out as quickly as I normally would. Nice!

Ah, and then I reached the "5 miles to the observatory" sign. That's where the road kicks up a little bit more and there are a lot of switchbacks. And the observatory looks so close it seems you can reach out & touch it. Especially today, it was gloriously clear out. And that's where I always seem to peter out. I'm sure a big part of it is psychological, but even if so, my body wastes no time in joining in. Today was no exception, it didn't take long at all for my legs & back to start complaining loudly, and switching down to my small ring didn't really help. But I managed to slog it out the remaining few miles, although I did need to stop & rest a lot.

I eventually made it, but I couldn't help but think when I reached the observatory that I'd have to complete a climb sort of like this one four more times to finish the Death Ride. And in considerably less time. Ack.

Hopefully I'll look back at this five months from now and marvel at how far I progressed over that time. Still, Sarah & Michael (my Death Ride coaches) have their work cut out for them. :D

TNT kickoff - 160 days to the Death Ride

2009-01-31T13:59:00.000-08:00

We had our TNT kickoff meeting this morning at the UC Berkeley campus. I hadn't been on campus for over a dozen years so I got a bit nostalgic as I hunted down a parking place.

The kickoff meeting was interesting and fun, and I got to meet many of the people on our Death Ride team. I've already forgotten most of their names but I'm sure over the ensuing weeks they will be my New Best Friends. Particularly the SAG drivers.

I received some Special Recognition in our DR team break-out meeting for being the second leading fundraiser so far. That annoyingly overachieving sandbagger Laurie was in first place. Grrr. But I got the cool TNT blinkie light while she picked out a mousepad. What a loser, chosing a mousepad over a blinkie light. I mean, really.

Our first team ride is next Saturday in ~~Novato~~ Mill Valley. Until then I'll be practicing my loud & perky "Go Team!"s.

Heh. TNT should take slogan and sekret handshake hints from Amici Veloci.

A lot to learn

2009-01-15T15:38:00.000-08:00

No, not me, the president-elect!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

President Goofus and President Gallant - Peer Pressers

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

The best laid plans (and all that rot)

2009-01-10T08:04:00.000-08:00

The New Year started off with Big Plans for me to get in the base miles before TnT training started up in early Feb. I was going to ride at least - at least, mind you! - two mornings a week my usual 10-15 mile loop before work, with commutes to work (30 miles RT) as circumstances allowed, and longer rides on the weekend, building back up to 50 miles or so by the end of the month.

So naturally, on Jan 2nd I came down with the Head Cold from Hell.
And I haven't done squat for the last week.

I'm finally over it, sort of. We'll see how decrepit(er) I've become on my ride tomorrow.

Not denied ! :)

2008-12-30T20:17:00.000-08:00

Yay - I went to give blood today & this time my hematocrit was high enough.

And so, I earned my place in this world for at least one more day. :^)

Caught on YouTube!

2008-12-22T19:14:00.000-08:00

My friend Daniel (aka Lanceoldstrong) emailed me today with a surprising discovery: a video of me hauling my lardbutt up Sierra Road before Stage 3 of the Tour of California a couple of years ago!

What style, what strength, what panache! uh, right.

I wonder if the caption in Japanese on the YouTube page reads "fat slow American lumbering up hill".

Denied! :(

2008-12-17T21:16:00.000-08:00

I received an email yesterday from the Blood Centers of the Pacific informing me that 8 weeks passed since my last donation and I was eligible to donate again.

After work I dutifully trooped over to the nearby Redwood City donation center. I had read about their new ALYX system which collects two units of red cells at once from donors, and I was keen to give it a try. Double karma points!

In order to donate a double supply of red cells, a donor has to weigh at least 150 lbs (not a problem for me at the moment!) and have a hematocrit of at least 40. For a standard blood donation, the hematocrit has to be at least 38.

Mine was 36. Crud!!

So I'll start popping the One-A-Days again, and try again in a couple of weeks.

Or in other words, "Ahhhl be bahhk"

Am I freakin' NUTZ?!? (or, my goal for 2009)

2008-12-15T10:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, I suppose I am. :^)

Starting in early February, I'll be training for the Death Ride with Team in Training. Yes, you read it right, The Death Ride. That's what it's called. It's also known as the Tour of the California Alps, but somehow Death Ride seems more apropos. We're talking 15,000 feet of climbing on five passes over 129 miles. At altitude. Booyah.

The structured TnT training program is just what I need. My friend Sarah (aka maillotpois) will be one of the coaches of our group, and I'm really looking forward to working with her. She's wonderfully upbeat and a great motivator.

So, my goal for 2009 is to complete all five freakin' passes of the Death Ride on July 11. Everything else I accomplish, cycling-wise, will be incidental to that.

But of course I'll be sharing all my Adventures in Training here with you, my dear readers!

And just so you know, I'll be hitting up friends, family and other willing parties for donations towards my fundraising goal for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society - a very fine organization and an excellent cause. :^)

And what after mid-July?

Crater Lake would be nice ... but, first things first.

Fat & Slow

2008-11-19T07:48:00.001-08:00

... and doing something about it.

Gahhh. I rode with some friends up Mt. Hamliton on Saturday and I was simply awful. Slow, lethargic, so much so that I couldn't even reach the freakin' summit. Well, to be more precise, I didn't want to reach the freakin' summit. I was tired!

Then I got on the scale the next day. 160 pounds - double gahhhh.

I'm tired of being the last one up the climbs all the time. It's time to do something about it.

I dug out my long distance cycling book and my RBR book and did some web surfing, and it's becoming apparent that I need to build up my strength this winter, especially my leg strength.

So, I'm starting a resistance training program. I came across a nifty site called SparkPeople which has a good exercise database, and together with my books and web searches I set up a training plan that hopefully I can stick to & will show some results. I'm not using any weights at the moment, but maybe at some point I'll incorporate light dumbells.

SparkPeople also has a food tracking function similar to Weight Watchers online. I'm going to use this to keep track of what I eat. Maybe I can get under 150 lbs once and for all -- a girl can hope.

Boo hiss, California!

2008-11-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

Keith Olberman said it much better than I - read (or better yet, listen) to what he had to say here.

Here's an excerpt:
If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want — a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Back home

2008-11-05T08:37:00.000-08:00

Lee & I are back home after a week in Massachusetts visiting with family and attending my niece's wedding.

Dang, it's beautiful out there. Too bad they have winter. :^)

My niece Nicole's wedding was lovely. It was held at Jiminy Peak in the Berkshires. The ceremony was a combination of Catholic and Jewish traditions - Nicole's husband Michael is Jewish. I gave a reading (since I'm Nikki's godmother). I'm happy to report I didn't trip on my high heels going up and back from the chuppa.

I was thrilled to finally meet Michael, he's a sweetheart. Best wishes and mazel tov to the couple!

And it was great to be re-acquainted with the family after a long separation. Stay in touch now guys, y'hear???

SFR Winters 200K in the books

2008-10-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I rode the SF Randonneurs 200K from Hercules to Winters & back, with V and Mel.

It rained overnight and more rain was predicted. I thought of bringing Pokey w fenders but I hadn't ridden him in ages & I had no time this week to check him out. So Dusty it was. Turns out we were sprinkled on only a little and the wet roads dried out by late morning. I was awfully grubby though, and Dusty is a mess. So it goes.

I had a great day. I was feeling very good and I (almost) never had those negative thoughts that plague me on long rides. Many of the roads we followed I'd ridden on at one time or another, so it was nice to go though sort of familiar territory. I did lots of rides with Sarah & Bill out this way, and they were in my thoughts a lot but luckily, SK's singing wasn't. We even went along much of the same route SK and I rode for the Jelly Belly ride, a training ride we volunteered to help lead many moons ago (which was memorable in an oh-my-gawd-can-you-believe-that sort of way ...).

It was one of those days when big ominous rain clouds would pass overhead but then be gone before they actually dumped on us. When the sun came out it was clear as glass, and the many vineyards we passed were starting to develop their fall colors. The repaved Wooden Valley Road was an absolute joy. Cruising along Wooden Valley with a big silly grin on my face, I couldn't help but marvel at how fortunate I am to be a cyclist living in the Bay Area.

The only big blah was after the penultimate checkpoint, when we were hit with the brunt of the afternoon post-storm wind as we were heading along the Carquinez Straight. Lake Herman Road was an absolute bear - generally uphill and full face into the wind. Gaaaaah. After the Lake Herman torture fest the four of us (me, Mel, V and Andrew) kindof-sortof stuck together and managed a paceline of sorts before the bridge thru Vallejo and after the bridge thru Rodeo.

But we finished, and all was well. I was DFL but so what, I felt great and it wasn't all that late - at least I didn't need the lights I brought :D

I'm really happy that I finally seem to be getting into the long distance groove. Three down!

East Bay 200K

2008-09-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

My other permanent route, the East Bay 200K, was approved back in May.

I made a couple of changes to the route over time, the most significant one between Martinez and Lafayette. After Martinez the route now goes back down Alhambra Valley Road then heads southeast on Reliez Valley Road back to Pleasant Hill Rd. RVR is a nice road, infinitely more pleasant than Taylor Blvd, although there is that stinker of a hill just before the end. So it goes. At least it's mostly flat or slightly downhill after that. Sort of.

The major climbs are Calaveras Rd, Palomares Rd, Redwood/Pinehurst/Canyon Rds, Alhambra Valley Rd (Pig Farm Hill) & Reliez Valley Rd, for a total elevation gain of about 7000 ft.

Here's the route on Bikely (click here for the more detailed map):

East Bay 200K RUSA permanent

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

South Bay 215K

2008-09-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

My South Bay 215K permanent was just approved by RUSA.

Update 10/13: Due to road construction and repaving on Silver Creek Valley Rd (SCVR) between miles 26-30, I strongly recommend that riders use the multiuse trail that runs alongside SCVR. This multiuse trail - some may call it a sidewalk :^) - is known as the Silver Creek Trail. By all indications bikes are perfectly legit on this trail; however, you will of course need to be aware and careful of pedestrians also using this trail.

Here's the route on Bikely (click here for the more detailed map):

South Bay 215K RUSA permanent

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Bikely's elevation chart shows about 3400 ft of climbing, but I'm listing it as 4000 ft in the RUSA database until someone actually rides the whole thing and proves otherwise. I'd rather overestimate than underestimate the amount of climbing.

At any rate, it should be considerably easier than my East Bay 200K. It might not be as scenic (although parts will still be very nice), but the roads will generally be good, with especially fun descents down ~~Silver Creek Valley Rd in San Jose~~* and Woodside Rd in Woodside.

*Update 10/5: I drove out to Silver Creek Valley Road today and yes, the surface of the entire length of the road has been ground away for resurfacing. Signs say that the estimated completion is July 2009. RATS!!! I'd rather not take the route over this road, particularly over the long downhill section. I thought I might need to re-route up Hassler Parkway, which is a stinker of a climb, but I may be able to use the Silver Creek Trail instead. I'll do a test ride this coming weekend and submit the change to the RUSA permanents coordinator for approval.

Ooops, I did it again

2008-09-21T21:55:00.000-07:00

Or, amazing was a difference 30 degrees makes.

Since it looks like my new "flat" permanent route won't be approved for another week or so, I went & rode my EB200K again today.

Unlike two weeks ago, when V & I rode it during a record heat wave (smart, we were not), this weekend was lovely with nice cool temps.

Two weeks ago when I reached the mile 75 point I was thinking to myself "50 more miles? No way!!" and promptly made a beeline for the Orinda BART station. But today when I reached that same spot I was thinking "50 more miles? No problem!"

And I felt remarkably good at the end. Now if I could only climb a bit faster ....

More later. I need some shuteye.

Another permanent route in the works

2008-09-09T08:35:00.000-07:00

(updated 9/9): I plotted out a new permanent route and submitted it to RUSA yesterday. The route will start out in Fremont near the BART station, head southward through San Jose and down to Gilroy, back up along the reservoirs and through Los Gatos, Saratoga, Portola Valley & Woodside, and then cross over the Dumbarton Bridge back to Fremont. It'll be about 134 miles (215K) and have less than 4000 ft of climbing. yay.

I plan to call it the South Bay 215K. Clever, huh?

Here's the route so far.

"Am I really that slow?"

2008-08-31T07:32:00.000-07:00

Someone posted a question to the Randon list recently asking about average speeds of randonneurs. There were some interesting replies, but this one by Dr Codfish was especially good.

(there was also this thread on speedwork which I thought was very useful)

I finally rode my own permanent route!

2008-08-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

For the last few months I've been feeling like Such a Loser because I hadn't managed to ride my own East Bay 200K permanent route.

Granted, it's a fairly demanding route with 7000 ft of climbing over about 125 miles, but still, it's my own route so you'd think I could eeke it out once in a while. :p

Well, yesterday I finally rode it, and I'm pleased as punch!

After last weekend's reasonably successful Crater Lake Century, I realized I had nothing planned for this weekend so I thought it was a good a time as any to give my perm another try. I didn't tell anyone my plans (except Lee of course, who drove me out to the start in Dublin) in case I ended up bailing again.

My goal for this ride was simply to finish sometime within the allotted 13 & 1/2 hours. So I employed the time-honored "start slow & taper off" approach. I never really pushed on any of the climbs - except for the last climb on Reliez Valley Road, at which point forward momentum was a bit hard to come by (gahhh) - and I stopped a lot for photo ops, snacks, water, chatting with people, & nature breaks. All told it took me 12 hrs and 20 minutes to complete the ride, which is kind of lame (especially compared to others who have ridden this permanent) but hey, it's a start. With all the stops I took I'm pretty confident I will smash that elusive 12 hour barrier next time. :)

The day started out chilly, damp and foggy. The weather report said it would get to the low 90's inland so I wore a sleeveless jersey & bolero. Calaveras Road was very misty on the way up to and at the False Summit:

At the bottom of Calaveras I stopped at the first checkpoint, Christies Donuts, where I scarfed a couple of glazed donut holes - yum - and refilled my bottles. The overcast fog finally burned off by the time I reached Niles Canyon Road.

Heading up Palomares Road I passed a tarantua - my first Big Fuzzy Spider Sighting of the season! - toodling purposefully up the road. I took a couple of photos (in telephoto mode, natch) and thought of putting my foot near to him for a comparison pic, but I didn't want to run the risk of a heart attack so early into the ride if he chose to change course and climb on my foot. If you're like me you like to prepare yourself before viewing a photo of a Big Fuzzy Spider, so here it is.

Continuing up Palomares I was passed by a big group of vintage cars. Much nicer than the usual noisy obnoxious groups of corvettes and beemers and whatnot that like to bomb through that canyon.

Recently someone marked the road with mile markings indicating the distance to the summit. While the 4 and 3 mile markings weren't really thrilling, I definitely perked up when I say the 1 and the 1/2 mile markings. And this one was most certainly welcome:

I headed down the fun descent on the other side (40+ mph, whee!) and into Castro Valley. I stopped at the Willow Park golf course near the bottom of Redwood Road to use the restroom and have a snack, and I got chatting with a woman wearing an Oakland Yellowjackets jersey. Seems the Bike Against the Odds was being held that day (I totally forgot about it!) and she had just finished her volunteering stint and was out on her own ride. I spent entirely too long hanging out there, but it was nice.

I called Lee just as I was about to head out from the golf course to let him know how I was doing. He told me that after he dropped me off in Dublin he went over to Danville and rode up Mt. Diablo. While he was up there he saw Veronica and they chatted for a bit. He went and told her that I was out riding my permanent!! OK, I didn't tell him it was a secret or anything. But V told him "tell her she better finish!". Aw crud. No more riding under the radar. :p

Redwood Road was lovely, as always.

And hilly, as always.

At Pinehurst Road I starting seeing signs and route markings for the Bike Against the Odds ride, and for much of the next 40 miles or so I was following the BATO century route.

I reached the third checkpoint in Moraga only about 25 minutes before the closing time. While by then I had completed most of the climbing, I still had the long hot slog on Alhambra Valley Road and up Pig Farm Hill. I was starting to wonder if I'd make it to the fourth checkpoint in Martinez in time.

Although I was running a bit low on time, that didn't keep me from stopping again at the Starbucks in Orinda for the restroom, more water, and a slice of banana nut bread. That Starbucks was the last opportunity to top off my bottles for quite a while & I wasn't about to pass on it. The nut bread, well, I just felt like it.

Continuing down Camino Pablo I passed the intersection of Bear Creek Road and saw there were tents set up for the BATO ride. One of the tents had a LunaChix banner so I stopped to see if CindySue was there. Turns out I missed her by only a half hour, bummer. Probably for the best because I couldn't spare too much time chatting.

Luckily, there was a light cool breeze blowing on Castro Ranch and Alhambra Valley Roads so it wasn't as hot out there as it could have been.

But as I was slogging along AVR I started having my first major case of the Dreaded Self-Doubt (Why on earth am I doing this? Who am I kidding? and so on). I was seriously doubting I'd make the Martinez checkpoint in time. I decided I would check my time when I reached the intersection of AVR and Reliez Valley Road. I'd have about 8 miles to Martinez from there, and if it looked like I wouldn't make it to Martinez by the 5 pm checkpoint closing time, I would simply continue on Reliez Valley Road and head into Lafayette and take BART back home. I tried not to think of what V would have to say if I bailed yet again. :p

But in the meantime I still had to tackle that stinker, Pig Farm Hill:

Oddly enough, Pig Farm Hill wasn't too bad, I simply geared way down and chugged. I heard one guy come up rapidly behind me and I assumed he would pass by, but as the grade reached its 12-16% max I heard him emitting death throes. Meanwhile, my super-low gears & I just continued upward, slowly but surely. At the top I caught my breath and chatted with the guy in the photo (who was well ahead of me all the way up the hill) while he waited for his friend (the aforementioned Death Throe Guy). Guy in the photo really liked my Keen cycling sandals so we were discussing the merits of Keens and super-low gears, and Death Throe Guy soon appeared.

I bid my farewells and bombed down AVR. When I reached the intersection I checked the time. It was only 4 pm! I had a whole hour to ride 8 flat miles to the checkpoint! Yee-hah, I was actually going to do this!!!

I reached the checkpoint at 4:22, and headed out again at 4:30. I called Lee to let him know I thought would finish between 7 and 7:30. I was relieved that I'd likely finish before sunset.

A couple of weeks ago I changed the remaining route slightly. Instead of a long, shadeless slog up the very busy Taylor Blvd, the route now went back on AVR to the intersection with Reliez Valley Road and continued on RVR until it joined up with Pleasant Hill Road leading into Lafayette. It's a much more scenic, shady, less travelled route. Except I forgot about that last stinker of a climb before reaching Pleasant Hill Road. It occurs around mile 105 and it's nearly as difficult as Pig Farm Hill. But, at least it's in the shade. And once that's over with, that's it for the big climbs. Yay.

I can understand why V says she hates that last slog down Danville Bld. After Reliez Valley Road, I was more than ready to be DONE, dammit. Although it's flat & shady, Danville Blvd was hard - my legs were yelling "uncle!" and I had to stop to take a couple of ibuprophen. At least when I reached Railroad Ave I knew I only had 10 miles or so to go, and the last 5 miles on San Ramon Road was a slight downhill grade which was a definite plus. I rolled into the Safeway at about 7:05 pm, a very happy camper indeed.

After I cleaned up a bit in the lovely Safeway bathroom, Lee and I had a celebratory dinner at Bosco's in Sunol. They make a mean linguine with Dungeness crab! I probably shouldn't have eaten the whole thing, but geeze it was goood. I then slept for a good ten hours.

This morning I was pretty creaky but I did a quick easy spin along the AC Trail out to the bay & back, and I felt fine after that.

And still mighty pleased with myself! :)

Crater Lake was wonderful!

2008-08-19T13:21:00.001-07:00

This past Saturday, Lee & I rode the Crater Lake Century up in Oregon, along with Sarah, Bill, Kim & Mel.

More pics be here

We stayed at Jo's Motel (of course) in Ft. Klamath, which was located very close to the start which was tres convenient. We were there from Thurs through Monday; Sarah, Bill, and Kim were there Friday thru Sunday, and Mel stayed with us in our cabin on Friday night.

It was freakin' hot up there from Thursday onward. I did a short ride from the motel just to Mazama Village on Friday morning, and it was already very warm when I started out at 9 am. It worked out to about 32 miles and about 1800 ft of climbing. I started out at about 4000 ft elevation and I wasn't sure how the altitude would affect me, but turns out it wasn't particularly noticeable. The heat on the other hand, yeck! I knew the heat would be an issue so I took it easy.

Saturday we were all up at O'Dark Stupid and rode over to the museum where the ride began.

We started out with the first wave of riders at 6:30 - we were all very concerned about the heat (it was supposed to get even hotter than it was on Friday) so we wanted to get off to an early start and get up to the rim as soon as possible. We opted not to follow the full century route, which included about 20 miles or so of meandering around flat cow pastures to take the total distance up to 100 miles. Instead, we followed the metric route which took us directly up to the rim. That was an excellent plan because it indeed did get very hot up there and it would have been even worse for us if we arrived up there the hour or so later if we followed the full century route.

The grades on this ride were never particularly steep. The ride up to the rim averaged around 4% (some stretches of 2% and some brief 6-8% bits). On Rim Drive itself, many of the climbs were in the 6-8% range but I don't think there was much if any at 10%. The climbs were fairly long, and as the day wore on and the sun moved overhead there was very little shade. But the descents were a lot of fun! :^)

My one and only criticism about this ride was the lack of a water stop before the long hot climb leading up to the Mt Scott trailhead. There's apparently no water available at the various picnic areas along Rim Drive, and I went through nearly all of my water & Cytomax on that climb. At the very end of that climb there was an out & back section which took us out to the Cloud Cap overlook. After consulting the route sheet I realized that it was just an out & back, so I asked riders coming back if there was water available at the turnaround. When I found out there wasn't, I was too low on water to risk it (and I was whupped from the heat) so I skipped that portion and continued directly on to the rest stop at the Phantom Ship overlook. I think the organizers weren't prepared for the extreme heat but it sounds like they will add another water stop next year.

The roads for the most part were very good to excellent. Even the "bad" part, on the descent after Cloud Cap, wasn't bad at all compared to many California roads!

LeeBob was waiting for us in a bit of shade on the last long climb up from Vidae Falls. He had signed up for the Metric century, which would involve going counterclockwise on Rim Drive only as far as the Phantom Ship stop. He was feeling very good on the climb up to the rim so he decided to accompany us on the full route clockwise around the rim, but after a few miles he decided he'd be better off backtracking and head counterclockwise until he met up with us and/or went as far as he felt like going. When he saw how long the climb was from the bottom of Vidae Falls towards Phantom Ship, he decided he'd gone far enough, thenkew. :^)

When we all regrouped we continued on to the Visitor Center for more water, then for the fun descent back down to Ft. Klamath. It was very warm on the descent and especially along the last 8 miles or so of flatlands back to the start. We took the opportunity to stop at the Ft. Klamath General Store (which I call the Deliverance Store) to feast on ice cream bars before we rode the remaining 2 miles to the Klamath Museum for barbecue and our second desert of pie and ice cream.

It was still oppressively hot in the shade on the museum grounds so Lee took the cue from some others and practically submerged himself in the ice-cold stream running through the park. Happily, he has yet to show signs of hepatitis or bubonic plague or any other maladies that may have been lurking in that stream. :p Most of the rest of us were content with soaking our feet, which helped a lot.

Sarah on the other hand preferred to make good use of a buff soaked in ice-cold drinking water, embracing her inner Amish maiden.

The elevation gain fell way short of the advertised 7500 feet according to their Topo map. My CicloSport showed about 6100 feet, but I cut out a bit of climbing from bypassing the out & back to Cloud Cap. I'm very happy with how I did - I took it very easy on the climbs since I knew the heat would likely be a big problem for me if I didn't. So although I took it very slow, I survived, and enjoyed it immensely! :^)

This was a really great ride, and I'd love to do it again.

A lovely day out

2008-08-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went on a ride that was pretty much perfect.

I slept very late, and between that and lazing around watching the Olympics we had tivo'd the night before, I didn't get out until nearly noontime. It was pretty warm out by then but I figured a bit of heat acclimation would be Good For Me.

I took my usual route from home along the Alameda Creek Trail out to Niles Canyon Rd and up Palomares Rd. On account of the heat, I took it really easy on that climb, spending lots of quality time in my small chainring. Turns out I took 36 minutes, not great, but then again only a minute more than this past Thursday when I was pushing it some and ran out of gas at the steeper one-lane section. And this time I spun and felt fine all the way up. So there.

When I reached the other side of Palomares I was still feeling very good so I continued along the DMD route up Crow Canyon & Norris Canyon. I stopped at the mini-mart on Crow Cyn for some cold water & a Red Bull (say what you will about Red Bull, but I find nothing more refreshing on a hot hilly ride). The climb up Norris Cyn had little shade so again, no speed records were endangered. I doused my head & neck a bit with water at the top of Norris so the descent into San Ramon was delightfully almost cool.

I stopped for a bit at Livermore Cyclery on Dublin Blvd - OMG the air conditioning felt soooo good! - to buy some more cold water and a packet of Cytomax and use their rest room. I'm still not keen about the tropical fruit Cytomax flavor - I'll stay with orange. I then headed along Foothill into Sunol and along Niles Canyon back home. The AC Trail Wind Tunnel had kicked up by then but the wind off the bay felt very refreshing. All told about 64 miles and 2400 ft of climbing.

Throughout the ride I was downing lots Cytomax, Clif Shot Blocks (egad! fake food!!), a bit of Hammer Gel, and lots of water. That worked very well for me, I felt remarkably good despite the heat which normally bowls me over. That and the fact that I didn't push hard at all on the climbs. I'm really pleased with how this ride went - no aches, no pains, no energy lows, and I enjoyed every moment.

Where've I been?

2008-08-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I've just been lazy. Riding stopped being fun so I kicked back for a couple of months but I'm gearing up again. High time since I'll be attempting the Crater Lake Century in Oregon in a couple of weeks.

Last weekend I rode up Mt. Hamilton (and set a new Personal Worst, bah) and this Saturday I'll be slogging up Mt. Diablo. That ought to get me ready. Bwah hah.

As for other fun goings-on this past summer, at the end of June Lee and I helped out at the Mazama overnight checkpoint for the Cascade 1200 Randonee up in WA state. We then headed down to Bend and spent the 4th of July weekend with Sarah & Bubba, and accompanied them on the Firecracker 100 metric century.

My East Bay 200K RUSA permanent is becoming fairly popular, and who knows, maybe someday I'll even manage to complete it myself.

My East Bay 200K RUSA permanent is up & running

2008-05-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

... and the first DNF was me, naturally. :^)

This is a pretty challenging ride. I wanted to keep it for the most part on scenic roads, preferably shady, with little traffic. Alas, in the East Bay, that means climbing. I tried to keep it under 6000 ft of climbing, but between RUSA's constraints with respect to designing permanent routes, and my own self-imposed contstraint to avoid yukky urban sprawl as much as possible, the best I could do was about 7000 ft. Oh well, most of the studly randonneur types I know can do this easily.

Speaking of, congratulations to Veronica, aka Princess Zippy, the first finisher of the EB200 permanent !
Pending verification and rubber-stamping by RUSA, of course :^)

I started out strong & feeling fine. Veronica and I left the start point in Dublin at about 6 am, so it was very pleasantly cool out and the car traffic was about nil.

Calaveras Road was lovely. Along the way we passed a couple of deer, some quail darted across the road in front of us (quail are so doofy, they always make me laugh), and lots of turkeys - the bird kind, that is.

I had a flat after about 30 miles, and I discovered my Topeak road morph frame pump wasn't working properly - I could pump my tire up to only about 60 psi or so. Which was fine on the flatlands, but Palomares Road was a truly painful slog, I have never felt so awful going up that, I felt I was pushing a tank uphill. (yeah, yeah, some of you might think I already push a tank uphill, but trust me, this was worse).

At the top of Palomares, I asked a passing rider if I could use his frame pump. He galantly pumped up my tire, and then while disengaging the pump he broke off the valve. Ooops. Glad I carried 2 spare tubes. He galantly changed the tubes and inflated the new tube with a CO2 cartridge. I halfway expected it to explode, but yay, no more disasters.

I was only at about mile 50 and I was getting stressed out knowing that I was riding with a defecto pump and no good tubes left. And the way my luck was going I knew that was going to come back and bite me, so I managed to get a hold of Lee who met us out at the golf course and gave me his (working) frame pump and a couple of spare tubes for the rest of the ride.

We had been wasting a lot of time with all my pump/tube mishaps so I made V go on ahead to the next checkpoint.

Climbing up Redwood Road wasn't near as bad as Palomares, but by then I was really off my game and feeling stressed and lousy and it was getting hot. I was climbing so slowly that I was worried that I wouldn't make the next checkpoint in Moraga in time. Then eventually I decided this was BS, I just wasn't enjoying the ride any more. So I phoned ahead to V as soon as I got a cell signal at the top of Pinehurst Road and told her to just keep going, I was going to bail when I reached Moraga.

Once I reached Moraga I bought myself a Diet Coke at the Safeway - and wouldn't you know it, even with my glacial climbing and dawdling on the phone the receipt showed I made it 10 minutes before the checkpoint closing time.

I hung out in a shady spot waiting for Lee to pick me up. And I started feeling a lot better. I shouldn't have been so hasty to bail, I suppose, particularly since almost 3/4 of the climbing was done. I couldn't keep going since I had already called Lee to come & get me. Oh well, lesson learned.

Lee & I drove out towards Martinez to check on V. She was looking strong and going great. freak. We met up with her at the train station and chatted a bit and then we went on our ways.

I might give this a try again next weekend. With a working frame pump. :^)

Grizzly Peak

2008-05-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

Kim, Cyndi & I rode the Grizzly Peak Century on Sunday. The GPC is in two parts, the northern part which is 73 miles and then the southern part which brings it up to 112 miles. When I signed up I had ~~intentions~~ delusions of doing the full route. But I've done so little riding in the past month, the 1st part sounded like good choice. Plus I like the idea of finishing before the final stop is all packed up and there's no food left. :p

The day started out freezing cold, windy and damp. We were in a damp mist riding up Pinehurst which turned into a fairly thick fog when we reached Grizzly Peak - so much for the great views, oh well. The mist was so thick we were rained on passing under the eucalyptus groves along GP. All in all, it was pretty neat. We dawdled at the first rest stop at Tilden park and decided to take it easy on this ride and make it a tour de bakery. I nearly froze to death on the descent down Wildcat, geeze it was cold!

It was much nicer cruising down San Pablo Dam Rd but the ever-present headwind made it a bit slower than I'm used to.

We stopped at a Starbucks in Hercules and lounged about for quite a while. It was sooo nice to get out of the chilly wind!

Back on the route we encountered a boy (maybe 18 if a day) on a loaded touring bike on the first day of his trip from El Cerrito to Chicago. Sweet kid, hope it goes well for him.

We dawdled again at the rest stop in Port Coasta, immediately after which we had the joy of climbing McKewan Rd. Jeeeezzz. For yucks I had the gradient indicator on, lots of 12%-plus. I saw 16% a few times. (Oh, and for the benefit of a certain person on TE, I climbed a great deal of it at under 3 mph, and I was oh-so-grateful for my 26/28 gear. :p """" )

We headed along Alhambra Valley Road, which I always like - it's one of the places I'd like to live if I won the lottery. I've never done it in the south-west direction. We climbed Pig Farm Hill the long way. Although it's significantly steeper in the other direction, I much prefer that other way since you get the climb over sooner and then you have the long fun descent. But this way wasn't bad, and it was actually over sooner than I expected.

My lack-of-training really caught up with me on the Bears. The wind really got to me and I got super tired near the end of the first climb (mama?) and couln't wait for the rest stop at Briones. That stop perked me up a bit but not a lot, and I still slogged up papa.

Heading down papa we passed by a very bad looking accident. I heard the sirens up ahead and then I turned a corner and came upon a bunch of stopped cars and a couple of police cars blocking the road on either end of the scene. I couldn't see over all the vehicles and the crowd of people forming, and my heart was in my throat when I asked a guy by the side of the road "was it a cyclist?" I'm a bit ashamed to admit I let out a silent prayer of thanks when they guy responded "yeah, a motorcycle". I rode by the scene and the crumpled-up motorcycle was in the middle of the road and the poor guy was laying in the road being tended to by a small group of people. (According to a short report in the Contra Costa Times, the motorcyclist had hit a stopped car. His injuries were quite serious and he had to be airlifted to the hospital.)

The rest of the ride was thankfully without incident. Cyndi and I were both wearing down, and Kim mentioned the last climb on Rheem was pretty steep, so we took a detour and continued down Moraga Way & took a left on Moraga Rd back to the start. Not only did we miss out on the last climb, we had a blissful few miles of tailwind to take us to the finish.

A nice ride with excellent company :)

Happy Birthday LeeBob!

2008-04-14T10:40:00.000-07:00

To celebrate my sweetie's birthday, LeeBob (aka BottO) & I went up to Folsom for the weekend and had a lovely ride on Saturday along the American River Trail.

Here's Lee waving hi to all his fans on TE :^)

More pics be here

We really enjoyed it up in Folsom back when we accompanied Pansy, Raleighdon, et al. on the Mad March Hair ride, so we thought we'd pay it a return visit.

On Saturday we started out from the Larkspur Landing hotel (great place to stay, btw!) and got right on the trail from an entrance near the hotel and the outlet mall.

We first headed eastward to Beals Point which is the easternmost end of the trail, and where what little climbing there is on the trail is located. The last time I did this part of the trail, 3 or 4 years ago, I had just started riding and I was absolutely dying up that climb. This time around I hardly noticed it. :D

Once we reached Beals Point we turned around and headed west to the other end of the trail, in Sacramento's Old Town area. We wandered Old Town a little, had lunch, and headed back to Folsom. All told it was about 68 miles, and a whoppin' 900 feet of climbing (most of which was heading up to Beals Point).

It was really warm out, especially in the afternoon heading back to Folsom, when temps were in the upper 80's, much higher than I've been used to 'til now. Even though I drank what I thought was lots of water & Cytomax, I probably didn't drink enough, and I felt pretty droopy near the end. Lesson learned. I'll probably break out the camelback on rides this warm in the future, and use Elete electrolyte drops.

It was a beautiful day to celebrate my sweetie's birthday. To top it off we then had a very nice dinner at the Balcony, a little restaurant on Sutter Street in the Folsom historic district. An excellent weekend.

I did it!

2008-04-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

I finally finished my 1st 200K this year!

More pics be here

On Sunday, Veronica & I rode the Jittery Jaunt 200K permanent brevet. I was a little apprehensive about it since my track record with respect to brevets and permanents has not been what one might call stellar.

The route started from the Safeway at Marina Green in San Francisco. While V and I were making our final preparations, Thom (aka Can Opener, as in "husbands are handy but so are can openers") was demonstrating to Lee (aka Bottle Opener, for reasons which shall eventually be apparent) his cool new gadget - an adapter that runs off a Dyno hub to power small external speakers for an MP3 player. Kewl.

We needed to purchase something from the Safeway to get a receipt to verify our start time. V bought a Dr Seuss cookbook. Our husbands found it fascinating.

We started out a bit before 8 am, heading along Marina Green towards the Golden Gate Bridge. As we were approaching the Sports Basement we encountered a large crowd of runners milling about. Huh? We got off our bikes and started walking around the edge of the crowd and soon realized we were passing right by the start line of a foot race. The PA announcer was noting that the race route was going over the Golden Gate Bridge, and the race was going to start in 45 seconds. I looked at V and said "we better book it!" so we got back on our bikes and scooted, huffing and puffing up the hill leading to the bridge bike/ped path entrance.

And there we came to a screeching halt. Seems the bike/ped paths on *both* sides of the bridge were closed for the race. Already. We weren't allowed to ride over the bridge even though we were way ahead of the runners. We had to wait for a van with a bike trailer, load our bikes on and be driven across the bridge. Grrrr.

When the first van pulled up, we looked at the contraption we were expected to load our bikes on and said "no way!" - V had her beautiful Legolas and I had my Rivendell that I just got back from the painters only a couple of weeks ago.

Someone told us to wait for the next van since the trailer on that was much better. So we hung out and eventually the next van showed up and we decided we could entrust our bikes to it. If that trailer also looked dicey we were simply going to abandon the ride - neither of us wanted to damage our bikes that way!

At any rate, we finally got our ride across the bridge, unloaded on the other side, and were on our way. (We wound up about 2 miles short of 200K by not riding over the bridge, but it couldn't be avoided.)

It was a really lovely route, from Sausalito through Faifax, up to Nicasio and Petaluma, then west to Valley Ford.

We rode into a headwind pretty much the entire way between Petaluma and Valley Ford, during which time I finally learned one of the Great Truths of Brevet Survival:

Don't Think.

I just hunkered down and zoned out. Riding to Valley Ford I was a mindless pedaling zombie, enjoying the scenery but without any conscious thought intruding into my little la-la land. But it got me through a tough stretch in which normally I would have been obsessing over how awful I felt and oh my gawd I'm only halfway done and there is no way I'm going to finish and I think I have a hangnail and who the heck am I kidding even attempting this?

Whatever works.

Speaking of scenery, did I mention it was gorgeous out?

From Valley Ford we headed south on Highway 1 to Pt Reyes. Sarah (maillotpois) rode her incredibly cool Triumph motorcycle out along Highway 1 to say hi and to lend us moral support (and, I heard after the fact, to threaten us with bodily harm if we considered bailing out - but what are friends for?)

After a nice break at the Bovine Bakery where we met up again with Sarah and the DH's, we then headed a bit further down Highway 1 to Olema, then along SFD and thru Samuel Taylor Park back to Fairfax, at which point we retraced our outbound route thru Sausalito and over the GG Bridge - which this time we were able to cross under our own power.

In true jobob fashion, the receipt for the final checkpoint at the Marina Safeway was for the purchase a 6-pack of Fat Tire Ale. Alas, we did not have a bottle opener in our possession, but my intrepid husband made do with a spoke wrench. Hence, Lee is heretofore known as the Bottle Opener, or BottO for short.BO having a somewhat negative, if on occasion a not entirely inaccurate, connotation.

I'm very glad I didn't know beforehand that the climbing would be on the order of 6000 ft (V's polar showed 6200) rather than the 4000 ft shown in the RUSA database. Altho I suspected it would be well more than 4000. At least now I know I have a chance of actually finishing my own permanent route, which has about 6600 ft of climbing.

We didn't have a stellar ride time (poor V was waiting up for me a lot!) but we finished, and I'm really happy to finally get my 1st RUSA 200K of the year in the books.

East Bay 200K RUSA permanent

2008-03-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

I submitted my revised route to RUSA on Weds 4/9. Stay tuned !

Solo Century & Permanent Scouting

2008-03-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I rode the northern 3/4 of my 200K permanent route to check on control locations.

I saw Kim on Redwood Road - she was riding with some friends who were wearing Amici Veloci jerseys. I was really surprised to see all those AV jerseys. It was great to chat w Kim for a bit.

I was passed by Fred Rodriguez on Pinehurst Road - it was like I was standing still (er, more like I was moving backwards :p ) He was hard to miss in the Rock Racing kit. He evidently went as far as the summit & turned around, because I got to see him ride by again while I was along the side of the road changing a flat.

Pig Farm Hill was a stinker as usual. For yuks I had the % grade showing on my computer. It went up to 16%. Ugh.

But what I didn't expect was the long climb up Taylor Blvd & Pleasant Hill Blvd into Lafayette - I was definitely not up for a 6-10% grade at that point. Not sure if I can re-route the section from Martinez to Walnut Creek to anything much easier though. (Ed. to add: Thought I could route it thru the Iron Horse Trail but that'll be more trouble than it's worth. Back to Plan A)

I was kind of whupped at about the 85 mile point, so when I reached Danville I stopped at the Starbucks for a bit. Good thing I knew that the rest of the ride was relatively easy, still I didn't really perk up until maybe the last 5 miles or so.

Lee picked me up at Pleasanton Ridge Park, about 4 miles outside of Sunol. I felt pretty good when I finished.

The entire ride took me over 9 1/2 hours, gahh. But I took a bit of time wandering thru Martinez. That's my excuse. Yeah. :p

My attempt at the Davis 200K

2008-03-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

The short version:
I thought I was ready and I was really looking forward to this. But, my back & shoulders started hurting at about mile 30, and over time my neck and legs joined in, and then my head started pounding. By the time I reached Moskovite Corners at mile 45 I decided there was no way I could gut this one out, and I wanted off my bike NOW. So, I bailed. I'm beginning to think I don't have the kind of tenacity one needs to do these long rides.

The long version:
As expected, pretty much everyone flew out at at least 20 mph (and that was the back of the pack, LOL). I felt fine and stayed up with Veronica and we chatted for a few miles but then I gradually started to creep back. I told her not to wait for me, we'd do our own rides, so that was fine.

I was eventually on my own but tooling happily at a very good pace for me (~16) when I got to the long flat boring hinterlands. Turned a corner and was in a bit of a headwind - nothing awful, but enough. A tandem which must have left late passed by me and I could have kicked myself for not latching on - I very well could have, I just wasn't thinking about it until they were too far ahead to make it worth the effort. duh.

Not too long after that a man & two women passed me. They weren't going all that much faster than me so I asked if I could latch on and they said fine. I never fully appreciated the Joys of Drafting until just then. Heaven!!! The man, who was leading our paceline, never moved over so I just happily hung off the back, never having to take a pull. Whee.

They pulled over just before that freeway overpass (it's the one bump in the road for miles) to shed jackets and I wasn't inclined to stop so I continued on, thanking them profusely and assuming I'd see them again in a few miles. It was just me & the breeze again.

Eventually an older man caught up with me (our group had passed him a bit earlier) and since the wind was starting to wear on me some I asked if I could draft off him and he said fine. After we turned onto Putah Creek Rd I pulled up abreast of him and we chatted a bit - he had started biking again after a brief hiatus but he did lots of dcs some years back. In '91 he rode 9 doubles. Jeeze. Then he mentioned he just turned 70. Double jeeze.

I couldn't quite keep up with him so I let him go on ahead about when we were passing Winters. By then I was already starting to get tired & a bit achey (at mile 22, good grief!!) and I was wondering how on earth I was going to slog this out. I was feeling kind of down because even though I was going at a good pace for me, about 99% of the field was already way ahead and probably in the next freakin' county by then. Lots of negative thoughts were bouncing around in my head. At that point I was wishing I was with someone - it would have been great if my three new best friends materialized again, but no sign of them yet.

Then I saw Lee parked along the side of the road so I pulled over to chat with him. He said V's group was only about 10 minutes ahead which cheered me up some, and it was nice to just stop & stretch a little. I told him I wasn't feeling too great and he asked if I wanted him to drive ahead and wait for me up at Moskovite, and I hemmed & hawed and said no, go play (he brought his bike along and was waiting for it to warm up a little before going off on his own ride).

That little stop cheered me up and gave me a second wind so the rest of the way along Putah Creek went fine. It also helped a lot that there wasn't much breeze at that point, and even a small bit of tailwind. The way the wind was blowing made for hopes of a tailwind most of the way back, which was really encouraging.

But then when I reached Rt. 128 I started to get really achey, and Advil didn't really help. This was even before the climb up to the dam. I'm one of those lucky ones who almost never gets a sore back & shoulders while riding - I mean, my back can get a bit stiff after a long ride, but never particularly sore. And certainly not after only about 30 miles! But my lower back and especially between my shoulders was getting really sore, which had never happened to me before. And naturally it got worse as I climbed up the dam & then cardiac. I geared really low and spun easliy up those climbs hoping it would go away, but notsomuch.

Near the top of the dam I caught up with the older guy, who had mentioned to me earlier he wasn't looking forward to the hills. He was having a bit of a rough time and had to stop for lots of short rests. We took a breather together at the top of the dam and he started down a bit ahead of me and was off like a shot, gravity was indeed his friend. But I caught up with him again on the slog up cardiac. We might have been leapfrogging like that the whole rest of the ride.

But then my head started pounding and joined in the pain party with my back, shoulders, neck and legs, and by the time I got over cardiac I was thinking this just wasn't going to happen today. Even the rollers into Moscovite were no fun at all, so I pulled into Moscovite and called it a day.

I called Lee and he had already gone out on his own ride by then, but he said he'd head back to the car & pick me up eventually. I told him I was fine & to take his time. One of my New Best Friends showed up soon after, she was waiting for the other two. Seems they did a lot of stops which is why they were so far behind.

Turns out the store & restaurant at Moscovite were closed since Jan for renovations. The sign said they'd reopen in Feb. Ooops. No bathrooms. I was doing OK in that regard but my friend had stopped there specifically for one so she wasn't too thrilled. None at the gas station across the road either. I think maybe she found some bushes. Her other two companions finally showed up and they were on their way. I'm not sure if they were the last ones the route, I wasn't paying much attention.

Lee Mitchell soon pulled into the lot and I gave him my brevet card and asked him to make sure to tell the control folks at Pope Valley that I was out. I also called Thom to let him know that I was bailing - he was going to meet up with V and ride back with her. For some reason I thought he was meeting her at Pope Valley but in retrospect I realized that was wrong so I hope she didn't end up waiting for me there! Hopefully she saw I had dnf'd.

I found a nice sunny spot at the side of the building and laid back on some wood decking, which actually felt pretty good, and just sort of watched the world go by and dozed. Didn't suck, all in all. Lee showed up after a couple of hours and that was that. By then the speedy folks had already passed heading back - I wouldn't be surprised if some of them reached Pope Valley before the control opened. :p

I slept a good part of the drive back home, and for at least another 3 hours once we got back. I then slept for about 11 hours straight last night and I'm still awfully creaky today - I think I'm coming down with something.

I'm so bummed because I thought I was ready for this!!! But I was feeling so crummy I knew I couldn't slog it out - some people have that kind of tenacity but I sure don't. I hate bailing out on things and I had promised myself I wouldn't do that this year. Gahh.

Dusty's new paint job !

2008-02-21T15:33:00.000-08:00

Woo-hoo! I just got Dusty back from the painters today - the frame had developed a crack in one of the seatstay joints so it had to be re-brazed, good a time as any for a new paint job.

Rick at D&D did a fabulous job, the pic doesn't do it justice. I stayed with the original Dusty Rose color. The color seems a bit deeper than the original, but the could just be due to fading of the old paint or yellowing of the old top coat. Rick blinged it out a bit, with some of the lug cutouts filled in in ivory (which is more apparent on the fork). Rick couldn't find the original Waterford-era decals (with the arrow motif) so we went with the current Riv decals, which look lovely.

She's being built up by Robinson Wheelworks, so I should have my sweet bike back by the beginning of March.

I'm giddy as a little schoolgirl! :^)

SuperNana's got it right.

2008-02-21T15:29:00.000-08:00

Check out SuperNana's Ode to Coach Troy.
So funny!
So true!

2008 goal rides

2008-02-19T14:46:00.000-08:00

OK, here are the big rides I have planned for 2008:

Mt. Hamilton Challenge on April 26 (125 miles, 8300 ft climbing) - I can wave hi to all the hardy souls riding the DMD route going in the opposite direction.

Grizzly Peak Century on May 4 (112 miles, 8550 ft climbing) - I've never done this ride though I've done parts of the route. Although I just realized it's only a week after the MHC, argh. Well, hopefully I'm up to it by then.

And my really big stretch goal ride:

Mt. Shasta Summit Super Century on August 3 (135 miles, 16500 ft of climbing) - allegedly tougher than the Death Ride - not that I'd know! - but the out-n-back route allows for bailouts if need be. Plus Lee & I will be staying at the Mt. Shasta Resort, only a few miles away from the start and the location of the lunch stop, which could be a tactical error for me. :D But it's a nice place to stay. Lee will be doing the metric century.

I also plan to do a 200K+ brevet or permanent each month starting in (uh... March?) for a RUSA R-12.

I think that's plenty - I'll put the double centuries on hold until next year. Unless I change my mind.

My new friend Troy

2008-02-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

On a more positive note, I've made a new friend in Evil Coach Troy.

With all the crummy weather we'd been having, we got our Cyclops trainer back from Lee's sister-in-law and Lee graciously hooked up his Atlantis to it. I first bought Spinervals 25, aka Aero Base Builder V, which is a 2-hour compilation of selected workouts from ABB I-V. I really enjoyed it, so I sprung for the Intervals 5-pack which contains No Slackers, Uphill Grind, Suffer-O-ama and a couple of others I'm too lazy to check at the moment. Currently I'm doing two interval workouts per week, alternating between NS and UHG (I'll add the others into the mix eventually), separated by at least a day, with ABB V another couple of days. I generally only manage 1-1.5 hours of ABBV at a time, I haven't made it through the full 2 hours, yet.

I'm inherently a lazy person, and left to my own devices, I won't push myself very hard so these workouts are just what I need. And it's so convenient to be able to hop on the trainer without having to figure out what to wear for the weather conditions. And I really think it's helping.

The year so far

2008-02-19T08:21:00.000-08:00

Yikes, almost 2 months into 2008 and I haven't posted my goals yet. I guess that's because I'm still figuring them out...

I was hoping to ride the SF Randonneurs 200K at the end of January. There were some heavy rain storms starting a few days prior, and I was up late the night before watching the news reports of flash flooding in the areas thru which the route went. So, I wimped out of the ride. I wasn't alone, out of about 85 registered only 32 actually rode. And naturally, it hardly rained a drop during the ride (despite forecasts of heavy rain that day as well) and the roads were quite good for the most part. Still, the very strong winds that day likely would have done me in so it's probably just as well I bailed ... I guess.

I started commuting into work some in January but a combination of yukky weather, committments which required a car, and just plain laziness, I got out of the habit just as quickly as I started. Maybe next month :p

I've done some fun rides with some friends from bikejournal, bikeforums, & TE.

All in all, a very good year!

2007-12-29T23:28:00.000-08:00

Well, despite my September thru November hiatus, this turned out to be a very good year. I did 25 metric centuries, 3 imperial centuries and two double metrics. Total for the year so far is about 5,300 miles (about 1000 miles more than I had originally aimed for) and climbing is about 225,000 feet.

And best of all, I'm feeling good again. I did two metrics in the past two weeks.

I DNF'd on a few rides this year - most notably, the Siskiyou metric, and Day 1 of Waves to Wine, both of which were in September when I was feeling like crud. Maybe I could have slogged them out, but first and foremost this has to be fun, and I reserve the right to bail when it isn't being fun anymore. :^)

So, what's the plan for next year ... ?

Calaveras

2007-12-15T22:08:00.000-08:00

Today I rode to Sunol and over Calaveras for the first time since my Whupfest ride with Veronica at the end of August. Palomares earlier in the week, Calaveras today - it's so nice to be riding these roads again !

It was a lovely day, chilly enough to be comfy in a couple of layers of wool, and sunny.

I passed a large TnT group heading in the other direction, and chatted with a few of them regrouping at the false summit. They're training for the Solvang century in March. Nice bunch of people.

I headed home along Warm Springs and decided to take Paseo Padre instead of Mission Blvd. Gahh, I forgot how many stoplights there were on PP - I think I'll stick with Mission.

Nearing home on the AC Trail I realized I was up to about 52 miles. Hmmm, thought I, should I head out to the bay & back to tack on another 10 for a metric? But I promised myself I wouldn't ramp up too much too soon, so I left the metric for another day.

Excellent ride.

Yeah baby !

2007-12-13T15:09:00.000-08:00

Woo-hoo, as of today I've ridden 5000 miles this year - 5008, to be exact. :^)

It seems I've finally gotten over that weird slump that hit me in early September. I'm gradually building up on my mileage & climbing, and I'm feeling really good. I'm not getting that fatigued feeling that I experienced so often in September. Still, I'm being careful not to overdo it.

In a fit of optimism (hopefully not self-delusion) I signed up for the SFR 200K brevet on Jan. 26. Eh, I have 13 & a half hours to complete it. Lee will be doing the late shift rider check-in so hopefully he won't be too pissed off if I roll in at 8:29 pm.

Back to square one

2007-10-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

Well, went to the doctor this morning and had some blood tests run. We probably won't find anything, but may as well make sure. In the meantime, I'm pretty much starting from scratch. I did two short rides this weekend with Lee, just out to the bay & around Coyote Hills and back, under 14 miles both times. I had a hard time keeping up with him, argh. What a difference from just a month or so ago.

The LDTR group started up their training series this past weekend but I wasn't there - there's no way I can do 75 miles right now. That's a big disappointment for me.

Well, if something medical does turn up, so be it. In the meantime, all I can do is eat right, get lots of sleep, and build back up slowly.

Bor-ing ... :p

And they wonder why I don't have kids

2007-09-06T21:11:00.000-07:00

Funniest eBay post, ever:
LOT OF POKEMON CARDS THAT MY KIDS TRIED TO SNEAK BY ME

Bye Dr. Badger!

2007-09-03T22:29:00.000-07:00

Ellen (aka PABadger, she of Holstein 100 fame) turned in her Ph.D. thesis and is heading off soon to a new job, so we threw her a sendoff bike ride culminating in a fun lunch at a brewpub.

Ellen, Lee, Nancy (BikeGoddess) & I started out in San Francisco, rode across the Golden Gate Bridge and thru Sausalito, where we met up with Sarah (maillotpois). We continued on thru Tiburon & along the Paradise Loop and up into Larkspur. We met up with other TE-ers for lunch and brewskis at the Marin Brewing Co. in Larkspur, and ended the day with a scenic ferry ride across the bay back to San Francisco.

Here are a few pics from a very fun day.

Once we crossed the bridge we took the back route into Sausalito via Ft. Baker, where we were treated to this stunning view of the bridge:

Here we are along the Paradise loop, which was a very nice route indeed (l to r: jobob, maillotpois, PABadger, & BikeGoddess)

Here's a view of the skyline on our way back to San Francisco:

We had lots of laughs this day!

Ooops

2007-09-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

Looks like I'm going to need to back off a bit.

It started this past Thursday. I took the morning off from work and Lee & I headed off for Palomares Road. I was planning on an up and over, turn around near the Castro Valley end of the road, head back up, meet up with Lee someplace along the way, and head for home.

I've been saying over and over that I need about 10 miles to warm up. Lee's been joking lately that he can keep up with me easily during that time, but once my body's kicked in I take off like a shot. Relatively speaking.

Except, on Thursday, I never did seem to get warmed up. I felt pretty lethargic from the get-go, so I warmed up a bit slower than I normally would, but even so, after around 10 miles, if anything I felt more tired.

We reached Palomares and I knew this wasn't going to be a good day. Eh, no biggie. I did what I could and figured an off day once in a while was no concern. I reached the top of Palomares (took me over 37 minutes, yech!), took a short break at the top, and continued down. Since I was taking so freaking long, and I was tired, I cut the backside a bit short and turned around at the first Palomares Creek bridge and slogged back up again.

A big 'ol hairy tarantula toodling up the center of the road kept me company for a few feet. I was so tired I didn't even freak at the sight of it. :p

Lee was waiting for me up at the top, and he turned around and accompanied me back down towards home. I was telling him I was having a really off day and he said he could tell, I stayed in his view nearly all the way up the climb from Fremont, which hasn't happened in a while.

The most telling bit of the ride was heading back home along the dead-flat Alameda Creek Trail. My speed on the flats has improved sigificantly over the past several months, enough that Lee often has a hard time keeping up with me nowadays. He'll usually either latch onto my wheel on the way home, or just tell me to go on ahead and he'll see me in a bit. Well, on Thursday, I could not keep up with him. It was a struggle for me to maintain 13 mph on a section where lately I'd been averaging 17-plus. WTF? But I chalked it up to a off day and didn't worry much about it.

On Saturday, I went out for what I thought was going to be a pretty long ride - up Palomares, Redwood, Pinehurst, Skyline to Grizzly Peak Rd., and play it by ear from there. But once again, I had that lethargic, fatigued, dead-leg feeling. Palomares was even more of a struggle than on Thursday - granted, it was pretty warm, but I don't think it was just the heat that was causing my fatigue. I didn't even bother timing the climb but it was probably on the order of 40 minutes or more. I decided to cut my ride short and loop back along Dublin Canyon and Foothill back to Sunol and then home. Again, I was just crawling along the AC Trail, I even had to stop and rest a couple of times. WTF??? This was getting weird.

On Sunday I did a ride over the GG bridge thru Sausalito and Tiburon to Larkspur with Ellen (PABager on TE), who is leaving for a new job in Texas, and Lee and Nancy (BikeGoddess). We met up with Sarah (maillotpois) outside of Sausalito and, once again, that gawdawful tired feeling kicked in as we were heading towards Tiburon and along Paradise Drive. Being near the ocean and along the bay, it wasn't particularly hot, at least not as my recent inland rides, so heat wasn't much of a factor today. Still, I couldn't keep up with them for the life of me, and even the littlest hill was giving me a world of grief. WTF????

Long story short, it looks like I've been overtraining, and I need to kick back. I've been doing long, hilly rides on several consecutive weekends, with very little riding during the rest of the week. Looks my body doesn't deal well with that "weekend warrior" foolishness after a time.

So, I'm taking the rest of the week off, after which I'm going to cut back on the mileage and also go back to doing my short early weekday morning rides at least 2, or 3 days a week. Then I'll raise the mileage and climbing but more gradually this time.

Gah, I have so much to learn about LD cycling and especially how my body deals with it. :p

The Calaveras - Mt. Hamilton Whupfest

2007-08-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

Lee and I met up with Veronica and Thom in Sunol around 7 am on Saturday to ride over Calaveras, up Mt. Hamilton, and back.

I've learned over and over again that I really need about 10 miles of riding to warm up. It's the way I am. So I kept falling back behind the others along the rollery part of Calaveras. Eh.

Lee planned on riding with us a bit and then going off on his own. So as we passed Welch Creek Road, Lee decided to give that uber-stinker road a go. He made it up well into the 17% section before he decided that was enough fun and turned around, possibly about a mile before the top. Go Lee!

Meanwhile V, Thom & I reached the beginning of the climb up Calaveras, and I started my lap timer at the Geary Road sign. It was only about 5 miles from the start of the ride and I was still creakin' a bit. Usually when I do this ride I start from home, which is 15 flat miles to Sunol, a very nice warm up, so I generally have 20 miles in me when I start up Calaveras. I made it to the little KOM sign at the false summit in exactly 17 minutes, just a wee less than my current best of 16 min 40 sec. I'd really like to break 15 minutes soon.

Calaveras Road was chip-sealed a few weeks ago from the Santa Clara Co. border southward, and there was still a bit of gravel on the road. Not too bad, though, although I had to take the corners more cautiously than I ordinarily would. But I heard there were a couple of accidents amoung the TnT group that went through there a bit after us.

We continued down the Wall, hung a right and zoomed down Calaveras Road past Ed Levin park and took a left onto Piedmont Rd. for a nice flat cruise towards Alum Rock Park. We stopped at the 7-Eleven to top off our water bottles and Thom wolfed down a hotdog much to V's disgust. :D

We then went into Alum Rock Park and used the restrooms there, then went up Alum Rock Road where it's closed to traffic and emerged from the park still on Alum Rock Rd. (I think cutting through Alum Rock Park is a really nice way to approach Mt. Hamilton, you have the restrooms and you avoid the urban sprawl of Toyon and McGee roads which is the DMD route.)

After a nice smooth descent on Alum Road Road from the park (the other reason why I like this approach!) we turned left and began climbing up Mt. Hamilton Road. I wasn’t feeling great so I told V and Thom to just bomb on ahead and I’d meet them at Grant Ranch Park. I think I might not have eaten enough so I had a mini payday bar partway up (along with the Spiz and Hamer gel) and that seemed to help.

V and Thom were actually waiting for me at the start of the descent into Grant Ranch - V quipped “we didn’t want to have to climb out of Grant Ranch if we had to check up on you” - good point! - so we did the nice descent into Grant Ranch all together. We stopped off at the trailhead to use the porta-potty and refill bottles, then headed onward and upward. I was feeling better but still climbing slowly, so V and Thom left me in the dust soon again. I came upon them as they were waiting along the side of the road, Thom decided he had enough and was saying his goodbyes before turning around and heading back to Sunol.

So then there were the two of us. It was pretty uneventful for me the rest of the way up, V disappeared soon enough again but once we were in the final portion of the climb I spotted her from time to time on the switchbacks heading towards the observatory. Oh geeze, I was whupped those last two or three miles! I’m pretty sure I was eating and drinking enough, I was just tired. I had a brief stop about 2 miles from the top and that helped a bit. At least it was pretty up there, and while it was warming up it didn’t get oppressively hot.

I was soooo glad to finally reach the summit. V claims she was waiting for only about 10 minutes but I suspect it was more than that. :p We had a nice break and V shared half her turkey sandwich with me which was very tasty. She was very pleased with how good she felt. I just whimpered. :p

Then we headed back down. I seem to be descending a bit more tentatively than I used to, not sure why, but I was still tired from the climb so I didn’t want to take any chances.

We reached the bottom of the mountain and followed the DMD route thru the afforementioned stripmall spawl of McGee and Toyon roads (mainly because they were downhill) and cruised along Piedmont Road. We passed the turn for Sierra Road and V quipped that she felt so good she almost considered going up it. I just whimpered. :p

Then the fun began again. We reached Calaveras Road and turned right for the long, semi-steep slog leading up to the Wall. As I approached Ed Levin Park at about the 68 mile point, like a mirage in the distance there was Thom in their car, bringing us lovely cold bottled water.

I was gazing longingly at the empty spot on their bike rack, and whimpered pathetically to Thom asking if he wouldn’t mind giving me a ride the rest of the way to Sunol.

V just looked at me and asked "do you REALLY want to quit now???".

Errr. OK, the rest of the way up to the Wall would be a drag, the Wall would hurt, but then it would be over, and then it would be just a few rollers to the end.

"OK, OK, I'll keep riding, dammit."

Gawd I was pathetic going up that wall. Forward momentum was maintained, just. The lowest speed my computer registers is 2.4 mph. I may have gone under that, good grief.

V's a very smart girl. She waited for me waaay past the crest of the wall, at a point after a little downhill, so I didn't hate her quite so much by the time I reached her. :p

The rest of the ride was fine. I had a tiny skid going around one of the corners on the freshly chipsealed section of Calaveras but that was due to my own inattention (meaning, I fried and my coordination was a bit off). My lower back was starting to ache a bit and it actually started to feel worse during the final descent, but once we reached the bottom and the rollery section towards Sunol it felt a bit better.

We had told Thom back at Levin Park that we’d reach Sunol by 4 pm and we rolled in at 3:58. Thom and Lee were waiting patiently for us back at the school, and Thom quipped that we got in under the cutoff. Wizeazz. :D

Despite all the whimpering and whining, it was a really great ride!

We all headed off to Bosco’s for our after-ride feast. Very soon I had a pint of Sierra Nevada in front of me and all was quite well with my world.

Total climb was 7700 feet or so, a new max for me. So I guess I was entitled to feel whupped. :D

Re-evaluating my goals

2007-08-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

It's two months before the Solvang Fall Double, and I've come to the conclusion I won't be ready for a double century by then. At least my head won't be ready for it. Yes, I likey could "survive" it, and maybe even finish within the cutoff, but I'm not one of those people that handle pain and discomfort well. I want to enjoy the ride, not suffer through it!

Basically, I need a few more hilly centuries & double metrics under my belt to build up my confidence before I tackle a DC. That's the way I operate.

I'll still be doing my own long & hilly rides, and I'll be joining the ACTC's LDTR/UTD/whatever-they-call-them rides. I'll be plenty ready for the Solvang Spring double come the end of March.

And, starting next month, I'll be doing the local 200K+ permaments and working towards a RUSA R-12 award.

Holstein 100

2007-08-20T00:04:00.001-07:00

I rode this with Ellen, her roomie Amie, and Amie's friend John. It was the first century for all three of them. They were such fun company! This was a challenging ride, made more so by the wicked afternoon head & side winds we encountered for the last 25 miles or so.

Kim and Leslie rode the metric with Lee, and they all finished early in the afternoon. Kim & Leslie hung out with Lee and waited for us to finish - and they had a LONG wait. That was so incredibly sweet of them to wait for us!

My computer showed about 6500 ft of climbing (the last climb into a wicked headwind, I might add!) Ellen's Edge showed about 8000-something feet so we figured it was on the order of 7000 :^)

We slowed down & stopped a lot, and the winds really took their toll in the last couple of hours.

I'm going to have to step up the training a lot for Solvang, yikes.

Lollygagging up Palomares

2007-08-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

I took the morning off yesterday to ride up Palomares. It was really nice out and I was feeling kind of lazy so I decided to enjoy the scenery and not push myself very hard. I still timed myself from the no shooting sign to the top as I normally do, to get a feel for what my relaxed pace is nowadays. I climbed at a pace where I wasn't breathing hard (I don't have a HRM) and I wasn't winded at all when I reached the top. Come to find out it took me 35 minutes. That was my personal best only a couple of months ago! So I'm really pleased that my "lollygagging" pace is one that was pretty challenging for me such a short time ago.

My current best is around 31 minutes. I hope to break 30 soon.

Tour de Max

2007-08-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

I rode the Tour de Max on Sunday with some folks from bikeforums.

We started from Menlo Park, up Sand Hill to Portola Road (where the group promptly dropped me), down Alpine and over Arastradero. I take a long time to warm up so I figured it was no use trying to keep up with them this early on.

There was a rest stop on Arastradero but by then I was finally warmed up and feeling human so I didn't bother to stop. Then up Page Mill, oy. I stopped at the rest stop on top of Page Mill and the rest of the group joined up with me about then - come to find out they had stopped at Arastradero :D

The descent down Alpine West was a bit dicey with the gravel still on the road from the recent chipsealing. Past the chipsealed part the road was narrow, extremely bumpy and very windey with lots of steep sharp turns, which made it not particularly fun. It was pretty exhausing and I was looking forward to that descent being over, which says a lot.

A bunch of us climbed together up Haskins Hill on Pescadero Road which was nice. I really enjoyed the descent down Pescadero Road until I got stuck behind a car with a *very* timid driver who rode his/her brakes for almost the entire way down the rest of the hill, and there was no way I could pass. How *dare* that rotten person deprive me of my well-earned descent! grrrr.

Stage Road was nice but a bit windy. The view of the cliffs as we descended Highway 1 to Tunitas Creek was spectacular today. We were all spread out by the time we reached Highway 1 so I assumed I wouldn't see any of our group again until I reached the finish.

Let me just say here and now that the climb up Tunitas Creek Road *sucks*. The road surface is the worst and the middle part of the climb where it kicks up to 10% is a bear. Now, that said, its nice & shady almost all the way up and you have the lovely sound of Tunitas Creek to serenade you if you can hear it over your rasping breathing. (At least I didn't need to walk up this stinker, unlike the last time I rode up it 2 years ago on that epic Labor Day weekend ride with Veronica & Thom where my legs basically gave up the ghost.) I did end up stopping for a couple of minutes for a breather after most of the steep section was past, which helped a lot. Soon after I started up again I encountered Ron from the bf group, who had stopped for a much longer breather, which is how I managed to catch up with him. Soon after that we reached the mini-rest stop near the top where we each had a can of Coke which really hit the spot.

A guy pulled up during that time and complimented me on my Brooks saddle and my Randonnuers of China jersey. He was wearing a PBP 2003 jersey, and we struck up a conversation about randonneuring. Come to find out he was Ken Shoemaker, a frequent poster on the Randon list. He's leaving for France this Thursday for this year's PBP.

At this point Ron & I were on the much shallower grade a couple of miles from the top so the rest of Tunitas went by quickly, and then we were treated to the lovely descent down Kings Mtn into Woodside and the shorter but still lovely descent down 84 to Redwood City, where we hung a right on Alameda de las Pulgas and powered it (be that as it may) back to the school in Menlo Park.

It was good ride, tough but somehow not as draining and the Mt. Tam ride last week, although it had a bit more climbing overall. A new pb for climbing, woo woo.

I might do this route starting from home next time which would add on about 30 miles or so. But instead of the Alpine Road descent I'd head north on Skyline to 84, then west down 84 past La Honda, then hang a left onto Pescadero Road.

Mt. Tam (almost) century

2007-08-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

The Marin 200K was to be an 'intermediate' goal leading up to Solvang. I ended up doing the Mt. Tam century instead, which was listed as 94 miles with about 7800 ft of climbing.

I rode with Kim, who was insisting beforehand that I'd gotten so strong that I would leave her in the dust. Kim is such a hoot. She's a strong climber and I was hoping at best I would be able to keep up with her on the climbs. Well, turns out, notsomuch. But at least she didn't have to wait as long for me as she used to.

I've never ridden up Mt. Tam before, so I didn't know what to expect. Sometimes that's good. I was told it would be beautiful up there, and it was. The climb up Fairfax-Bolinas was nice and shady for the most part, and the Alpine Dam area was lovely. On the way up I happened to meet one of the organizers for this years Waves to Wine MS ride, a guy named Dan, so Kim & I had a nice chat with him about the upcoming ride. Sounds like the celebration at Sonoma Mountain Village is going to be fun. Must remember aspirin.

Kim left me in the dust and soon so did Dan and his companion (whose name I have forgotten). I'm so used to climbing alone that it's no big deal. But I reached Ridgecrest Road and I thought, oh crud, long rollers for as far as I could see. Ridgecrest, as the name implies, goes around near the top of Tam. What I mistook for rollers were in fact a series of climbs called the Seven Bitches (or the Seven Sisters in polite company). Not knowing that these were not mere rollers, I started getting really down on myself when I couldn't get any momentum and power up the inclines like I normally would. Looking at the elevation profile afterwards I could see why I was having such a tough time. But at the time, I started up on my "who am I kidding" mantra not too far along Ridgecrest.

We were well above the fog line out in the sun, and it was freakin' hot up there. But the scenery was lovely. When I finally reached the intersection of Ridgecrest and Pan Toll (where Kim was waiting patiently, working on her suntan), we still had about 3 miles to go to the summit of Tam. It was an up and back, and after about 30 milliseconds of debate I wussed out on it (to be fair, Kim would have done it if I wanted to - but my tenacity leaves something to be desired) and we hung a right to begin our descent down PanToll and Panoramic Hiway.

Heading down Panoramic we rode into the fog, and in the space of about a half mile it went from sunny & freakin' hot to damp & cold with a nearly 40 degree temperature drop, so we soon had our armwarmers and vests back on. We rode past the entrance to Muir Woods, which can be a bit dicey with all the cars parked along the road and pedestrians wandering about and the @#$% tour busses passing within inches on the narrow windey shoulderless road (can you tell I really loved that part).

We finally reached Highway 1 which alas wasn't all that much better, it was still narrow and windey and relatively shoulderless with lots of cars and a slog of a climb after Muir Beach to boot. I was well into my "who am I kidding mode" by then, and whenever I caught up to Kim (who by now was waiting for me at the top of every little anthill roller, it seemed), in betwixt general purpose whining I was informing her and anyone else within earshot that no way in creation was I attempting a freakin' double century in this lifetime.

But by the time we passed Stinson Beach the traffic volume went down considerably, the road widened, the fog had lifted by then and it was nice & sunny but the temperature remained pleasant, and all was well with our world. Just past Pt. Reyes we headed inland on Pt. Reyes - Petaluma Rd. and hung a right past the Nicasio Revervior. Almost done, yaaay! My lower back was tightening up so I took a couple of vitamin I's and by the time we reached the final rest stop in Nicasio it was much better.

It started getting really hot again as we went inland so we had some nice cold Cokes at the final rest stop at the Nicasio School. This rest stop was common to the final leg of all the rides so it was fun to chat with people - and everyone was glad that they were almost done! We met up with MP and her friend Sky at that rest stop and she gave me some words of encouragement which helped a bit, but I still wanted this ride to be O-VER. I met Jim (cyclofiend) at this rest stop, he was hard to miss with his Rivendell wool jersey and his lovely burnt-orange Quickbeam. (He rode the Marin Century route on a single-speed wearing a wool jersey. In the heat. It's so reassuring to know there are many people out there much crazier than I.)

Lucas Valley Road was hot as well but at least we were in the shade a lot, and Kim was joining in on the whining by now and misery really loves company so I was plenty fine with that. Once we got over the final (thank gawd, short) climb in the baking sun we had the nice long descent to the finish.

At the finish I made a beeline to the ice cream freezer and wolfed down a Haagen-Dasz ice cream bar as we waited in line for the real food. You know that saying, life is uncertain, eat dessert first!

We rode about 88 miles of the 94 mile route (since we wussed out on the 3 mile up & back to the summit of Tam) and my Ciclosport showed about 6300 feet of climbing. Compared to others' computers my Ciclosport seems to underestimate climbing but, whatever. I've seen someone else's report in which they recorded about 7200 feet of climbing for the same route (that is, w/o the Tam summit) using an Edge 305 GPS.

Eh, it's all relative. Looking back at my old journal entires this seems to be the most climbing I've done on a single ride. That'll change soon.

There was a nice email from MP waiting for me when I got home. She told to give it a few days before deciding on Solvang. Well, after sleeping on it, I'm pretty pleased with the ride all in all. I obviously have to get stronger at climbing - and not give up so easily !!! - but that'll come.