Just got back from the worst ride I’ve had in a long time. It was a 100 mile ride over Mt Hamilton to Livermore, Sunol and back over Calaveras- about 8500 feet of climbing. Nomally not a problem. I did it with a group of racers from my club. Between six of us we had eight flats. I had five, one guy had two and another one. One of the guys had been ridiculed on the club mailing list for planning to bring a spare tire, but I wound up using it. I get to bring the spare tire next time.
Besides flatting five times, I also got pummeled by a bunch of big fit guys who could ride hard into a stiff headwind (I’m tall and light and not making much power even when I am going well, which I am not). Then I bonked and my clubmates abandoned me. I was a bit irked by that- getting dark, no tubes or patches left, and in the middle of nowhere- but it turned out ok.
Before I get well-meaning advice about watching where I am riding or looking in the tire for debris, I did all that. I didn’t hit anything and none of us (all with 20+ years of riding) could find anything wrong with the tire or wheel.
Right now I am going to drink. I’ll look at the wheel tomorrow.
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I had a really great ride on Tuesday. I woke up at 10 minutes before the alarm went off at 4:30 and got up to where I normally park about 15 minutes early. That gave me enough time to get in three 5 minute intervals on Kings, and climb some more before I had to turn around to get to the start of the group ride. I went well on the intervals, the first time that’s happened all year. I did ok on the big climb in the group ride. It started raining but it was a light rain that didn’t get the pavement wet. By the end of the ride on the descent down 84 the pavement was wet, and I pulled away from the riders who were left. They’re usually faster than I am down this descent but I don’t slow down as much in the wet. It still wasn’t all that wet out so even though I didn’t have the fenders on, or a rain jacket, I was fine.
I got to work and was working (on something interesting) by 10am. I did close to three hours, 40 miles and 5000′ of climbing before work. Now that’s the way to start the day.
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M45 4/5, 18th of 34
My last race a couple weekends ago was Pine Flat. 45 miles of lightly rolling to flat terrain, then a 3 mile climb, 7 mile gradual descent, and a short 1/2 mile kicker climb to the finish. The only reasonable thing to do in this race is to sit in the pack for the first part then attack on the climb. Since that is everyone else’s plan the pace was pretty easy for the first part, with only periodic speedups when someone tried to break away and the pack shut them down.
Not knowing the course I moved to the front a little early (worried about being boxed in when the climb started) and probably did too much work there. I couldn’t quite hang with the lead group over the climb. I was about 20 seconds off at the top, and couldn’t catch back up on the descent. I got swept up by a 5 rider chase group and most of them out-sprinted me at the finish. Including the guy who had pulled most of the first 45 miles because he was bored.
Race incidents- on the fast descent to the valley about 30 miles in to the race we came around a corner to find a bunch of cars stopped, race officials screaming “single file! single file!” at us and a couple ambulances. And at the crash scene, a huge puddle of blood. I found out later that someone in the 3s had hooked bars with a club mate and jerked the bars to get loose, which caused him to crash. Then he got run over by other riders. We had to slow down for the ambulances to pass us. Seeing the aftermath kind of put a damper on things for me for a while.
On the gradual descent when I got caught, I wound up in the ditch along side the road. No big deal except that a woman we’d caught had gotten in the line and was taking the spot I needed. I said a bad word and she moved over enough to let me hop out of the ditch and back on the road. I was a bit miffed because when I catch women’s fields in a race I take pains to stay out of their way.
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It’s been pouring here in the santa cruz mountains… we got 10 inches in the last 5 days. Lots of rock and mud slides on our road. The county road crew has been busy. The other day Laura was on her way to town and a mile from home found the road flooded a foot deep. She had to turn around.
You can imagine that I haven’t gotten a lot of cycling done. I got a lot of time on the spin bike. Well, as much as I can stand, which is about an hour a day. I hate riding indoors. By friday I was desperate for a real ride outside, and the rain didn’t look too bad. By the time I got into town to start my ride (I wasn’t up for riding through the crap that’s on our roads, and I’m not keen on riding roads this steep when they’re soaking wet) it was raining. I went ahead anyhow and put in an hour and a half. After an hour my feet and hands were numb, because it was 36 degrees and even with fenders on my bike and a rain jacket on me, I was soaked. When I got to work I spread my bike clothes around my cubicle to dry. No one said anything but my co-workers already think I’m a freak. It was an absolutely miserable ride and I felt so much better afterwards. My gear still wasn’t dry when I got home from work, so I arranged it on top of the heater vents. George helped by sitting on my booties to hold them down on the register.
Today was supposed to be the “dry” day of this endless series of storms. Of course it was raining when I got up. It stopped after breakfast so I went into town and did a nice long ride (4:45, 73 miles). On the way back I noticed a dark cloud in the valley I was about to ride up. I hoped it would have moved to the east by the time I got there, but instead it started raining immediately. I was no longer feeling like a weenie for having the fenders on my bike and bringing a rain jacket. It poured for about 15 minutes… not Arizona thunderstorm kind of rain, but hard for California. There was a lot of water running in the road and my shoe covers and gloves got soaked. But a few more miles down the road it was dry, and I started drying out. Then another 10 miles up the valley it started raining again, but it stopped before I got back into town.
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There’s a big storm about to hit Northern California… we’re forecast to get 10-20 inches of rain here in the mountains. That’s more than most of California gets in a year. I did a long ride yesterday, then came home and cleaned the gutters to get ready for the storm. The ride completely sucked… for some reason I was terribly slow. I spent three hours noodling along with my heart rate around 110. I’ve been getting fitter over the years and able to go faster at a lower heart rate, but not that low. My HR hits 110 when I stand up. It was rather pathetic. Since I went out and back on Foothill, otherwise known at the Fred Expressway, I got passed by a lot of freds. Just rubbing in my suckitude. I took today off to rest.
Now I get to look forward to a week on the trainer, assuming we don’t lose power. Perhaps I should hook the trainer up to the generator. But if I am as weak as I was yesterday, I’d barely be able to light a night light.
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San Bruno is the traditional start of the NoCal road season, on Jan 1. I had a completely miserable time at this race in the 80s- wet, cold, couldn’t see or feel my fingers on the descent. I vowed to never come back. The race is too short to be interesting, or for me to be any good. It’s after the Christmas eating season but long before any races that mean anything. It’s totally meaningless, and if you’re good for this race, chances are you’ll suck later on in the season.
But I’ve gone back recently. I did it in 2008, skipped 2009 due to being sick, and did it again in 2010. And I have to say, I had a really good time.
I slept in the day of the race- it’s only an hours drive and starts at 10am. I weighed myself for the first time in two weeks and discovered that I was at the heaviest I’d been at in a year. Oops, I guess I ate too many of those Christmas cookies I made. The weather looked like rain, so I brought the rain bike. It did rain a bit on the drive up, but it was dry at the start. Most of the racers were warming up on trainers, many starting an hour before the race start. I hate trainers and don’t warm up on them well, so I rode up the mountain. I got a bit past halfway before it was time to turn around.
I got a decent start and went hard up the first steep pitch, then let the lead group go. I was doing ok for a while but when the climb leveled off a bit a few more guys who looked like they were in my group went by. Then the lead 55+ guys went by (they started 30 seconds behind us). After the turn to radio road the grade got steeper and I started catching guys who were fading. Approaching the finish the guys I’d passed were far enough behind that I didn’t need to worry about them, and there was one guy up ahead. I sprinted for the line (as much as I can sprint, which isn’t much) and managed to get him right at the line.
I did it in 19:46, which isn’t that spectacular- the best 45s are in the 16s. But it’s 45 seconds faster than I did it in 2008, and I finished in the top half. Most important, I had a really good time.
As for the weather- it sprinkled for about 15 seconds while I was warming up, and that was it. I could have ridden the race bike instead of the rain bike.
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This year I rode 8700 miles in 591 hours, with 810,000 feet of climbing. Or something like that- I had some computer problems (both bike computer and the computer I use to read the bike computers) which caused me to miss some rides. That was more time than I planned (550 hours was the plan) but when I was out of work I got in more junk miles than usual and that probably accounted for most of the difference.
Hopefully next year I’ll be faster and more focused on racing.
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400 pages on the history of the derailleur!
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So I have been holding out on you, readers. Both of you. I got laid off last april. I didn’t want to post about it here because there wasn’t a direct tie to cycling. And because I didn’t want to seem like I was whining. But now it’s time to own up, because a couple weeks ago I went back to work.
One great thing, at least in theory, about being laid off was that I could ride as much as I wanted to. It turns out that I was already riding about as much as I could stand. I can get my CTL up to about 120 and that’s it for me… any more and I’m in trouble. (Translation for people who aren’t wattage weenies: for me that’s a bunch of 15-18 hour weeks in a row, with a lot of hard climbing). “In trouble” in this case means being too tired to think and needing a second nap after a ride to recover from the first post-ride nap. Even though I wasn’t using any software to monitor it (WKO+ being busted on my Linux box and me not having written the Performance Monitor for GoldenCheetah yet) I managed to hit 121.8 right before the Everest Challenge, just like I’d planned. Maybe training by feel isn’t so bad after all.
I did put in more hours but it was mostly low intensity stuff. Like the Chain Reaction “after” ride… the guys who don’t have to be into work right away go out relatively flat Canada rd. and back at a mellow pace. It’s social and adds about 45 minutes but not a lot of training stress. And I could do a longer “endurance” paced climbing ride during the week as well.
But the best part of being out of work was being able to start my rides a bit later in the morning, so the latter part of the ride would be after the morning commute.
But now that I am back to work I am back to a normal schedule as well. Right now I am in base training but soon I will be getting up early (4:30 instead of sleeping in till 5am) and doing intervals in the dark, just like last year.
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On the Tue/Thurs group ride this morning there were not one but two guys with new bikes.
Mike, who with his brother owns a local two-shop chain of Trek stores, had a spiffy new Madone 6.9. I think that’s the top end Trek frame. He had it outfitted with the new electronic Dura-Ace. Electronic DA has been in the works for years and has also been quite controversial on the various cycling forums. Besides the usual Luddite frothing about any new technology (“Eddie didn’t need that crap to win!”), many posters claimed that it will short out or stop working at an inconveinent time, like in the middle of a sprint or on a steep hill. I did not personally witness either an explosion or a shifting malfunction, but I was safely off the back most of the ride.
The group ride “new bike” protocol goes something like this. You roll up to the ride’s meeting point on your new steed. The guys (and girls if you’re lucky enough to have any on your ride) notice your bike. “Hey, is that a new XYZ?” Then they engage you in bike technobabble, like “is it as laterally stiff and vertically compliant as they say?” Or in the case of electric DA, the talk’s about the shifting precision. It’s good form for the new bike owner to downplay it a bit by finding at least one thing to complain about, no matter how small. It’s most definitely good form for everyone else to be admiring.
Karl blew that however. I was chatting with someone else when I heard a loud “ELECTRONIC SHIFTING? YOU MIGHT AS WELL PUT A MOTOR ON IT!” Mike took it in good humor though.
The reason I was chatting with someone else was that I’d noticed the other Mike, who is a realtor, was also on a new bike. No one else had noticed in the fuss over Mike the shop owner’s bike, so I felt like I owed Mike the realtor some bike admiration.
The ride itself was eh. I was doing ok until we started up the big climb, all of ten minutes into the ride. After that I saved Mike the shop owner from the embarassment of being last up the big climb despite his spiffy laterally stiff yet vertcially compliant crisp shifting new ride. I was “in base training” which is what us serious cyclists call it when we have been riding 8 hours a week for the last month and have been eating like we still were riding 18 hours a week. I’ve gained five pounds since Everest. I’m not yet in the “clyde” camp but I have reached my “oh no, I’m fat!” winter weight. That didn’t take long.
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