It might appear I have forsaken this blog, moved all my ramblings to FaceBook with so many others. Such is not the case, I have just been caught up in life. My spring was dominated by a job search, as I worked to remove myself from the unemployment statistics. It was an up and down process, one that was more work than a daily job, and I ultimately succeeded in garnering three job offers. The job I took is an easy commute distance: 20 minutes walking, less by bike. As soon as I landed the new job, The Wife changed jobs and returned to her previous employer. Her commute is almost as short, being only about a half mile north of where I toil daily. It is truly wonderful to be commute-free for the most part.
Once I had a new job I threw myself into the task of fully rebuilding the strength I lost last year. I said ‘au revoir’ to the orthopedic surgeon who was opposed to physical therapy and started hitting the gym (at the office, 20 minutes from home) twice a week for weight training. And I have returned to the occasional yoga session, hopefully stepping that up as the fall progresses to winter. With the new job, working on full recovery, and helping the wife in her goals, and working on long neglected home maintenance, there has not been much time to sit down and tap at the keyboard much less anything of real interest to write about. Now it is time for me to get back to some basics. I will be participating in some century rides this fall, both organized and self-directed, getting the house and yard in shape, and working on trying to establish a new doctor-patient relationship with the objective of developing a plan to get the metal out of my hip. I’ll have a bit more time this month, as The Wife will be taking her parents on a cycling tour of western Washington starting next Saturday. Now to buckle down and get started.
For the past three or so months one of my primary goals has been to rebuild the strength on my right hip and to get back some endurance. The main problem with the former is some restrictions on the types of strength building activities I can undertake, and the main problem with regaining the endurance I had in the past is just finding the hours to spend in the saddle. A couple of months back, during the rainy days of February when it was hard to get motivated I knew I needed a nudge. To push myself towards spending the hours on the bike, and to assess my progress, I signed myself up for a couple of local century rides. The first of those was held yesterday, the first really warm day we have had this year by coincidence.
My current assessment is I failed the test. Early in the day I thought things were good and I was thinking of extending the ride to be 120+ miles. In the end I took a cutoff and rode a mere 76 miles and change. The problems stemmed from the one significant climb of the day, to the park headquarters of Henry Coe, a net gain of 2200′ in about 9 miles. I felt good at the start of the climb, weaving my way around other riders and progressing steadily. But the consistent 10-17% grades took their toll and by the time I hit that 17% section just before the summit there was nothing left in the legs and I had to fight for every inch of elevation gain. I still thought I was alright, took on some food and hydration and stretched out before starting back down, but the small climb out the basin of Anderson reservoir showed how depleted the muscles were. There was no power, and every time I attempted to push them they surrendered and their counterparts cramped in defiance. I stopped, rested a bit, stretched out some more, but there was nothing.
I headed southward to continue, aided by a nice tailwind, but everytime I tried to push it a bit the problems cropped up. A few miles down the road my teammate Derrick caught up with me, suffering his own similar problems related to his knee. We discussed and decided the better part of valor was to cut off the second climbing loop, to Gilroy Hot Springs, and head to the cars. Calling ourselves the ‘gimp patrol’ we passed the turnoff to the Springs and limped back to where we started. Not exactly the result I envisioned, but my body made it clear that it was not ready, yet.
Now it is time to assess my plans for two weeks from now when I will be joining The Wife and a bunch of friends on another similar test. The early discussions have revolved over who is doing the 100 mile, who is doing the ‘official’ metric century, and who will do the ‘unofficial’ sort of metric cut-off version of the 100 miler. I’ve been in the 100 miler camp, alone, all along. Now I have to decide whether to give in to what the body said yesterday, or push for a better result.
The Wife does an annual Christmas ‘letter’ (now an email, rather than a standard old-school snail mail offering) to keep friends and family up with what has happened in our lives over the past year. That is a bit too much work for me, given that most of what has happened over the past year has been covered here in blogland. But it has been weeks since I have posted, and though not much has transpired it is time to put 2008 to rest and ramp up for 2009.
The Quest
During our brief trip to Hawaii I was reunited with one of my weaknesses. Yes, I admit it; I have this thing for cinnamon rolls. Island Lava Java in Kona does a fitting version. Since we returnied I have been on the quest to find a local version that stands muster. Unfortunately, so far all the candidates forget that cinnamon is the operative word. Some I have tried in the past couple of months have hardly any cinnamon, and try to cover the omission by layering on too much tasteless ‘frosting’. Others use commercial grade cinnamon that has barely any taste no matter how much they use. Come on bakers of the world; a good quality Vietnamese, Chinese Cassia, or Korintje is so much better than that flavorless commercial grade Schillings or McCormick’s and not that much more expensive. I wonder where I can find a ‘cinnamon roll’ worthy of the name without jumping on a plane for Kona, and without breaking out the yeast, flour, etc. on my own.
The Trip
The Wife promised her parents that we would escort them on their first bike tour, a short run from southern San Luis Obispo county to the Santa Barbara area. That was our major event of the holiday season, a two day, 97 mile journey. I’ll let her fill in the details, but the genesis of the route selection was my former desire to do the one day version of the trip, returning northward on the Amtrack Surf-Liner. I now would like to do that one day trip as my endurance and power gets back to normal. Time to start thinking of when I might be able to pull it off. I’ll be back in the area on two weeks, accompanying The Wife as she participates in Bella training camp, but I suppose I will have enough to do then working as pack mule.
The Odometers
I finished with 2008 with a bit under 4K miles, total, on the odometers of the various bikes. The least since I started keeping track in 2001, and only sligthly more than 2002 when I had my last recovery hiatus. I feel like such a slackard, looking at the chart showing 9K miles two years ago next to less than half that this year. I will be trying to get back to something more respectable this year, especially since I believe I need to spend some time in the saddle to build back the endurance I have lost since my accident in June.
I Resolve
Actually, I do not resolve. I am not one for New Years resolutions. To paraphrase from ‘Treasure of the Sierra Madre’: resolutions? resolutions? I don’t need no stinking resolutions.
So don’t look for me to fall off the resolution wagon. If you don’t make them, you can’t break them. Stay tuned to see what does transpire.
… data. I figure that if I am going to continue to do some racing then I need to get a bit more serious, actually do a training regimen, and then I might need some data. And then it gets down to a question of what data and which data collection device. Ugh!
I had been ignoring the issue for a number of reasons.
Holding off on spending $$$ until the taxman has come and gone (hopefully with no more of our $$$).
Waiting to get over my loathing of the PowerTap after dealing with The Wife’s early Pro model which has lots of warts.
Waiting to see how serious I will be at racing.
I am not big on collecting new toys.
But then last week ‘Uncle REI’ informed me of my yearly rebate, err, dividend which is a bit on the high side due to a number of purchases made for work. REI does not carry power devices, except the Polar, but they do have the Garmin’s (though they do not quality for the 20% off one item deal). Hmmmm, says I. That overcomes the first reason. OK, need some time to think this over. It would seem silly to get a Garmin if I were to get a PowerTap soon; no reason to lug both around. And though the new Garmin 705 works with the SRM it does not work with the PowerTap (PowerTap uses the early ANT protocol, not ANT+), so there is no way to get all the information collected in one device. And until the SRM comes off patent and inexpensive 3rd party knock-offs come out I will not go down that path. What to do, what to do?
While musing on it over the weekend I joined up for the Saturday PenVelo ride (thanks folks) and did a bit of an survey. Funny it was an even split among the participants, 2 for the PowerTap, 2 for the Garmin, the rest (20+) undecided (of course the real zealots were at Merco). So for now the data I collect will be speed and cadence (average and max) and will continue to wonder what I am missing, other than frustration.
The Wife and I will celebrate our anniversary in just over a month, and this weekend I started committing to the plan. Of course for those romantics with thoughts of fancy get-aways in some exotic or semi-exotic location they do not know The Wife all that well. This is the woman whom, when we first started spending time together outside of work, told me that she was not fond of girly gifts like perfume and jewelry but was rather more inclined to things like sports equipment. The first real gift I gave her was a complete gruppo for a bike she bought, and she was thrilled.
Our first anniversary fell just a couple of weeks before her first road race, the Wente Vineyards RR. But rather than sit on her laurels or train for the race she decided it would be fun for us to do a century ride together (actually it was supposed to be a 200K ride, but we opted at the cut-off to make it just a 100M event). For a while it looked like those plans would be rained on, literally, but the skies cleared and we had the first dry day in a week or two for the event. And it was a wonderful ride.
Our second anniversary fell near the time of Sea Otter, and the wife was committed to do the circuit race the Friday of that week. So our anniversary was a weekend together in Monterey with the circuit race and the Sea Otter tour (a century) as the bookends. Fortunately Friday and Sunday were good weather, but on Saturday ‘Laguna Seca’ was threatening to become a real lake again as the skies opened and the rain poured down. The Sea Otter tour was a fun group event with members of her team and club joining us for that nice loop of the northern end of the Santa Lucia mountains.
This year the anniversary falls just before the Madera Stage Race, so guess what we are going to do for our anniversary? I have a motel room booked in beautiful Madera and I am registered in the 55+ (open) category. There was some talk of me registering in the 35+ 4/5, but that field was full within a few hours of the opening of registration. The Wife still needs to register, but since the number of W4 entrants at this point is 0 that should not be a problem.
I wonder what we will do for the next anniversary?
The Wife and I did a trip to Portland in late June/early July 2006 for some personal business. Knowing we would be there for a week or so we packed the S&S coupled touring bikes and lugged them northward with us. We found Portland to be quite accommodating and were soon comfortable pedaling around the city and out into the surrounding countryside, often getting around faster on bike than we would in a car. While we were there we heard that one of the city council guys was doing a once a month get-together on the first Thursday of each month to show off one aspect of the community and that the one coming up during our stay was a bicycle show. That Thursday we went east from the city and rode a part of the Columbia River Gorge, returning to town to in time for the event. It was not hard to find the show, we just had to follow all the bicycles! There were so many bicycles parked in front of city hall that there was not room for any more; in some spots bikes were actually stacked on top on other bikes due to the lack of parking space relative to need. We ended up lashing our bikes up a block away, the closest spot we could find that was not already taken. Inside city hall it was a combination handbuilt bicycle show and beerfest, the latter sponsored by Chris King. We got to ogle some lovely work by the likes of Sasha at VanillaBicycles, Natalie at SweetPea, Joseph at Ahearne, Tony at Pereira, and quite a few others. Lots of eye candy for those who love a nice bike. We were left full of bike lust and an enhanced desire for custom rigs, in part to support some of these excellent crafts people.
In just over a week from now, on Feb. 8th, the North American Handmade Bicycle Show opens its doors in Portland, moving north after running the first three years in San Jose. I wished I had an excuse to run up to Portland for a day or two; the convention center is a quick ride on the Tri-Met light rail from the airport. I’d love to ogle all the eye candy, do some interviews of builders, and get a sense of who is doing what. It is not just academic any longer. Sure it is nice to look, touch, and dream. But, The Wife has already gone on record as stating she would like a nice custom racing bike in the not so distant future so at some point we will need to talk to some of these builders. The Colnago I ride, which is a wonderful bike, is a tad too tall for me and at some point I will want to get a racing bike that is more my size. All the better to have it made by hand by someone with whom you can talk, convey your wishes, and, if the planets align, go riding with on an occasion or two. Anyone have some work to be done in Portland somewhere around the 9th of February? Give me a plane ticket, or two, and I will be there.
One of the skills supposedly covered this week in the Early Birds was to ride into and fill gaps in the pack. For me this week has been all about trying to ride in the gaps between storms. The National Weather Service doppler maps have been yellow and orange far to much of this week for me to get out for serious riding much of the time. I worked from home on Monday, then commuted on Tuesday through Thursday, but then opted for staying off the bike, and drier, when the heavy, sustained rain of Friday reared its head.
The small startup for which I work just got access to the ‘gym’ in the business park where we rent office space. I thought that taking a day off the bike on Friday and doing some weight work would be a good idea. Then I got into the gym on Friday. Let’s just say I have friends with better setups in their garage than is in the so-called gym. Oh, well, at least I did a bit of weight work and some work on the abs before using the shower, the only bright spot in having access to the gym. With access to the shower I can now do training rides on my way to work and not offend my co-workers.
Saturday was supposed to be more of the same weather; our friend (and teammate of The Wife) Erika decided to host a garage trainer workout party for the team but invited some of us with Y chromosomes to participate, too. I was thinking I would take the rollers and demonstrate my skills, similar to the guys in the video (yeah, right …), but the weather was clear, calm, and warmer than the past few days, all leading to the decision to do the workout on the road. It was great out, doing hill intervals until the legs felt like mush, then a nice tempo ride on a southern loop back home. The hills to the east, which had been covered in snow and clouds all week, were clearly visible with only a couple small patches of white stuff left near the top of Mt. Hamilton. I was wishing there was something left in the tank so I could go ascend that monster, but opted for home and lunch, instead.
The rain had started again on Saturday night, so I was expecting a possible ‘pass’ on the Early Birds, especially since ‘Meet the Teams’ was delayed a week so The Wife was not obligated to go and sit for hours under the big top while handing out food and beverage to potential recruits. Sunday morning we awoke to dry roads and partly cloudy skies, with nothing of interest on the doppler. So a quick, carbo dense breakfast and we loaded up and headed to Fremont. The Wife participated in the Women’s clinic while I socialized and watched the growing gray mass to the south. The rain held off … until about 30 seconds after my group started on the road. Perfect timing! Sheesh. The shower was brief and after a couple of laps the only weather issue was the stiff 15-25MPH wind out of the southeast. By that time I was in caloric deficit mode, having left home in such a hurry that I neglected to grab any extra food items, which meant digging deep into the reserves to stay with the yellow ‘mice’ who kept punching the pace up. In the end I was able to keep integrated most of the time (one brief bit OTB) and got a pretty good workout.
Next week I plan on returning for the last Early Bird of the year, in part to do some interviewing with some of the local teams to see if I stay with Team Unattached or opt for one of the more structured groups. The requirement for a Master’s program and that training rides be in the geographic area I live and/or work in has narrowed the field to three candidates. A fourth squad, the green and whites is out as the anti-social aspect of some of the membership which has made the team a bit of a pariah in the bigger community; wearing the green and white would make some of my friends loathe to ride with me and might harm some of my advocacy work in the region. So it is down to the black/blue/whites that carry the name of the largest city in the region (and which I must join, anyway, to ride in their twilight crits), the red/yellows which has the most extensive sponsorship (and biggest track presence of the three), or the red/whites which are centered near where I work. I had crossed off the red/white group, The ratio of X chromosomes to Y’s is way too close to 1, but two of my friends have reportedly committed to the team. Decisions, decisions. All to think about while I do circles of the business park.
Saturday I decided to test the lungs, the legs, the mucous producing machinery by doing a brief jaunt into the Los Altos Hills area. The legs were OK, not great, but the lungs were straining to find room for some air in between the resevoirs of mucous that had filled over the past two weeks. Even though I was riding tempo I kept the speed moderated, in part a concession to the lungs, in part to make sure I had control as I fired off countless ’snot rockets’. By the time I got home the throat was agitated, leading to a few good coughing fits through the rest of the day. Hmmm, perhaps it was a bit too soon to climb back into the saddle.
Did I learn my lesson and throttle back? You must be kidding! Sunday I got up ready to put myself out there in Early Bird #3, having missed #1 and #2 due to the combination of weather and the now infamous cold. But I needed to warmup first, right? And what better way to warmup for a few circuits of the industrial park than to ride 19 miles to the event? Little did I know what was in store.
The first surprise was rain; about 2 miles from home I entered the precipitation zone, light but steady, enough to get me and the bike thoroughly covered in that black, oily road run-off. At about mile 4 I seriously considered turning around and going back for the car, but was I smart enough to take the wise choice? Noooooo! Surprise #2 was a drive train problem, finally traced to debris that had gotten thrown up into the rear cassette. As the problem started I considered turning back and getting the car, but still I was not smart enough to follow my intuition. Surprise #3 was flooding on the approach to the Dumbarton bridge and the entrance to the bike lane on the bridge. I had to ford through water 2-3″ deep to get started on my way to cross the bridge, and by this time it was too late to consider turning back for the car. If that was not enough, right after crossing the bridge I realized my rear tire was going flat. When it rains, it pours, as they say.
By some miracle I did make it to the Early Bird with a few minutes to spare. And to add to the fun the first 7 miles of the trip back was straight into a stiff headwind. Mucous production seemed to have increased, and keeping that in check while riding in the pack was loads of fun; I am sure some of the other riders were amused at the long strands that kept dripping off the nose. And all that fun and games tweaked the throat even more, leading to more and longer coughing spells through the afternoon and evening. I am so ready to get back to my normal, healthy self. But moderate? What’s that?
I wanted to take a look at the San Bruno Mtn. course so The Wife and I took a trip north today to do some ups and downs on the mountain. After the rains of the past couple of days the weather was near perfect, and the views from the top were fantastic. I was wishing for a camera; San Francisco was looking lovely and you could make out all the details in every building. We started with a warm-up ride to the top, or at least it was a warm-up for me on the upper part. The Wife was not liking it so much, and for the first part I was having trouble getting the heart rate above 140 bpm or so on the lower sections. The final ride up I rode with a target time in mind, but I missed it by a couple of minutes. Of course about a minute of that was taken with waiting at one of the stop lights as some fool sat on the detector and refused to turn so I could not go through. And I blew out less than a half mile from the top; need to moderate that section a bit more. I set my target time with no knowledge of past times up the hill; I had been ignoring results from the past. After I got home I found that my target would have put me in the top 3 of my category (Cat ‘Old Fogey’) last year. A tad aggressive, but perhaps achievable. The more interesting revelation is that The Wife now wants to race it on Tuesday; she pre-registered right after we got home today.
Setting the stage(s)
The Wife was very upset that she could not participate in the fun at the Kern stage race last year; a friend chose that weekend for her wedding. The Wife did the Madera Stage Race as an alternative, but had committed to doing Kern in 2008. She wants to do Madera in 2008, too, as a warm-up. Last night I made room reservations for both events, so now the commitment deepens. I might do Madera, but a lot depends on logistics; how to get two of us to stages in different locations at the same time will be the issue. We will have to see who else is at Madera and what type of ride-sharing to the stages we can arrange. Madera is on our anniversary weekend; what a crazy way to celebrate!
We seem to have hit a theme; meet some nice folks (aka Alicat and Merkeley) at a distant location and do a nice rural ride. On the 23rd we met the ‘Dots’ at a location in the Santa Lucia Mountains west of Paso Robles for a pre-holiday exploration of some of the rural roads in the area. The Wife had chosen the route, a loop following Santa Rosa Creek down to the town of Cambria, following Highway 1 south to Cayucos, then going up along Old Creek and back to the top. Out of interest I mounted my trusty old Garmin eTrex Vista to the Colnago and recorded the route; GPS Visualizer cranked away at the data and shows what The Wife already knew: there were a couple of sections a bit steep for her liking!
It was a great ride! Santa Rosa Creek Canyon was spectacular in late fall glory, as were the upper reaches of Old Creek Canyon. The oaks were resplendent, having shed much of their bumper crop of acorns. We wove by orange groves, wound past pastures, spent a short bit of time along the coast, and sailed through avocado orchards. We eschewed the standard energy bars for delectable treats from a bakery in Cambria, and enjoyed the scenery and company. The weather cooperated for the most part with beautiful blue skies, temperatures warm enough, and even the wind demons moderated to a degree. At the end of the ride we had a nice time sitting around and talking over wine and tasty snacks. A hearty thanks to hosts Merkeley and Alicat, who even gave us a good recommendation for a fine Zinfandel (Turley “Dusi”) to pick up at the winery on the way out. More photos are in the gallery here.
