Riding Pics

Only a few more days to the big event! I'm excited but definitely nervous. I'll take tomorrow off to get everything (bike, clothes, food) ready for the trip.

Meanwhile, here are some new pics from earlier rides. Enjoy!

Showing my Game Face

Finally! Proof that I really do ride the bike! Here I am pulling the group. They're all smiling. I must be doing a good job!

Wicked Beautiful

Note: today, May 21, is the final day to submit donations to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. If you'd like to support me with a donation, please visit my fundraising page. Thanks for your consideration!

Yesterday we rode our final and longest training ride of the season. It was 80 miles long, from Santa Cruz, up the coast all the way up to San Gregorio, and then back along Highway 1. During those moments when I could actually look up and enjoy the scenery, it was spectacular: coastline, waves, farmland, charming old farm houses.

It was very hard for me. On the way up, we were fighting a headwind and had to really rely on our paceline to conserve energy. When I got to the front of the line to lead, it was like hitting a wall! To lead into the wind, you'd have to downshift, even if you were going downhill. By the time we made it to San Gregorio, I was pretty tired. I inhaled calories and salt as much as I could, including such fine nutrition as brownies (several!), potato chips, peanut butter cookies, ... and of course lots of water.

On the way back, our team was anxious to get take advantage of the tail wind that we now had, and they started hammering it home! While we usually average ~15 miles/hour overall on our rides, we were flying down the coast at 20-25 mph! I was struggling to stay with the group. I'm not sure why it was so hard, but I sure hope the trend doesn't continue to our event in only two weeks.

I brought my little camera along in my jersey and snapped some pictures when we stopped en route. Sorry, no action shots. When we were riding, it was all I could do to hang on!

TNT Spring 2007 Santa Cruz 80 Miler

For the Love of Bike

I love my bike more than my car, but this guy takes it to the next level!
2006: Man of the year award, Pictures - office-humour.co.uk

Colorful Calaveras Ride

A few weeks ago, we rode from Milpitas through Niles all the way to Pleasanton and back! As a runner, it always impresses me how much more territory you can cover on a bike. I traced out the pretty picture of our route below. Our route was the outline of the purple region at right. Don't be distracted by the other colorful areas next to the SF Bay -- those are the salt evaporation ponds!

This was a beautiful ride through some East Bay foothills. And, it's where I was introducted to Spam Sushi, which really hits the spot (rice=carbohydrates, salt) on a long ride!  

Takeaways from a 71 mile ride

Have a dehydration headache
Taste the salt on my face, see it on my clothes
First time that being small is an advantage

The songs for today are

• Cycling is Fun, Shonen Knife
• Bicycle Race, Queen

Climb. Descend. Repeat.

During the week, I've been dutifully working out on my own, either attending Spinning class, lifting weights, or running with my buddies. But, the cycling coaches strongly encourage us to attend a mid-week session on "hill repeats", to make us stronger for climbing.

The formula is simple: find a hill with a good ~1 mile climb, ride up to the top and return, and repeat several times. Well finally I attended my first hill repeat session, on Mt. Eden Road in Saratoga. Not only was it at 7am, but just my luck, it was lightly raining for my debut!

I was feeling kind of lost since I'd never met for this before, but finally I found our knowledgable leader, Vijay, and he showed me the way. When we arrived at the base of the hill, we found another teammate, Audrey, already there and having completed a couple of repetitions already. AND, she had rode over from home. Tough chick! :-)

The climbing was perfectly hard: not painful, but challenging and long. Vijay led us through the paces, mixing it up by climbing in different gears and cadences. I usually like to descend fast, but I was spooked by the rain and wet roads and took the curves pretty slow. I thought Vijay said we were finished after 3-4 climbs (I've lost count!), but he twisted our arms with "just one more" so we ended up doing 5-6 rounds.

Here's our course map, below. It's nice -- not much traffic, pretty, and peaceful. I can even attest that it's nice in the rain. ;-)