Another Cold Morning...Another Looooong Ride!

Ok, after last Sunday's 58 mile ride, I thought this morning's 66 mile ride would just be a little bit tougher. WRONG! It was A LOT tougher! Just like last week, it was cold. We were to be ride ready at 7:30am at Foothill College. Everyone had their winter gear on and ready to go.

We started the morning hearing from an honoree who just joined the cycling team named Lois Rosenblum. Lois was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 2002. Since then, she has had several treatments of Rituxan, a monoclonal antibody. With this treatment came chemotherapy. Today Lois describes her condition as "stable". She looks great and had nothing but words of encouragement as well as appreciation for all of us riders. In her own words Lois said, "Please know that those of us who are hoping for new treatments and cures are so appreciative of your efforts in raising the money needed for such research. We thank you wholeheartedly – GO TEAM!"

Hearing from beautiful people such as Lois continues to validate that what I am doing is one of the best ways I can do something for someone else! No matter how tough the training is!

Ok, on with the ride...Coach Patrick warned us that there would be some climbing on today's route, including a visit to our favorite hill, Mt. Eden. Everyone groaned, but he reminded us that although Palm Springs will not include such hills, there is a lot of wind so the hill training will allow us to be able to prepare for all the wind we will face in Palm Springs.

We headed out right before 8am and it was another good pace! I felt really good and the team looked good too! Mt. Eden came early in the ride (after only about 10 miles) so I kicked its butt! I have been feeling really confident after last week's ride and the new bike was responding well! I was the first one to the top! Right on! Coach Rick and I had a good pace going down the other side of Mt. Eden to the bottom. I love fast descents with lots of corners. I get to use some of my motorcycling skills to attack the corners. Sometimes, I even feel like putting a knee down on the pavement! :)

I forgot to mention that this ride was titled on our TNT calendar as, "Old La Honda Road". Well, after riding through some familiar roads such as Foothill, Alpine, Sand Hill, we came to Old La Honda Rode at about mile 35. We stopped at the bottom of the hill and our team coach, Kristy, gave us a little pep talk and gave us some tips to get up this long, tough, hill. For the life of me, I still can't remember a word that she said!

It was sooooo frickin' hard! I can honestly say that Old La Honda Road kicked my butt! I started with the leaders in my group, but that changed quickly! It was a 3.4 mile climb where so many times I just wanted to quit and have someone get me on the side of the road! Other cyclists with other groups were passing by me like I was standing still. At times, I looked down at my computer and saw that I was moving as slow as 3 mph! I almost fell over I was going so slow. But, I thought better go slow than to stop and lose momentum. I was breathing so hard that I was getting dizzy! My lower back was starting to kill me and then for some reason my arms started to get really sore! Probably because I was holding way too hard on the handlebars!

Remember earlier when I said that I was first up on Mt. Eden? Well, this time, even though I finished, I ended up 2nd to last in my group. And when I got to the top and saw all my teammates waiting for me (there is about 8 riders in our mini-team), I had to get off the bike, stretch my back out and then I thought for sure I was going to throw up! Seriously! I could not catch my breath fast enough! A couple of the coaches/mentors told me how Old La Honda is an infamous climb for bay area riders and now I can say that I have climbed it! Oh yeah, big deal, it kicked my a$$!!

Ok, now we are on Skyline and this is totally familiar to me from my motorcycling days. We ended up at what we used to call "Four Corners" or "Alice's" (for Alice's restaurant). But, unlike my motorcycling days, we didn't stop to eat! Instead, we headed down 84 towards highway 280. The descent was fun, but Coach Kristy and I got caught behind a cargo van so we couldn't get as much speed as we wanted! Oh well.

We ended up on Canada Road and headed towards Edgewood. Again, this area was familiar since we did our pacelining clinics on Edgewood. In fact, we had a rest stop at the corner of Canada and Edgewood. We got to refuel and top off our water bottles thanks again to the great SAG support that is provided by our awesome volunteers! But before going, Coach Kristy warned us that we still had a couple of more hills to get through on this last 18 miles! Great! I along, with my other teammates were definitely tired!

The last 18 miles was really tough with one last climb on Elena at around mile 62. My legs were about to explode! I couldn't believe how sore I was already and we weren't even done. When Coach Rick said, "It's all down hill from here", I just yelled out load! I couldn't believe how happy I was to see the Foothill College parking lot! Wow, it's amazing how I changed from being so confident at the beginning of the morning to feeling like I just got my butt kicked at the end of the ride! Nevertheless, my teammates and I did it! We just rode over 65 miles with a lot of hill climbs. The stats included total miles of 65.81, total time (from start to finish) 6 hours, 4 minutes (although total ride time was about 5 hours...we had 3 rest/bathroom stops), total climbing of about 4665 feet (top hill grade of 14%), top speed of 39.8 mph, approximately 4995 calories burned! Needless to say, I pigged out when I got home! And, even though it was probably one of the hardest things I had to do physically, I was very happy to do it and I did feel good. I didn't want to get in the habit of napping or resting too much so I ended up cleaning the bike, cleaned and lubed the chain, and played Guitar Band with the kids! All in a days work! :) Tomorrow, "Recovery Ride". I don't even know what that is!