Spin Class - Getting Tougher!

Coach Peggy warned us last week that she was going to turn up the intensity of our workouts since the event, February 13, is coming up in just a few more weeks. Well, she kept her word. After about a 5 minute warm up, she decided to tell us what we were in for tonight. All climbing! Variations of seated and standing climbs was theme for this evening!

1 minute sitting, 1 minute standing; 2 minutes sitting, 2 minutes standing; 3 minutes sitting, 3 minutes standing...and so on up to 6 minutes! The legs were burning, but Coach Peggy said it is what we needed to prepare us for our next long ride this weekend...a little over 79 miles starting in Santa Cruz on Saturday. Oh boy!!

Recovery Ride...I Need Lots of Recovery

Coach Don and Coach George hosted this morning's Recovery Ride, which started off of Foothill in Los Altos. It was scheduled to be a short 22 mile (funny how I now consider 22 miles on a bike "short"), flat, easy going ride. The purpose was to just get our legs spinning. I did ask at the beginning of the ride, what's the point of a "recovery ride". I mean wouldn't I be better off recovering in bed? :) Well, everyone laughed (even though I was serious) and said that if we didn't do some sort of easy spinning, our legs would be even more sore tomorrow. Ok, if you say so!

Well, they lied! It was not all flat. Although there were only little hills, my legs were burning up. And, even though it was supposed to be slow, we did get up to about 22 - 24 mph on the flat stuff. Well, we didn't need to, but since a couple of riders in the front were going that pace, I decided to try and keep up with them. Thanks Arielle and Michelle!

Anyway, I'm glad that I did it. I don't know if I won't be sore tomorrow, but I'll take their word for it that I might have been worse off if I didn't go for the ride today!

Next up, of course Spin Class on Thursday, but then Saturday brings us a 79 mile ride starting in Santa Cruz at 6:45 am! WOW, can't wait!

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!

Spinning in the New Year

After being on vacation and only riding some flats, I must admit that I kind of missed hill climbs and spin class! Pretty sick, I know! Well, my mind changed after Coach Peggy told us that we were going to work harder during the new year! Oh great! I was working so hard during the first set of sprints that I broke my spin bike! :) Really, I did. I moved over to the next bike and caught up to the group.

Coach Peggy had us doing sprints, climbs, and jumps! Tough class, but what cracked me up was when Coach Peggy said, "Ok guys, since the rides you guys will be doing will be longer, I am going to start making these spin classes a bit tougher." Tougher? I thought we were already at tough? Oh well, I'll be back for more! There is still about 4 of us who have attended each class and is close to earning our $100 from Coach Peggy!

Hit My Goal...Again!!

I am absolutely amazed! To all my friends and family! You guys rock! You guys are the best! Together we surpassed my fundraising goal of $7,500! WOW!!! As many of you know, I set my initial goal at $5,000. I thought it would be difficult, but I blew that away in only one week thanks to all of you! Many, many, many thanks to all of you who are not only helping to support me in my journey, but for helping to stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives! Like I said when we first started this journey, "Together We Can Fight". http://pages.teamintraining.org/sj/tdps10/hdeguzman

Long Sunday Ride

We were given an extra day to recover from New Years as our next long ride would be on Sunday, 1/3/10! We started out the new year with a nice 58 mile ride starting in Milpitas. I was a bit nervous since this would be by far my longest ride. The last time I rode with my new team, I had cramped up at mile 10. That was not fun and I didn't want that to happen again. We were to be ready to ride at 7:30am. Well, put it this way, I was out in Milpitas by around 6:30am! I was excited and nervous! :)

It was frickin' cold! Excuse my language, but it was very, very cold!! The coaches kept saying not to worry because we wouldn't be cold for very long. Yeah, I guess they were right. We were warned that we had two big hills to get over, Palomares and Calaveras. It was a nice little 15 mile warm up before getting to Palomares. We were all getting psyched to go up our first hill, when we heard, "FLAT!!!" One of our teammates got a flat on his rear wheel right before getting to the hill. As a team, we all waited for him to get his wheel changed. He was having some challenges so we cooled down pretty quick! We saw other teams from our TNT team go by us. After about 30 minutes, we were finally off. Time to attack the hill! One thing that came to me while climbing with one of my riding mates, Henry, was I said, "Hey Henry, you know, I don't think I would ever do a ride or climb like this if I wasn't with this team." The funny thing was that he agreed with me and he has been riding for a long time! I guess my point is that it's thanks to this team that I get to experience this! I love it! Not only am I loving the riding part, but it's all for such a good cause. I never lose site of why I signed up to do this in the first place. If you're wondering why, check out my website at http://pages.teamintraining.org/sj/tdps10/hdeguzman .

The best part about getting to the top of Palomares was seeing my wife, Laarni, and my oldest daughter Hana. Yup, they volunteered to support our first of 3 rest stops. It was so cool to see them. They, along with the other two volunteers were cheering us on! I've never done anything like this in the past so I have nothing to compare to, but I am absolutely amazed at the people who volunteer their time to support us and provide us with great food so that we could refuel! Now, I can say that my family has volunteered to support us on our ride! Awesome feeling!

Ok, as much as it was tempting to get in the van with my family, it was time to go. We had a nice little decent to get to the bottom of the hill. There was 8 of us in our little mini group but we ended up breaking up in two smaller groups of 5 and 3. One of our teammates was feeling a bit sick and cramping so he took it easy. The rest of us charged ahead and even though I haven't ridden very long with these folks, we did a pretty good paceline all the way to the next rest stop at mile 38. Same deal, different volunteers, but great food and fuel! Oh, and a bathroom too! :)

Next hurdle...the Calaveras hill. Our coach told us to just go at our own pace climbing and then we would meet at the bottom of the hill. I tried to keep up with my climbing buddy Henry, but after a while he dropped me. He was chasing one of our other teammates Barry. He took the lead up the hill, followed by Henry and then me! Not bad for someone who was on a slower team just two weeks prior. I owe it all to the hill climb repeats! Now I know what everyone was talking about when they said that climbing Calaveras could be frustrating because once you think you're starting a decent, here comes another hill! I had to crack up a few times because it started to get pretty funny! I actually enjoyed it. My new bike was working really well! Whenever I "hammered" it, the bike just responded and seemed to move so easily and fast!

We got to the bottom right before our final decent and we waited for the rest of the team. It was all downhill from there! I followed Coach Rick to the bottom and all I can say is that we were flying! We hit speeds of 42 mph! I'm sure there is a lot faster out there, but man, that felt really fast!! Coach Rick even said that he was impressed with how fast I was going! We made it back to our cars and all I could do was yell! I was sooooo pumped up finishing 58 miles and I still felt like I had more in the tank!

The best part of the ride....no cramps!!!! I'm getting better! Can't wait until next week's Old La Honda ride...68 miles!!

Happy Holidays!!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! This year, the family and I decided to go down to Southern California to spend some time with my brother and his family. But, I had to bring the bike with me to keep up with the training! With a van full of kids, luggage, and presents, the trusty ole steed had to go on top of the van on a bicycle rack! I hope she'll be ok!

Probably one of the best presents I could get from my wife, Laarni, was when she told me that she wanted to try and enjoy this new found sport of cycling with me! Yup, we found a bike shop near my brother's home in Chino that rented some nice Specialized (all carbon fiber frame) bikes. They also sold some nice cycling clothes. Laarni has always done well in the sport of shopping! :o)

Laarni had not ridden in over 20 years. Her first ride was around my brother's neighborhood, which by the way was very bike friendly since they had bike lanes everywhere, and she successfully pedaled for about 13 miles. The day after Christmas, we decided to head out on the Santa Ana River Trail. We went out and rode 22 miles. Not bad for someone who didn't know how to shift gears or use the brakes! It was a fun day. So now what, Laarni needs a new bike. Well, the great supportive wife that she is, recommends to me that I give her my bike and then I go out and shop for a new bike! WHAT? Uh, ok, I'll sacrifice and buy a new bike dear!!

Needless to say, it didn't take me long to find something that would work for me! Since we were down south, I looked around down there, test drove some bikes and even looked on-line. I found the new bike at a shop (Art's Cyclery, which by the way provides excellent customer service and has a fantastic shop) San Luis Obispo. Instead of driving home on hwy 5, we decided to go up 101 and pick up the new bike! I was ready for the new year on a new bike!! I feel faster already!