Ride Around the Bottom of the Bay - A Day of Flats!

The ride for today was titled, "66 Miles Around the Bottom of the Bay". Today was considered a "buddy ride" which means that it's not an official TNT ride, which means it's unsupported (ie: food on our own and no ride support). It also meant that you ride at your own pace and you ride with whomever you want to.

I don't know why, but when I went to sleep last night, I wasn't as nervous as I was the prior week. In fact, I caught myself saying, "hmmm...I don't need to get up too early tomorrow morning, it's only a 66 mile ride tomorrow"! DOH!! Would I regret thinking that way later!

We started in Los Altos and our route was to take us about 15 miles to the Dumbarton bridge. The past week was filled with rainy days so we were lucky that it wasn't raining...yet! We started the ride and wouldn't you know it that it started raining on mile 2! We were getting soaked! Our first stop was a restroom stop at mile 14 right before we were to go over the Dumbarton bridge. Luckily it stopped raining and we didn't see anymore rain for the day. In fact, we got some sun for part of our ride.

Going over the bridge was a trip! I've lived in the bay area all my life and I think I've been over the Dumbarton bridge once in my life and of course it was in a car. I never knew there was a bike lane on the bridge. This is where one of our teammates got his first of 3 flats. I didn't know he got a flat until I was already off the bridge on the eastern side. We had to ride in single file and it was hard to hear anything since all the cars were passing by. That teammate decided to call it a day at around mile 23 when he got his 3rd flat! It wasn't until later that I found out that another teammate had brought a friend to ride with us and that friend actually got 2 flats before getting to the bridge so she called it a day as well.

One of my teammates, Annette and I were ahead of the pack when we made it over the bridge. Since our other teammate who got the flat was with one of the coaches, Annette and I decided to keep go ahead since it was getting cold and were still wet from the rain. We got to Patterson Ranch in Fremont. We had no clue where we should be going next so we rode around a bit and tried to wait for the rest of the team. We definitely thought we went the wrong way so we decided to go back towards the road we came in on. Once we saw other teammates, one of the mentors asked us if we did the loop already? We were like, "what loop." She said, follow me so we did.

I guess we were going in the right direction and just needed to do the "loop". The loop was around a large hill in the park that we would have definitely thought we were lost if we kept going. What we didn't realize was that it was a big loop that would get us back on the same road that we came in on. Oh well, whats a few extra miles! The only bad thing is that we lost a lot of time waiting so we were in for a looooong day!

Ok, after regrouping with the rest of the team, we headed out with 4 of us in a small group. The other three included my one teammate, Annette, and then two TNT Mentors, Arielle and Butch. What all three of these guys had in common is that they are all fast! I had my work cut out for me! In fact, by mile 40, I was done! My legs just couldn't go anymore! I was so tired. I slowed it down and let the three of them go ahead of me. I tried to keep a constant cadence and not push too hard. I came to a corner where I saw the other three waiting for me. I told them that they didn't have to wait but they were very cool and said, "Hey, we are a team!" I think what really got me was when Annette said, "C'mon Harold, what are you a B#$%$? Suck it up!" Wow, not what I would expect from a lady! :o) Nevertheless, that got me motivated to step it up and dig deep in the fuel tank! I took in a GU pack and went from "sad to glad"!!!

At around mile 47 (we were in Milpitas by this time) , Arielle (one of our mentors) got a flat! Whew, I don't mind the rest even though I didn't tell them that. :o) She changed it pretty fast though so off we went again. At about mile 50, Arielle got another flat. Ok, now I didn't wish for this rest! She didn't have another tube but she still had her last one and a patch kit. But to save time, I gave her my spare tube. Ok, changed it out again and then this time, we decided to try and use her CO2 cartridge to fill the tire (don't ever use one of these). Well, it didn't help that none of us have ever used one of these? I mean what the worse that could happen? The cartridge filled her tire in about 3 seconds! It was instant! So Arielle puts the tire on and instantly the tire went flat again!! She had to take the tire off the bike again. Something is wrong! We tried pumping air into the tire with a regular pump but it wasn't holding air. Could I have given her a bad tube? Was it the CO2 cartridge?

Since we were down to one last tube between all four of us, Mentor Butch decided to take the wheel off the tire and inspect the wheel and tire carefully. Both Butch and I were also supposed to be somewhere by 3pm and we knew that wasn't going to happen so we had to make phone calls to our wives. While I had the phone out, I took a picture of my 3 teammates on the side of the road. Say hi to Annette, Butch and Arielle (standing). How many TNT people does it take to change a tube? LOL!! All we could do was laugh...what a long day!

The last 16 or so miles was tough. It was getting cold, lots of traffic, and the headwind was picking up. Mentor Butch led us back to Los Altos and we drafted behind him the rest of the way! What a lifesaver! What was supposed to be a 66 mile ride ended up being a 70 mile ride for Annette and I. Total ride time was only 4 hours 41 minutes, but total time from start to finish was 7 hours exactly! A lot of time definitely wasted, but still a great workout and I got to see the bottom of the bay!

One thing is for sure. I have met a lot of people who have ridden for a long time and never ride in the rain. I have been riding my bike for only about 3 months and I can say that I have a lot of experience riding in the rain! That also means that I have a lot of cleaning to do on the bike!

Spin Class - Anaerobic Workout!

We usually warm up for few minutes, but coach Peggy said to go ahead and spin and warm up our legs for about 10 minutes. Ok, why is she being so easy on us? Something is up! Yup, she said that tonight's workout would be an anaerobic one! What does that mean? It means, "without oxygen"! Enough said! I am still trying to catch my breath! Last spin class next week! Yippeee!!!!!

Sunday Recovery Ride

Ok, this was a game time decision as to whether (or weather) or not I was going to the recovery ride in Los Altos. When I woke up it was not raining so I went on-line and checked weather.com (yeah I know, how naive of me to believe weather.com). Anyway, forecast was for rain to start at around 1pm. We should be able to get our 22 mile recovery ride in and be done by around 11am. So off I went!

I got to Los Altos and only Coach Don was there. Ok, did everyone else bail? Here comes a few more people. But that's it, there were only 5 of us total and I was the only participant to show up. Oh well, it was a bit cool, but at least it was dry...for now!

We go north on Foothill and then make a left onto Page Mill Road, then an immediate slight right onto Old Page Mill to try and avoid some traffic. Back onto Page Mill, under hwy 280, and then a right onto Arastradero to the Arastradero Preserve. Here, three of us, Mentor Butch, Mentor Geoff, and I waited for the other two to arrive. Coach Don was taking it easy this morning as he had a long day yesterday in Santa Cruz. Coach Don's group was out on a very long ride yesterday (approximately 10 hours). After they arrived and after a quick water break we headed back via Alpine Road. We usually smoke down this fun hill. But today, wouldn't you know it, it started to pour on us! Yup, another ride where we got soaked! So much for the rain staying away until 1pm!

We made it back a little after 11:15am and tried to dry off as best as we could. It would have been easier to just stay in bed this morning, but then again, what fun would that have been! :) Rain, rain, go away!!!!!

Long, Cold, Wet, and Dark Saturday Morning Ride

We were to be ride ready at 6:45 am starting at the Twelve Bridges National Park in Santa Cruz. I like to be at least 30 - 60 minutes early to ensure that I have plenty of time to get my bike prepped and ready to go, get the necessary gear on and just socialize with some of the other participants and team members. But that would mean that I would need to be on the road by 5:30 am. I decided to set two alarm clocks for 4:45 am. What a night though! It was so frustrating. I tried to get to bed by 9 pm so that I could be well rested for the scheduled 79.6 mile ride. But all I did was stay up until about 2 am! I could not sleep. I felt a bit nervous, probably a bit anxious too! I finally fell asleep and then I remember the alarm going off, but then next thing I knew I looked up and it was 5:20 am! AHHHHH!! I hate that feeling!

Ok, out the door by 5:45 am so only about 15 minutes behind "my" schedule. I ate a light breakfast in the car on the way to Santa Cruz. Arrived at around 6:30 am and immediately got the bike ready to roll. The difficult part was putting air in my tires since it was still so dark! Hope I don't get a flat!!

I'm usually one of the first ones to arrive at a ride, but this time most of the participants were there before me. Oh well, I was still ready to go by 6:45, just not on the schedule that I had for myself! I tried to forget about how much sleep I had last night and just focused on keeping up with my team on the ride.

The route sheet showed that we would be going up north on hwy 1, making a few right turns to visit some "contours" as the coaches described them. Ok, whatever, these coaches love to lie! Just call it a hill already!! Nothing like Old La Honda, but we did have some wind so some of the hills were still tough for me.

This was our longest ride yet and I could tell that everyone was feeling it. I heard a lot of people complaining about their bottoms hurting! Mine was too, but really not that bad, I just stood up and tried to stretch out as much as possible. I did feel my right calf cramp up at about mile 50, but nothing too bad where i was not able to stretch it while on the bike and prevent it from locking up too bad. We got to La Honda Road (hwy 84) at mile 41 and then we headed back south on hwy 1. Not a straight shot though. Of course, the coaches wanted us to take a scenic route to do more sightseeing...like more "contours"! We took a left at Pescadero Creek and then a right to Bean Hollow before heading back onto hwy 1.

We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful area! While riding back on hwy 1, you really get to see how beautiful the ocean/beach is! The waves were really crashing. I wanted to ask the group to stop so that we could take a picture, but I figure the rest of my teammates may want to kill me because they just wanted to get back home!! :) But I did get a few photos at our last rest stop at mile 54. It was at the Lighthouse in Pescadero. The views are spectacular! No, that's not a dunce cap on my head, that's the lighthouse!

Ok, after the last rest stop, we had a little under 30 miles to go...home stretch. Yeah, as we would expect that last part of the ride was hard. We had a lot of head wind and the rolling hills, I mean "contours", on hwy 1 kept it challenging. Then, at about mile 67, the rain started coming down! We were getting soaked. Not to mention that it was difficult to see and the cars going by on hwy 1 were moving! But as weird as it sounds, it was pretty cool riding in the rain, watching the waves crash on the rocks. Mother nature is pretty amazing and to be outside watching while riding and getting a great workout was a fantastic feeling! We are truly lucky to live where we do!

As we got back to Twelve Bridges, my team mates and I each high fived each other for finishing another long and challenging ride! It is such a great feeling to finish a ride like that, but even more so is the feeling of accomplishing something like that with a team (I know it sounds corny). We saw our Team Manager, Christina, who had some leftover food from the rest stops so we hung out with her for a while! :) Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches never tasted so good!

Total miles - 79.58; total time start to finish - 7 hours 9 minutes; total actual ride time - 5 hours 55 minutes; total climbing - 4,294 feet; total calories burned - 5,022; top speed - 38.8 mph, only 1 flat tire the whole ride and was changed by the rider in about 11 minutes.

I will definitely need a recovery ride tomorrow...I just hope I could get up. I had two dinners tonight. One at around 4pm and another at 10pm. I think I ate a whole cow this evening! (my apologies to those who don't eat meat)! :)

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!