Crossing Wheels

I'm way late in reporting the Team ride from Saturday. Darn life getting in the way. I'm a little fuzzy on the details now so I'll keep it brief.

The ride was about the same as last week's route through Rancho Santa Fe with the addition of "Stud Loop".

Here's a map of the entire route, courtesy of Google Earth.




















3-28-09 Route

The little loop de loop on the upper right is called Stud Loop. I've enlarged the map so you can get a feel for what it's like.
















Stud Loop (Click on the image)

This particularly scenic route is a joy to ride. The rolling route is situated in such a way that if you ride efficiently, you can do the whole thing while in your big front chain ring. Being in your big ring gives you access to your upper (harder to pedal) gears which are usually only used on downhills or flat straight aways. If you ride the entire loop in the big ring, you qualify as a "stud". So it was another demonstration of the concept of cycling "momentum" that I was talking about on last weeks ride.

The team had a blast riding through this area. Beautiful tranquil riding with no cars in sight. That's what I signed up for!

Not everything was paradise, though. We had a crossing wheels incident just as we left the loop area. Maintaining the proper distance between bikes when riding in a pace line takes concentration, practice and trust. Concentration to stay vigilant and respond the ebbs and flow of speed changes. Practice to expend just enough energy to close any gaps or get back in line after rotating off the front. You also need to trust the riders in front of you to ride smoothly and not "make any sudden moves". Crossing wheels is when the front tire of the rider in the back touches the back tire of the rider directly ahead. It usually results in the rider in the rear getting their front tire suddenly jerked to the side causing an immediate crash. The back tire of the rider ahead is more stable because it is locked in place (no turning side to side) and because it is pinned by the weight of the rider. Crossing wheels is the result of either the rider ahead slowing too quickly not allowing the rider behind to react in time or of the rider behind "spacing out" and losing concentration allowing their speed to increase faster than the rider ahead. This sometimes happens on a slight downhill with the heavier rider in back picking up more speed on the slight decline.

Luckily the crossing wheels happened at very slow speeds so the crash wasn't too bad. The rider that went down had a scraped knee and no damage to the bike. It was a concrete example of the real dangers of falling asleep at the wheel and a good opportunity to give the crossing wheels lecture again. A rider in another group wasn't so lucky. That group had an crossing wheels incident where the rider was spun over the top of their bars, bouncing and flipping head over foot and into the middle of the street in a busy intersection. Luckily there were no cars immediately nearby. Not so luckily was that that rider ended up breaking their arm.

Two crashes in one day. No good :( This is one of those rare occasions where someone gets really hurt. It's very unfortunate and very preventable.

As a mentor, I try to help people have fun but I have to measure that against some "nagging" about riding safely. It can sometimes be awkward but incidents like these make it neccessary.

Training Log 03/23 to 03/29

Monday: Scheduled rest day

Tuesday: Spin, spin, spin with the ACE coach.

Wednesday: Sick again. No Rehab United class

Thursday: Still sick. Damn.

Friday: Nothing

Saturday: Team ride. 62 Miles, 3400 ft of climbing.

Sunday: 5-mile walk. I have a 1/2-marathon coming up and have to get back into walking shape.

Pasadena and/or the misery continues...

I generally try to be a positive person, but I took a figurative beating this weekend. Last night the fun continued. I lost (or had stolen) my wallet in the Amtrak train station on Saturday. Not good news but luckily Christine was with me so I wasn't stranded to go along with being penniless. We spent over an hour retracing my steps, searching the train we had just departed, looking through garbage cans. We reported the loss to the Union Station security office along with filing a claim with Amtrak lost and found. After all that, we gave up and left to the hotel, where I promptly called and cancelled all my credit cards.

We made the best of the situation and tried my best to enjoy the time in Pasadena. Christine had a good event, and we had a great visit to the Huntington Library. I highly recommend a visit if you are ever in town. Beautiful estate, impressive art gallery and amazing botanical gardens.

We also had a nice visit and dinner with my good friend, Karyme on Sunday night before I was to head home. Christine needed to stay in town for work on Monday so after dinner, Karyme dropped me off at the train station. I was rudely surprised to find out that they would not sell me a ticket without a valid photo ID. You can't board an airplane without ID, same with trains. Who knew? Umm, I explained to them that I had had my wallet stolen the day before and consequently wouldn't be able to produce an ID. No go. I miss the 8:30 pm train. The last train leaves after 10 pm. Not good news. Hmm. There was good chance I would be stranded there so I called Karyme on my nearly dead cell phone and she comes back. My phone promptly dies. For added measure, I had forgotten my charger in my rush to catch the train.

I manage to weave such a sad sack story over the next 1/2 hour that they finally allow me to buy a ticket, with only my Amtrack lost and found receipt as a form of ID. They took great pains to let me know how lucky I was that they were bending the rules for me. So, I have to sit around for a couple of hours before boarding the train. I was worried that the porter would ask me for ID on the train when he punched my ticket, so I put in my headphones, popped open my laptop and started a movie. I was generally trying to be as unapproachable as possible and it worked. 2-1/2 hours later, I'm back in San Diego on my way home. Got home after 1am and was still so amped up that I didn't fall asleep until around 2:30 am.

7 Wake Up calls

In Pasadena for one of Christine's events. She is currently running the inaugural Pasadena 1/2 Marathon. Actually, it is more of a re-inaugural as we were in town last year for her to do it and it was canceled at 4am the day of the race due to smoke from nearby wildfires.

My plan was to sleep in this morning to recover from a stressful day yesterday that saw me riding 50 miles with my Team, fighting with my convertible soft-top, that all of sudden stopped opening in mid-use, rushing to the Amtrak train station to catch the train and finally losing my wallet somewhere along the way!

4:15 am: the hotel phone on the desk rings, but somehow the one on the bedside doesn't making me have to get out of bed to address it.
4:30 am: The real wake-up call from the hotel
4:45 am: the follow-up wake up call.
6:00 am: the alarm clock goes off! Leftover setting from previous occupant
6:10 am: it goes off again! I guess I didn't turn it off correctly when fumbling in the dark and I just hit the snooze.
6:15 am: My cell phone alert goes off. I had put Christine's race in my calendar and didn't turn off the default 30 min alert.
7:30 am: cell phone rings...wrong number

I give up! Showered and now time to head out to the finish line.

Team Ride - 03/21/09

The day started out with a pancake breakfast as a reward for filling out the recommitment forms and agreeing to complete the program. This is good, what was bad was having to be there ready to eat before 6:30am. Very early start but those fresh flapjacks, crispy bacon and freshly sliced fruit were sure tasty.

Great team ride today. We had most of the gang ride today with the exception of Tammy who wasn't able to make it. We also added a new face, Mary and had the pleasure of having Coach Jack ride with us. This made for a pretty big group (Kent, Jeff, Natalie, Joan, Susan, Mary, Kirsten, me, mentor Tom, and Coach Jack for a total of 11 riders.

We started up the coast, rode inland through Rancho Santa Fe before looping around and making it back to home base. Here's a map of the route.


















Rancho Santa Fe is a beautiful area of San Diego, with orange orchards, a nice lake, horse ranches and million dollar homes. The route was very scenic and nicely rolling and a great place to ride.

With the rolling terrain, the lesson for the day was momentum. Momentum is the friend of a century riding cyclist. The concept is simple...pedal on the downhills to pick up speed so that your momentum carries you a significant way up the following hill. You don't even have to pedal very hard. A very common mistake that inexperienced cyclists make is not pedaling on the downhills, instead electing to coast and rest. The only problem is that, resting at that time just means that you have to work that much harder when you eventually get to the uphill.

I kept harping on this from the back of the paceline but I guess the message wasn't really getting through and it looked like a few of the riders were working too hard on the climbs. Cycling is a team sport, so if one of the riders tires too quickly it slows the whole Team down. I decided that is was best to just demonstrate what I meant instead of trying to explain it. On the next decent sized downhill, I make a move from the very back of the pace line, pedaling and picking up speed and just blow past everyone, huffing and puffing on the uphill. Point made.

Oveall, the group continues to make major strides and are really starting to gel as a team.

Thursday night light? Right....

Thursday night spin class is supposed to be more of light workout so we can save the legs for the longer mileage Saturday sessions. Not today! Coach DJ (aka the sadist) was out sick on Tuesday but came back today with a vengeance.

The majority of the workout was more big gear work to build leg strength and endurance. Then we followed up with those damn interval sprints. 20 seconds "on" at 140+ rpm, 20 seconds back at 80 rpm to "recover", repeat ad naseum. Hmm, naseum sounds a lot like nauseated which is how I felt after the second set of those, when the intervals went from 20 seconds to 45 seconds.

I knew I was having a tough workout when I got to 90% max heart rate and looked down to see a puddle of my sweat beneath my bike. Well, it didn't kill me so that means it made me stronger, right?

Nix the plans to ride my bike to work tomorrow. Unplanned rest day tomorrow to be ready for the extra hill work planned for this Saturday.

Recommitment

Today I turned in my recommitment forms again promising to raise the $1500 I pledged for this season to participate. 25% of my fundraising pledge was due today ($375) to secure my spot on the Team. I got a late start on fundraising this season with the overload of work so it was a mad scramble, but I got mostly there falling just $20 short. The remainder of the money and anything in excess of the $1500 goes directly to the cause.

The recommitment deadline is the last chance to back out. The recommitment money is used to pay for the race entry, event jersey, the pre-event meal (Pasta Party) and end of event meal (Victory Party). Essentually, it's when the Society has to shell out money for me to participate. Up until that time, I've essentially only agreed to just train and any money I've raised, goes to the Society. By signing the recommitment forms, I've agreed to personally pay the balance if I don't hit the $1,500 pledge by the end of the season.

I am also personally responsible to pay for my own travel expenses, including airfare and hotel costs for the event. In this case, with both Christine and I traveling, this amounts to almost as much as I've pledged to raise . It's a decent hit to the pocketbook but all in all it's worth it. I'm contributing to a meaningful cause, enjoying the comaraderie of my Team and get to ride my bike around beautiful Lake Tahoe.

Fabulous Forty

Quite the butt-kicking crosstraining workout at Rehab United tonight. I've decided to do at least one night of cross training since I've been so cycling specific with my exercise lately. The workout tonight was called the Fabulous 40. It was essentially a circuit work out with some pretty funky exercises.

The stations were

Airplane Push-ups - This requires you to raise one arm up and over your body at the top of each push-up.

Bowler's Squat with dumbbells - Start standing straight up with dumbells in hand, move your right leg back behind and across your body while simultaneously crossing your arm with dumbbell in the same direction but in front of your body.

Box-Steps with weight - One foot on a 2 foot high box the other on the floor. Drive bottom foot up to the box top while lifting the weight over your head.

Swimmer's Something or other - lay belly on large ball for balance, and do the freestyle arm stroke while holding 10-lb weights.

Cross the body X-Chop: Start with 20 lb medicine ball at hip, step back while driving the ball across your body and over your opposite shoulder.

Wall Ball Toss - Stand with your side to a wall with a medium weight medicine ball at your hip. Drive the ball at the wall by twisting your body trunk, catch and repeat.

3-way Lat Pull downs - grab the resistance band cables and walk back to get some good tension. Drive both hands down and left, down and center, down and right. That counts as one!

The workout was called the fabulous forty because; you guessed it, you have to do each one 40 times...per arm or leg! This means that you have to do 40 reps of the boxsteps with each leg. Some were very tough, particularly the airplane push-ups. Others like the box steps weren't so bad for me because of the overall good condition of my legs from the cycling. It was hurting a lot of people though.

The workout was very interesting because of the diversity of the stations but also because they allowed us to be free form and split up the workout however we liked. My general strategy was to try and do 1/2 the reps at each station at a time. I had to do two of them over three sessions because they were hard for me, airplanes and the swimming one. Guess that means I need to start paying more attention to my upper body when working out.

Training Log 03/16 -03/22

Monday: scheduled day off

Tuesday: spin class at the Leukemia and Lymphoma offices. The ACE coach was sick today so I spun with the main team. I don't know what was up today but I had zero energy. I was able to make it through most of the session with no issues but failed miserably at the standing climb part of the exercise. The legs felt dead tired. We were only standing for 10 minutes, which I usually have very little problem doing. I think I need more sleep and am still dehydrated from this weekend.

Wednesday: Fabulous Forty workout at Rehab United.

Thursday: Brutal spin work out.

Friday: Unplanned rest day.

Saturday: Team ride

Sunday: Sightseeing walking

Eating Well

I can't remember the last time that I actually cooked something at the house. Anything I do cook is rarely no more complex than a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, or nuking some Lean Cuisines for lunch. The only home cooked meals I get nowadays are the ones that Christine makes one to two nights a week. My new schedule has me eating dinner out M, T, W, Th. We also usually go out to a nice dinner either F or Sat. Sunday is usually eat at home day.

I've always had an idea that it would be nice to start cooking a little, maybe a meal a month. I'd find a cool recipe that sounded interesting and make the attempt. I'd buy whatever obscure cooking implement that I would need to complete the recipe and thereby build up my kitchen equipment over time. Maybe, I'd make a French dish to go along with a mini French film festival at the apartment and invite some friends over.

A few months ago I subscribed to Eating Well magazine as part of a school fundraiser for my little cousin, Adriana. There were no cycling magazines so I just picked this more or less on a whim. I have been browsing through the magazine looking at recipes over the last couple of weeks and decided to make the attempt tonight.

The two recipes I chose were

Asparagus/Radish Salad
Orange Glaze Chicken

We made a trip to the local grocery store and picked up the ingredients. Luckily, Christine has a pretty well stocked kitchen but we still had to pick up things like ground ginger, raisins, almonds along with the main ingredients.

I thought that these were relatively simple recipes but they ended up being more complex than I thought. One of the challenges, was figuring out when to start each of the parts. I'm sure cooking is more art than science, but I approached it like an engineer. I gathered all the ingredients, made a mental flow chart and tried to logically decide what needed to happen first.

First up with washing and chopping the vegetables as that could be done and set aside with no loss in quality. I thinly slicked the asparagus stalks, retaining the heads. I washed and cubed the radishes, I peeled the oranges, removing the pith, and cut in to wedges. I chopped and diced the almonds, and scallions.

I set that aside and made the flour, salt, pepper mix for the chicken. I then got the large sauce pan going with oil on medium temperature. Hmm, I'm going to need to steam the asparagus for a minute and then put them in ice water to keep them crisp and stop them from continuing to cook. Water boiling, use Christine's fancy bamboo steamer thingy. Oil is hot enough in the pan, dip the chicken in the flour mixture put in the pan, cover. Whoah, asparagus is done. Drain, put in the ice water...flip the chicken. Man, this is getting complicated. Lower the heat on the chicken. Time to start making the salad dressing. Damn, where's the Srirachi sauce...flip the chicken. Should I start boiling the noodles? Not yet. Baby, what does zest the orange mean? Chicken is browned, set it aside, pour the cup of white wine (no more, no less) into the sauce pan bring to a simmer. Where are the raisins? Whoops, forget the cinimmon stick. Ground cinimmon it is, then. We have just enough honey. A bit more salt. Time to put the chicken back in, cover. Time to boil the pasta! Mix in the asparagus, radish into the bowl with dressing. Flip the chicken. Getting close. Christine, set the table. Pasta is done, chicken is done, garnish the chicken with the orange slices, almonds.

Somehow everything is done at the same time, and we sit down to eat. Serve! And...it is delicious! The chicken is tender, there is enough sauce leftover for the pasta, the salad is spicy enough, there is just the right amount of cinimmon in the chicken. We have a nice sit down dinner at home. Success.

Afterwards, Christine gets to repair the disaster I've made of the kitchen. It was actually a lot of fun and is something that I'd like to do a few times a month.

Team Ride 03-14-09 Mission Moment

The day started with meeting at DeAnza Cove at 7:30 am for the Coaches talk. Coach DJ did a sexy striptease peeling a seemingly endless number of clothing layers to demonstrate how to dress for any type of riding weather. He started with three jackets, multiple shirts, even a shower cap and plastic poncho. He was down to a base layer T-shirt, bib shorts and tube socks before he stopped. We were all very thankful.

Next was the Mission Moment. This is a short talk given by one of the Team members or guest speakers that explain why they are doing what they are doing. It's a reminder of why we are participating in the program. The Mission Moment talk today was given by my buddy, Mark Rosenberger. Mark is a professional speaker and it really showed. He told his story about how he joined Team in Training about 6 years ago with a goal of getting in shape. He did a couple of marathons with the Team and then took a year off. During that year, he was diagnosed with cancer. He is a self-employed consultant/speaker and didn't have adequate insurance. His family hit hard times and eventually lost their home as he was getting treated. He also told how his neighbor across the street died of cancer and his next door neighbor also is fighting it. After a few years of treatment, he kicked cancer to the curb and a year later, he rode Tahoe as part of my Mighty B3s group in 2007. I rode with the guy an entire season and I didn't know that about him. I guess he didn't volunteer the info and I never asked. The day of this years Tahoe ride (June 7th) will be 5 years to the day of when his doctor told him he had cancer. Wow.

He left us with two main points:

1) This program isn't about us. It truly is about finding a cure for blood cancers. We get hung up on asking for donations because we are embarrassed or shy. The money goes to provide real services that generate real results and makes people's life better.

2) Enjoy the ride and celebrate life. When we are having a tough day, where the miles are too long and the climbs are too high, think about the good we are doing, take a deep breath and enjoy the beauty that surrounds us. Really look at the ocean, the countryside, the trees, the flowers, breath in the fresh air as we ride past. Feel the corporealness of our task. Appreciate that we are physically able to do this. There are many people who can't.

Awesome talk.

The ride was the same as last week, only this time with most of the group being present. Only Kent was MIA. I was happy to see that we are really starting to gel as a group. The pacelines were nice, tight and steady. Everyone was very focused and we really hit our stride a couple of times. We were lucky with streetlights and rolled off a nice 7-mile stretch at 18+ MPH. It ws a thing of beauty as we just gobbled up the miles with machine-like precision. We had a couple of really good milestone achievements today. Natalie cracked the 30MPH mark going down Torrey Pines. She has been very apprensive about going fast downhill but has been feeling more comfortable with the control of her bike with each ride and has been testing her boundaries. The 53 miles we rode today was the furthest that Tammy had ever ridden. She's a marathoner and is in great running shape, but cycling is an entirely different type of physical labor. She pulled through like a champ today and did very well.

It's a really gratifying experience to see the group conquering personal challenges and having fun. I'm having a great time as a mentor for this team.

Totals for the day were 53 miles, with 2388 feet of climbing.

Training Log - 03/9 to 03/15

Monday: Normal rest day

Tuesday: Worked late, ate like crap and had to skip my spin class. Frown.

Wednesday: Another long day. Skipped the workout to get to bed early.

Thursday: Killer spin class with the ACE team. Besides the normals stuff we did lots of heavy resistance spinning. Third hardest gear, high cadence for 10 minutes at 80% max heart rate. Followed up with a series of sprint intervals. 30 seconds on, 20 off, repeat. Felt pretty whipped after that. No climbing which is sort of weird since ACE means, Altitute, Climbing and Endurance. I guess we are working the heavy resistance to build endurance.

Friday: Worked late again, caught up with life stuff, paid bills, got ready for the Team ride tomorrow. Wrote and sent out my fundraising letters.

Saturday: Team Ride. 53 Miles, 2388 ft of climbing.

Sunday:

Team Miyata and the Hareem

Some teammates and I rode my favorite Highway 52 loop ride today. I like this route a lot because it's relatively short at 20+ miles but there is some climbing to go along with it. Several parts of the route are very beautiful, particularly the part where we ride through the valley of Mission Trails park.

Here is a Google Earth shot showing the rolling climb along the Highway 52 bike path turning into Mission Trails Regional Park.

















I rode my newish 1985 Team Miyata vintage bike. It's beauty. It was a top of the line production bike in it's heyday. It rides like a dream. The only complication is that it comes with tubular tire rims. This is an older style racing set up. The tubular tires fit directly on the rim, there is no inner tube. There are several advantages to them. Supposedly they are more resistant to flats as you eliminate the "pinch" flat where inner tube of a standard clincher tire pinches the inner tube after hitting a bump. They are also lighter and the ride quality is much smoother. The big disadvantage is that the tires need to be glued to the rim! This is a labor intensive and messy process that takes a few days to get right. You first have to stretch the tire on the rim for a couple of days, then apply the glue to the rim and tire during several steps, before finally mounting the tire. Then you pump it up to high pressure and let it set for 24 hours.

I was having a spectacular ride with this surprisenly agile bike, when I flatted! Horror of horrors. I had picked up a largish peice of glass and it had worked its way through the tire. First time out and pssssshhh. Damn. I had a spare tire but no glue. It took me a good five minutes to get the flat off the rim as I had to peel it away because I had done such a good job gluing it on. I quickly put the new one on, pumped it up and rode on. The look of confusion on my teammates face was pretty funny. None of them had ever seen a tire like that before. I rode the rest of the ride very gingerly making sure to not take any sharp turns fearing the tire would roll off the rim. It was fine.

In marked contrast to yesterday's ride, today's ride with with all women! All day, I heard jokes about me and my harem (Kim, Lynn, Lori, Natalie, Tonya). Couldn't get any of the to call me, Sultan, though :(

3/4 of the way back, Kim got a flat and I did my manly duty and changed it for her. Hmm, the real reason, they kept me around was now apparent. Looks like more glass. Kim's tires are pretty beat up and it was time for new ones anyway. A few more hills and we wrap up. Totals were

21 Miles
1680 feet of climbing.

Team Ride 03-07-09

The team ride yesterday was pretty interesting. The planned route was up and down the coast starting at Mission Bay to Carlsbad and back. We've done this route dozens of times. We started out with more than half of last week's group missing. Natalie had to work, Joanie and Susan had a conflict and couldn't make it. Kristen wasn't there and Julie and Jenny had moved to another group. Hmmm, what do they all have in common? They are all female. The remaining few were mentor Tom, Me, Jeff and Kent. The ride definitely had a different feel to it with all guys, with the primary difference being that the average speed was way up from last week. Poor Tom was still recovering from being sick all week and did all he could to hang on the entire day.

The ride out was pretty uneventful, except that Tom's bike computer died on him. He's the one in charge in the groups but was flying a little blind with no data. I didn't pay close enough attention and we ended up riding a bit further than we had actually planned. It was still well within the ability of the riders and our available options.

We get to talking and it seems that each of the three guys, I'm riding with are 56 years old. They start referring to themselves as the B-56's. I've never been the young buck on a ride before. Several whippersnapper jokes later, we get to the inevitable Torrey Pines hill. The boys are feeling strong and we decide to climb up the inside (Park). The inside route is shorter but steeper and can be a real lungbuster. I'm climbing along and a jogger starts to pass me. Oh hell, no. I'm shamed into speeding up and stay ahead of him.

Back to home base and to greet the other teams coming in. We rode a pretty fast day

Totals were
53 Miles
14.3 MPH average speed
2400 feet of climbing

Training Log - 03/02 - 03/08

Monday: Normal rest day

Tuesday: Spin class with Team in Training. Spun with the ACE Team. Longer more intense workout. Quads and Hammys were still sore from Sunday's ride.

Wednesday: Cross training day at Rehab United. Lots of stationary bike, squat matrices with dumbells, medicine ball exercises.

Thursday: Spin Class with the ACE Team. Pretty hard and very different than the spin classes I've been attending for the last two years. No standing climb today. We replaced that with seated, high resistance pedaling, followed by 45 second sprint intervals. 45 seconds "on" followed by 30 seconds "off". Repeat 5 times. Really tough. Good mix of cardio and strength workout.

Friday: Nada. Worked late and went to see Watchmen at the IMax theater instead.

Saturday: Team Ride. 53 Miles

Sunday: Friendly Noodle Ride. 21 miles.

Training Log - 02/23 to 03/01

Monday: Normal rest day

Tuesday: Spin class with Team in Training. Calve feeling crappy, took it easy on the standing climb exercise.

Wednesday: Cross training day at Rehab United. No more running for me due to calve problem. Lots of stationary bike, box step ups, squat matrices, walkover push-ups. Pain.

Thursday: Rest the legs day

Friday: Rest the legs day

Saturday: Team ride. 35 miles, with about 1500 feet of climbing.

Sunday: Granfondo Century Ride. 97 Miles, 6800 feet of climbing.

Granfondo San Diego

Did a Century on Sunday. It was the Gran Fondo San Diego. Gran Fondo is Italian for "big ride". The race was done in the Italian style and started and ended in Little Italy here in San Diego. It was the inaugural event for this ride. The guest of honor was Ernesto Colnago, world famous for building beautiful Italian racing bikes. Here are a few photos of some of the bikes that I took at the registration expo.
































I decided to do this ride with some reservations. I hadn't really been training enough since the end of the year when I did El Tour de Tucson. In fact, my longest ride since November, 2008 was 70 miles and I did that last Sunday. I had done a few 50 milers but was never able to fully train for this one. Holidays, lingering flu, work, severe calve strain...yadda, yadda.

The calve strain was the real concern. It was a pretty nasty and painful injury.




















Here's a photo of it almost healed up. At it's peak, the calve was nearly twice the normal size and the entire back of my leg was bruised. Friday morning, I got the tentative OK from my physical therapist that I have been seeing about it to ride, provided I didn't "hammer" and ride more for endurance, rather than speed.

I rode with one of my Tucson "C-Riders" teammates, Donna. She's a very strong cyclist. We had talked ahead of time and agreed to take it relatively easy as we both didn't feel we had trained enough.

The course started in Little Italy, which is essentially downtown San Diego and then proceed south and generally East, through Chula Vista, Bonita, Otay Mesa and then into the back country. We started out at the head of the race and kept up with the very speedy front group for about 5 miles. Average speed was up over 20mph. We decided to let them go on ahead when they started blowing through stop signs and lights. Not safe plus we didn't want to go that fast. It was fun while it lasted, though.

Part of the route was through the Olympic Training Center located near Otay Lake. It was a blast riding through the training facility where the Olympian's train.

After that we hit the backcountry where the terrain started getting pretty rocky and hilly. Hilly then turned to mountainy. Part of the course, Honey Spring Road, was timed as part of the King of the Mountain competition. This is a 7-mile stretch of road that proceeds upwards at grades between 4 and 8% grade. Each of the riders was timed up the climb and a special jersey and medal would be given to the fastest climber in each category. Well, I was nowhere in the running for that. In fact, the heat was so bad (90+ deg) and there was so little shade that I stopped about 5 times to cool down on the climb. Donna was feeling much stronger and could have gone on ahead but kindly stayed with me. It was a brutal climb and a very disturbing sight to see riders strewn across the course, out of water, overheated and with some puking. I stayed with my game plan and was probably overcautious but finally made it up the hill and was embarrassingly near the bottom time for the field. Lot's of riders didn't even finish the climb and were hauled off the course by the support vans.
















Honey Springs Hell

We get to the top of the hill, feeling pretty beat up and we are only 41 miles into the ride with 4300 feet of climbing already. Top the hill, the aid station is nearly out of water and people are looking really sad and tired. We take a short rest, fill up on bananas, pretzels, water and then move on. The good news is that the ride was advertised as 4800 feet of climbing. The next 60 miles should be cake, right? Umm....No. Someone needs to get their altimeter checked. After a beautiful fast downhill (46 mph!) we turn the bend to stare at a huge hill up ahead. Put the head down and pound it out.

Christine agreed to meet us at mile 59 to give us a little personal support so I had that as a short term goal. I estimated that we would be there between 12 and 12:30. We roll into the aid station to meet Christine over an hour behind schedule. The scene is even worse there, with many of the exhausted riders laying in the grass and phoning for rides home. We had been out of cell phone range for hours and this was their first opportunity to use their phones.

Christine meet us with open arms with a SUV full of goodies. First off was the camp chair in the shade of the car, then there was roasted chicken sandwiches, peeled bananas and oranges, gatorade and a beautiful 20-lb bag of ice.















Who has the better cleavage?

Kicked off the shoes, doffed the extra clothing, base layer, arm warmers from the morning and chowed down.

After about 20 minutes of resting in the shade, we're back on the road. By this time we had been on our bikes for over 7 hours with another 4o miles to go. We set a new goal to finish within an absolute maximum of 10 hours, which is very slow century time for us.

On the flats, we pace-line like pro's and get the average speed up to the low 20's MPH and make up lots of time. More climbing, followed by more climbing and we are in Alpine after passing through parts of Cleveland National Forest. We hit the last aid station at mile 85 for a pee pee break and leave quickly. The last few miles were through Spring Valley back into downtown. We join up with a group of 5 other riders going roughly the same pace as us to share in the work. We finally roll into the finish after nearly 9-1/2 hours in the saddle.

Total climbing for the day was over 6800 feet! That is by far the most I have ever done in a day. I think the previous best was 4500ish.

We celebrate with a burger and beer at the Princess Pub and then go home. Shower and try to keep my eyes open. Fail. I'm asleep on the couch by 7:30pm.

Brutal ride. Definitely the hardest Century I've ever done. I stayed with my plan, took it easy, finished safely, completed the event and lived to tell about it.