Sebastopol bakery ride

Apologies to those buried in snow and ice, but it was low 70s and not a cloud in the sky here in northern Cali. A friend offered to drive me up to ride in Sebastopol, which is about an hour's drive north of San Francisco. I said, "yes, as long as you're cool with doing my assigned workout... which means you either need to bring a book or running shoes for after the ride." He said, "game on, as long as you'll stop at a famous bakery on this route." Bakery? Of course. So off we went.

The route started with vinyards, then wound through a gorgeous wooded area, and finally the majority of the ride was all countryside and farmland.

At mile 15 was the "famous" bakery (I hadn't heard of it, but apparently it had been featured on CNN.) There was practically a traffic jam in the parking lot, plenty of other cyclists on bakery break, and a line out the door. Once you step inside you realize why it's so popular; it's totally old-school with a wood burning brick oven and lots of samples:

We opted to split a sticky bun. My dad makes homemade sticky buns, but this is the 800 pound gorilla of sticky buns... probably 5x the size of my dad's:

I only had 2 of the six pieces, which pretty much met my nutrition needs for the day. :-) Then back out on the road...

There were quite a few hills on this route, which I wasn't expecting. After TRX on Thurs plus a hilly ride yesterday, my legs were pretty much trashed. Plus I'm trying out a new saddle, which I honestly think is not going to work; by the end of the ride my ass was bruised and sore. The lousy, bumpy road conditions didn't help matters.

So I definitely felt like I "forced an adaptation" on my legs over the past couple days. My weak link is leg strength; by the end of the ride my HR was actually way too low, but my legs had nothing left. So after suffering through the last 8 miles (while stopping occasionally to take pictures of springtime in February)...

... I couldn't wait to get off the bike, but honestly wasn't looking forward to my first transition run of the season. My legs were toast and I was expecting to feel like a total slug. But after the first few minutes my legs felt surprisingly ok. It felt like I was going SO SLOW -- in my head I thought I was running 12 min miles and couldn't understand why my HR was high. Then I saw I was clipping along under 9:30. After the first mile I was actually feeling GOOD... and I had a big smile on my face when we arrived back at the car. Very glad for the t-run today. A good ending to a painful ride!

So now I just need to bargain with the legs... just give me one long run tomorrow, and you'll get a rest on Monday...

Comments

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Yay! Nice job! I'm sure with a little rest tonight our legs will come through one more time tomorrow :-)

Posted by: Molly | 02/12/2011 at 07:10 PM

Your legs might feel super heavy to start tomorrow- keep it very easy to Start off... If you start easy enough, they'll likely come around. :)
Nice ride today. I remember Sebastopol. My aunt used to live there. :)

Posted by: Mchelle | 02/12/2011 at 07:31 PM