Today is Not That Day

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...

 

Springtime in February

We are having crazy nice weather in San Francisco. Today was 70+ and sunny. Normally Jan - March is cold and rainy, but we seem to get the exact opposite weather then the rest of the country. When you are all frying in a nation-wide heat wave like last summer, we're enshrouded in cold, damp fog for months. And when you're getting dumped on with snow, we're getting endless sunshine. I'll take it.

This is in the first 10 minutes of my ride. I never get tired of this view.

Today I rode with a friend on the Paradise Loop route... over the Golden Gate bridge, through Sausalito, loop around to Tiburon and back. There was a bad bike crash on the Bridge when we were coming back... we rolled to a stop along with probably 80 other bikers as someone was carried into an ambulance. A few places on the bridge are quite narrow and dangerous for passing... apparently two bikers crashed head-on. No word if they are ok or not; I do hope it wasn't too serious. We waited about 5 minutes before they opened things up again.

Today was the first time I tried my new Hammer products, and the jury is still out. I mixed Sustained Energy with 3 tbsp raspberry gel, but it wasn't sweet enough so I threw in a scoop of Cytomax. Perfect. Well, sorta. I had a bottle of @ 550 cals and I like drinking my calories vs. messing with gels. But... Sustained Energy does have an interesting taste; mild, but will take a little getting used to. And I had a slightly funky stomach about an hour+ into the ride, and started burping it up. Not sure if it's because this mix needs constant shaking (see how it separates after only 15 min?) which made it foam a bit...

Or maybe mixing it with Cytomax was a problem? Not sure. I'll give it another shot next week and alternate this with plain water. Energy-wise I felt great by the end of the ride.

...which was good, because on a day like today I need to be outside as much as possible! So I quickly showered and ran back out the door to meet a friend up from LA to run the Kaiser half marathon (which I'd originally had on my schedule until my hamstring decided it had other plans.) Then drinks on a patio with a blind date... nice guy but alas, not my type. Conversation stalled, and... hey, the people sitting next to us are talking triathlon! I started chatting with a gal who was looking to do a few races this year, so that was fun.

And finally, home. I needed some down-time tonight; I have a bunch of work to do tomorrow, plus my longest run since September. Whoo hoo! I think I'll head over to Golden Gate Park. Will share pics.

Oversensitive

WAY too oversensitive, reactive and fussy. No, not me... My Garmin. 

First my cadence sensor conked out last week. I cannot figure out what's wrong. It's a new sensor (and a new Garmin), the little green light goes on when the wheel magnet crosses the sensor, my Garmin says "cadence sensor found" when I turn it on, but no data is showing.

Now for the HR fun. Yesterday I had my run HR benchmark... 3 miles around a track to find out my pace at 150 HR. During the first mile my HR was all over the place: 130, 165, 140, 155, etc. Finally stabilized during the last mile. Coach thought perhaps my warm-up wasn't long enough, which seemed logical... 

Until my ride today. I'm riding easy, warming up, and my HR shoots to 177. Then 184. Seriously? I'm not even breathing hard. I think the only time I've ever hit 184 was when I sprinted up a long steep hill, could barely breathe and was about to puke. I was NOT at 184 today. Either I need to run to the nearest cardiologist or my Garmin has PMS.

I was pretty sure it's the latter when my auto-pause/auto-resume starts getting wonky. It's a great feature when I'm stopped at a red light... not so great when I hit a bump in the road (auto pause, auto resume), change gears (auto pause, auto resume), haul ass down a curvy, tree-lined road (auto pause, auto resume, auto pause auto resume auto pause auto resume auto pause auto resume...). And of course my Garmin beeps and vibrates every time this happens. I was a beeping, buzzing fool on my bike today.

So here's the really weird thing... all the glitchiness stops after the first hour. My last 2 hours are entirely normal. Other than still no cadence data, there are no odd HR spikes, no pause/resume when it's not supposed to. WTF?

Any ideas here?

 

Alcatraz bike route

Today on the schedule was "find a hilly ride." Got it. No problemo. I live about 2 miles from the Escape from Alcatraz bike route and there's plenty of climbing to be had. I actually get there via my favorite run route, so these pics pick up from where I left off in this post. So in case you're curious about the race route, here you go. It's got to be one of the most beautiful rides in the country.

First, I'm going to gripe a little about the new MapMyRide.com. I love the new version in theory; they now assign categories to climbs. But they're giving these hills a Cat 5 and saying they're 3% grade... they're more like 10% - 15%, and almost 20% in a couple spots. So their new little tool is a bit useless, IMO. (BTW, this is the elevation for MY ride, which leaves out one more good climb at the beginning of the Alcatraz race):

Anyway, I start out in the Presidio and come to this amazing view of the ocean (this is where my 5 mile run route takes me):

Down a VERY steep but short road to Lincoln Blvd, which then takes you down even further to a lovely neighborhood called Seacliff. Here's the start of the hill headed down:

Down through Seacliff and then a decent climb along the water and a golf course with the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance...

... and continuing up to the Legion of Honor (one of our lovely museums), down through the golf course, through another neighborhood heading west, until you hit the ocean again. This isn't the best shot... it's a vast panorama of sea and sky, but this shows the descent (and subsequent ascent.)

This one's taken once you get around the bend... here's Ocean Boulevard. I never get tired of this view.

As you can tell, there's still a bit of a descent, and then it's flat as a pancake along the ocean walkway for a few miles. Here's where you can come watch surfers, although there weren't any out today.

And then I'm reminded of why I rarely ride this route. There are sand dunes falling into the bike lane heading out, and sand and iceplant growing into (and literally cutting off, in some places) the bike lane on the return. And the cars are FLYING by. At times it can get really scary. So even though I had a great tailwind I played it safe and kept it slow. Turned around and headed home. Before I hit all the climbs on the way back, here's one more shot:

 

 Yes, I'm on the wrong side of the street to go back up. That's intentional. See the white building? That's the Cliff House; if you're visiting SF, you'll need to make a stop here. Sit in the bar area, which has a wall of glass, and look out over the ocean. But I digress. See that cliff? That's what makes the return climb pretty dangerous; there's no bike lane or shoulder, it's going around a cliff, cars are flying up, and I feel far safer riding up the sidewalk on the wrong side of the street :-). Not that you'd have to worry about that if you do the race.

Anyway, I'm finally starting to feel like I'm growing some climbing legs. Trainer, weight training and stairs are finally making an impact. I'm still crawling pretty slowly up these hills but I felt a lot stronger and I didn't want to curl up and take a nap as soon as I got home! Progress... love it. Can't wait to do this ride again in a month or so (at maybe 6:30 in the morning before the traffic) and see if I can make it up these hills any faster.

My favorite ride in pictures

Happy Saturday!! It's a gorgeous spring-like day in northern California. A ride was on the schedule today... awesome. The sun's out and it's mid- 60s.  My assignment was to find a flat route for some HR training. A flat route... really? I live in San Francisco. So I drove about 30 minutes north to start my route. Overall the ride was great, but grueling. Here's the best way I can explain my ride in pictures:

Yeah. I need a LOT of "butt in seat" time. But let me back up...

Before I left this morning, I finally figured out how to install the quick release kit for my Garmin. While it's now super-cool that I can snap my Garmin off my wrist and onto the bike in 2 seconds, the wrist band is really unattractive. The original band is a very cool orange/grey that matches the Garmin. The quick release band now on my wrist is a cheap black band that doesn't even look like it goes with the watch. Hey Garmin, at least make it grey to match! Oh well... it's not like I'm out to win fashion awards with this thing. 

Anyway, I took off to an area north of Marin county which is beautiful and relatively unpopulated. After a nice flat 10 minute warm-up, you hit the one hefty hill on the route. My leg strength is pathetic right now, so I just ground it out at something like 5 MPH. When you get to the top, it's all farmland (and green! once summer hits it will be brown; we don't get rain between March and November.)

This downhill is a blast; not too steep, but fast and curvy. And then you hit the flatter but still fast and curvy part that takes you through some redwood groves.

Which then takes you out to Nicasio Reservoir. Now it's a fabulous flat road with a very wide bike lane, so it's time to just put your head down and hammer.

Riding with a HR monitor is new to me; I didn't realize how low my HR (and cadence) are on my rides. So today was mostly an exercise of remembering to downshift, increase cadence and increase HR.

There were a TON of other cyclists out... and a lot of triathletes. You can always tell the tri guys, all alone in their aero bars. Like me. Ha.

This road actually takes you out to the ocean; there's a little town called Pt Reyes that's very quaint and a good pit stop when out riding in a group. But alas, I didn't make it all the way there. Made a u-turn a couple miles early and headed back.

I always like riding by the horses.... (and by now coach is wondering if I got in a good workout or if I just lollygagged around taking pictures. Never fear, I saved most of the picture-taking for the return route. My legs were thrashed by the time I came back to the horses!)

Then one more climb... this is the backside of that first hill and fortunately isn't as steep (although it's longer.) By now my legs, back and shoulders are plotting mutiny. And I'd only been on the bike for 2 hours. But then again, last year I never rode for much more than 30 miles, since I was only doing Olympic distances and primarily focusing on swim & run. So I can't really be too hard on myself.

Here's the view at the top of that climb coming back to the car:

This pic doesn't really do it justice. I got a second wind on the way back down; as sluggish as I am going uphill, I love riding down. Especially easy grade and curvy. The final few miles are a false flat downhill, so a good way to end a ride. Fun and fast.

Coming back into San Francisco from the north is always a treat. Driving over the Golden Gate bridge on a sunny day like this one, you see the city sprawled out against the water and all the sailboats out in the Bay. Wanted to take a pic but too unsafe. When I can start running again, I'll take some pics on my GG Bridge route.

Happy Saturday everyone!

 

Unbelievable bike handling skills

Check out this Danny MacAskill video. His bike skills are jaw-dropping, and the music and gorgeous videography are icing on the cake.

 

Back on the bike

Today was my first ride outdoors in quite a while... it was my big test to see if cycling is still irritating my piraformis and hamstring. I'm pleased to report that I did 38 miles totally pain free! I rode with a friend of mine who's also in recovery mode, so we decided -- based on a forecast of sun -- to do a route that conveniently had a waterfront dive patio at the 20-mile mark to chill out and have lunch.

Unfortunately, the sun prediction never came to pass. Instead, this was our view:

Admittedly it was still lovely. The fog totally obliterated the normally breathtaking view of the San Francisco skyline, but it was very peaceful to hang out, watch the boats and catch up on girl talk. Mr Seagull kept his eye open for any chance to swoop over our table and grab a french fry.

Then a cold front came through, temp dropped at least 10 degrees, and we froze on the way back. Thankfully we had a great tailwind coming up the wicked hill from Sausalito (10 - 15% grade) and back over the Golden Gate bridge. Even though my hamstring was fine, my legs have lost a lot of fitness from my forced time off and they were not happy!

At least I know I can start doing some hill training on the bike without causing damage. Phew!