Monthly Archives: May 2012

It’s not me that’s slow; it’s everyone else getting too fast!

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

I’m not riding all that badly; 27:50 for the climb up Kings, for mid-May, isn’t atypical for me. Everybody else though? They’re definitely going faster. Today we had Karl, Karen, Eric, Marcus, Kevin (not the pilot), Todd & Jon, and it didn’t take long for me to completely lose sight of them. I thought that maybe Kevin (my son) would be riding a bit slower, since he’d missed several rides last week due to a kidney issue resurfacing (his epilepsy meds like to create kidney stones), but no, he made it up the hill in a “clean” 26 minutes (meaning 26 flat, not 26:59). Of course I wasn’t there to see it, but Strava seems to confirm his claim.

Strava. I could post the Strava thingee here, but at the bottom it would say “There are no accomplishments on this ride.” Strava, you could learn a thing or two about salesmanship! Why not just come out and say it? “You suck!” And why am I so addicted to the darned thing?

Overall I’m looking at numbers for my rides that really aren’t that bad. What’s changed is Kevin, who, at this time last year, had yet to get under 30 minutes up Kings, and two months later was at 26:30, and this past month has hit 25:30. I’m still better on the flats, and I’m still better if the ride is long enough (over 60 miles).

But what will happen in France? I’ll tell you one thing, it won’t be me carrying all the extra stuff up the hills this time!

Tour of California Stage 1 challenge

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)
Three cyclists in the break enjoying a light moment early in the first stage

So the Tour of California is back, you really want to see it, but you don’t want to go a long way to just catch a quick glimpse of them and then poof, they’re gone. Hey, if it’s in your back yard, no biggie, go see the parade of world-class cyclists that you read about and see on TV and once a year shows up here. But when you have to drive two and a half hours to get there… three+ hours on the way back? Plus losing out on a bike ride?

So I had an idea. What if you could design a bike ride that would cut across the course multiple times? Not as easy as it sounds; you’ve got to get maps and write down estiamted times that the race will pass various points on the course and then study the roads that criss-cross the course and see if something can work out. And it did!
Sorry I don’t have a way to overlay the actual race course with the route Kevin and I rode, but it all worked out pretty well. We started our ride at 10:30 and have plenty of time to get to our first intercept at 11:17, then rode 5 miles to the next intercept at 11:44, another 12 miles to see them at 1:10 and then a pretty tough 20 miles including the steep climb up Coleman for our final visit at 3:10.

Somehow it all worked out, even managing to get home in time for Mother’s Day dinner. 53 miles, not that much climbing (but quality!), moderate speed (would have been faster except that we were often in heavy traffic and once in a while not sure which way to go), but a lot better than watching it on TV and not riding!