All posts by Mike

Sunday & Tuesday

Personal stuff, Ride reports (not Tu/Th), Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Yeah, long time not writing again! It’s been tough finding the time to write (there’s always an excuse) and the current massive time suck project is scanning literally thousands of my parent’s old slides, following my mom’s passing 6 or so weeks ago. One of those things that, as you see the interesting stuff from the past, you really wish you had gotten around to this while my mom (or dad, for that matter) were still alive. So many questions!!! And never really thought of my mom as a glam girl out of Mad Men but yeah, she was.

But nothings gets in the way of the regular rides, right? Not yet anyway.

Sunday was a pretty spectacular day, probably the very last ride for some time without leg warmers, base layer or long-fingered gloves. It was that nice a day. Just me; Kevin (younger Kevin, not ex-Pilot) bailed due to stomach issues from dinner the night before. Kevin and his significant other have this thing about trying out different mexican restaurants on Saturday nights and it might not be an exaggeration to say 20% of the time it doesn’t agree with him. The definition of insanity…

So solo ride, stuck to the lowlands again, the usual route down to Los Altos and looping over Mt Eden. I was determined to try to ride it harder and faster than normal, and it showed. For once I got a pretty good suffer score and kept the average watts reasonable. Not great, but reasonable, at 150 average, 159 weighted. If it was a ride to the coast, those numbers would be higher.

Tuesday. I wish I could forecast how I’m going to do climbing Kings, when I start getting ready, or even heading to the start of the ride over Jefferson. But truth is, I can’t. I thought I was ok, but once we (“we” being myself and both Kevins) hit Kings, I was done. Could not get anything going. Kevin (not ex-pilot) hadn’t been on a real ride in some time, but it didn’t matter. He took off and had one of his best times up Kings in ages. Ex-pilot didn’t do too badly either; I lost sight of him before the hairpin creek crossing. I was not in a good way.

Good thing, VERY good thing, the Garmin doesn’t have a way to send short pre-programmed messages to other riders. It can show you where they are, but that’s it. If you could create short messages sent at the push of a button, how tough would it be to not send the one saying “Gotta turn back, I’m dead, keep going.” There were many times climbing Kings Tuesday where I was thinking, what am I doing here? But eventually I got to the top and started feeling a bit better and by the time we got to the West Old LaHonda loop, I wasn’t feeling 100% awful.

Did have a bit of an issue with confidence descending though. It felt like I lost traction in a corner, either slipping on something or a tire losing air. Stopped to check and no issues with air. Unfortunately, once that happens, you start second-guessing how your bike is handling on later descents, so it wasn’t a whole lot of fun going down 84 into Woodside (even though the road was completely dry).

Tomorrow is another day. Not too cold, no rain, could be nice. Film at 11.

Keeping the dream alive- 2026 Tour de France planning starts now!

Personal stuff, Tdf trip planning

The stages of the 2026 Tour de France, unveiled Thursday, October 23rd
Kevin and I didn’t make it to the 2025 TdF, but instead did a shorter-than-planned trip to Italy to watch the first four stages of the Tour of Spain… which were in Italy! Things actually went very well, getting to all four of the stages as planned, a little excitement with the second stage returning in the rain, but sadly we had to leave early and didn’t get to ride the Stelvio.

But next year… can it be done? With the TdF make it difficult to see several stages in a row? Will we get back to the Pyrenees (my favorite part of France) again?

The Pyrenees appear to be out. Once again, they’ve shortened the epic Pyrenees stages to just two days, near the start of the ‘Tour. Just like last year. So we’re back to the Alps again, but can we get back to the basics, the option where we stay entirely in one city (typically either Lourdes for the Pyrenees or Grenoble for the Alps) and then pack up on the last evening and head to Paris by train the next morning for the finale?

Survey says… yes!

It appears possible to do the impossible… see all 7 of the final stages. Don’t think we’ve ever done more than six in the past. Normally we’d skip the usually included flat stage the ‘Tour tosses into the final week, a gift for the sprinters, but this year, if we stay in Grenoble, we’ll be close enough to that boring flat stage it will be worth the ride to see it, maybe viewing it from a feed stop, or perhaps scouting things out well enough to get that ultimate and still-elusive shot of the riders with sunflowers in the background.

The basics- Leave Thursday July 16th and, depending upon pricing, fly into either Paris (CDG) and take the train to Grenoble, or Lyon (LYS) and take a shorter train to Grenoble.
Arrive Grenoble July 17th probably around 4pm, hopefully stay at our favorite apartment just two blocks from the train station, build the bikes, find dinner, set up shop for 9 days (Friday 17th night through Sunday 26th), then Sunday morning train to Paris for one night, see the finale, and leave next day (Monday 27th).

Saturday (the 18th) will be a day for a local ride, maybe into the Vercors.
Sunday (19th) will be a challenging day, seeing the finish at Plateau de Solaison. This will test the limits of following the TdF without a rental car! This will be a new climb for us; details can be found here. Getting there… not so easy from Grenoble. 7:32-9:15am from Grenoble to Annecy, and then a 50 kilometer (32 mile) ride with about 7000ft of climbing to the summit finish. There’s a choice of either going up the backside of the climb, watching it from the top, and then returning the way the riders came up, or a different route that would take us up the race route and then back down the same way. Details here. But getting back…unfortunately, about 2500ft of climbing on the return, either way. Looking into staying overnight “on the road” and returning the next day. Not a huge deal since that’s a rest day for the ‘Tour, but don’t want to make it an impossibly-tough day for us!

More to come. Close to 1am so got to shut things down and restart tomorrow (or, later today!).