Category Archives: Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Endless ramblings regarding the every Tuesday & Thursday-morning bike ride, leaving Olive Hill & Canada Road at 7:45am, rain or shine

Another solo ride, but at least full-distance. It’s been a tough month.

Personal stuff, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Last Sunday Kevin and I were supposed to to an easy hill ride, with a few miles. Ride up Old LaHonda then Skyline all the way to 9, down into Los Altos for the usual stop at Peet’s, and back via the foolhills. Didn’t work out as planned; Kevin’s knee was protesting pretty nastily so we cut things short, descending Page Mill and looping back through Portola Valley & Woodside. Under 40 miles just doesn’t cut it for a Sunday ride! But we couldn’t push our luck with his knee. He saw a doctor for it on Tuesday, and a physical therapist, at 7:30am, this morning. 7:30am??? Things are a bit tougher to figure out because he can’t have an MRI done, due to the computer installed on top of his brain. Big magnets aren’t a good idea.

Kevin did ride with me Tuesday morning, but we stayed out of the hills. Feels very very strange doing something other than heading up to Skyline on a Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride. We rode the Loop, including Arastradero, ending up just a mile or so short of the normal distance, but a whole lot less climbing.

Then today, while Kevin was at his PT appointment, it was just me out there. Surprisingly few other cyclists on the road; saw nobody on Skyline or West Old LaHonda. Nice morning as you can see from the video; the fog was further out towards the coast, and dry roads all the way!

Hopefully, with my mom’s brain surgery in the past (having a large meningioma removed, which sounds bad by itself, and add that it’s being removed from a 93 year old…). She’s recovering nicely, and hopefully we can get things back on track at the bike shop now. It just kinda feels like everything began going downwhill after Kevin and I got back from France. Time to reverse that. Time for Kevin to have fewer seizures too; it was 4 today and maybe 7 yesterday.

But this morning, even though riding alone, there was some feeling of normalcy. Heck, at the end of the ride I was even thinking, 9:29am, that’s just 7 minutes off a good time from the fast days way back when. Maybe way way way back when. It really does help having working power meters on the bike, no question.

At least Karen’s cancer seems stable and our November 17th-December 1st vacation is on! Flying into Amsterdam so she can see Anne Frank’s house, then train to Paris for a day, then board a cruise ship where the highlight will be a goat cheese farm and the Rock of Gibraltar. Our 4th cruise, not in as fancy a room as the last two but still pretty darned nice, still an Aft cabin so we can go to sleep with the sound of the ship’s wake through open doors. Looking forward to that! And also looking forward to the TdF route presentation in October. There are some things down the road to work towards. Just have to keep that in mind when things seem a tad bit crazy.

Past performance is not a predictor of future results

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

Got a new bike computer, the Garmin 1050. It is *so* nice!!! Super-bright screen with greater contrast, easier for 68-year-old eyes to see, easier for gloved hands to work the screen, and displays relevant information regarding your fitness level and what might be done to improve it.

Cruising through the menus, I found one (that’s also available on the Garmin 1030 and 1040 I think) that gives your past best accomplishments, going back to the beginning of time (not really; goes back to when you first started logging rides with a Garmin). One of the items shown was 20 minute power, which, of course, couldn’t be measured until I got my first power meter. That peak 20 minute power reading was from October 13, 2013. So I had to go back and look it up, right? And the title of that ride…

First real ride with “Power” (Stages power meter)

That’s right. My first ride with a power meter demonstrated the highest-20-minute-power I’ve ever seen. Which means, basically, that it’s been all downhill ever since. I have no way of knowing when my peak power readings might have been; when I was 50 I had a bit of a second “peak” in fitness (the first being the years I raced, which prehistoric times… no power meters, no cell phones, no bike computers of any kind). But I do know that I’ve been on a steadily-downhill trend since 2013 at least.

The good news is that my Garmin-estimated VO2 max is coming off it’s low and back up to 47 (was 46 a few weeks ago) and hopefully I can get it up a bit higher as I get ready for France. I’ve also got another glass-booth breathing test coming up, where I’ll get an idea of how the lungs are working and push for more attention to the cause of my breathing issues.

Yesterday’s Kings ride- not too bad. I was feeling pretty good on Kings, possibly feeling the effects of taking Ketones about 35 minutes prior to the ride, rather than waiting until just heading out. As with most things, seems like I need a bit more time to warm up and for meds to take effect.

Also finally on blood pressure meds. Losartan, which will hopefully not have an affect on my performance like Amlodipine did. First dose last night. Think if I take it just before sleep, I can sleep through the worst of any side-effects.

Here’s that ride from 11 years ago-