Tag Archives: bike friday

Bike Friday pre-France shakedown cruise #1

Personal stuff, Ride reports (not Tu/Th), Tdf trip planning

la_store_bikefriday_cruiseThe original plan sure didn’t work out today! Kevin needing to head to Kaiser to get antibiotics for the pneumonia bug that’s hit my family kept him from getting in a “real” ride today, but he did ride the trainer for an hour, plus we should count riding his bike to & from the doctor, right? We made the best of it, heading to the shop first, so we could go over the bikes we’ll be taking to France and make sure we have what we need.

After that I did get out on a short ride, heading south to our Los Altos store and then for the return, actually trying a new road or two… something not so easy for me to do after all these years!

It took about half an hour to get into the swing of things on the Bike Friday, although it wasn’t until nearly home that I was finally feeling comfortable putting some real power into the bike (on the ride south I never hit anything over 250 watts, but gradually my peak power crept up until finally getting over 500… still well below the 700 I’d typically see on my Trek, but y’know, when you’ve got a rack on the back and a large bag sitting on top of it, plus pedals and shoes you’re not really used to, and a bike that flexes quite a bit more… let’s just say it doesn’t quite feel the same trying to sprint up a hill!).

If things go as planned (which hasn’t happened often lately!), we’ll be doing the Pescadero Tunital loop tomorrow morning, at a pretty slow speed. We really don’t want to see issues with Kevin’s knee. Then we’ll be packing the bikes up afterward, so at least one thing will be ready for France.

We’re going to be hitting the ground running when we arrive; the train gets into Lourdes (in the Pyrenees) at 8:20pm, and the first ride (and stage of the ‘Tour we’ll be seeing) has us getting up early enough to catch a 6:30am train. Yikes! It won’t be an epic ride, but definitely challenging, as we climb the Col d’Aspin from the “hard” side and ride on back to Lourdes. That’s on Friday. Saturday, we’ll be seeing the ‘Tour ride over the Tourmalet, a relatively-short ride from Lourdes. Short does not mean easy though! That, also, will be an early morning, since the Tourmalet is the first climb of the day so they’ll be closing the mountain pretty early.

Too bad I’m not a morning person. 🙂

Shakedown ride, Col de la Charmette from the backside

Personal stuff, Ride reports (not Tu/Th), Tdf trip planning, , , , ,
This innocent little road takes you up the backside of the Col de la Charmette. The FUN side.
This innocent little road takes you up the backside of the Col de la Charmette. The FUN side.
This is the experience I seek out!
This is the experience I seek out!

Details coming later today, but for now, suffice it to say we completed a ride that Kevin and I started 2 years ago, doing the infamous “other” side of the Col de la Charmette, up Route Forestiere. Many claims that the road isn’t for riding on anything but a mountain bike, but, if you’re willing to walk over just a couple of places where rocks might slice your tires, and probably walk through one dark tunnel as well (again, because sharp rocks might do a number on your tires), you could ride any road bike up it. Provided you have reasonably-low gears that is! And yes, parts of this are pretty steep, with kilometer sections averaging 10, 11 & 12 percent. You will be working! Thankfully, our Bike Fridays were up to the task, as usual.