All posts by Mike

A tale of two rides, Tuesday vs Thursday

It’s really tough to figure out why Tuesday’s ride went so well. I hadn’t slept much the night before, lots of drama going around at the shop and home due to various health issues with various people (for the most part, not me). Vs Thursday when I did sleep pretty well the night before, and a lot of the immediate things that had needed to be dealt with earlier in the week were not settled.

Yet Tuesday I felt like I was in “cruise” mode climbing, vs Thursday when I just couldn’t get either heart rate or watts to cooperate. Both rides I was with ex-Pilot (older Kevin), as younger Kevin is going to be away from tougher climbs for a while, due to his continuing knee issues. Both rides had warm weather in common; no need for leg warmers, long-fingered and/or heated gloves, or base layers. But Thursday it felt like I just didn’t really show up for the ride.

Thankfully the #1 rule still applied… at the end of the ride, and later in the day, I was glad I got out there. No matter how bad it feels on the bike, it’s never felt like something I should have avoided. With possible exceptions for those rare rides where I injured myself.

It’s funny to think about making it up Kings and being relieve your time’s under 40 minutes; it wasn’t that long ago I would have felt the same for 30 minutes. It’s still my hope that, when I finally get my comprehensive lung testing done (which has been put off until mid-December, not by my choice), they’ll find something actionable, something that I can do something about and breathe better/ride faster.

Hard to believe it was just a couple months ago that Kevin and I were in France, on an impossibly-compressed 8 day time frame, and got in some fantastic rides, incredible climbs, and saw 6 stages of the Tour de France. It was like being on an island untouched by a storm surrounding int. So many things that could have gone wrong, but didn’t. If only the rest of the year could be like that!

Solo ride after watching World Cycling Road Championships

The not-so-secret quarry in the Los Altos foothills

It wasn’t supposed to be a solo ride this morning, but the World Cycling Road Race went a bit longer than expected, so I missed meeting up with ex-pilot in Woodside at 8:30. In theory I was supposed to chase after them (Kevin and two friends of his), but I knew catching them wasn’t going to be in the cards; just riding over Jefferson was tough, really tough, as I’m dealing with the very long tail end of bronchitis, or maybe it was RSV, who knows, but still hacking quite a bit with the slightest change in temperature. Hate that.

But I dutifully rode the prescribed route they’d given, adding an unintended detour or two because the routing through the Los Altos foothills, en route to the quarry, is more than a bit convoluted. At a couple points, where you could see way way way ahead, I’d see if I could find them, but nothing to see here, move along.

I’d love to have headed over the hill to the coast today, but not quite there yet. Got to get rid of the last of this coughing thing. In the meantime, I can still push myself when the opportunity arises, and the short steep hills above Los Altos are just the ticket. It did take a while to find any sort of rhythm, and it never, ever, helps that you head up the lower flanks of Page Mill to Altamont.

The part of this ride I do not see the appeal to is the section through Rancho San Antonio Park. I have yet to ride through when it wasn’t packed with walkers and joggers crowding the single paved road that goes through the park. And it is a park after all; the walkers and joggers have just as much right to be there as I do, even more actually. I have roads available to me everywhere, starting at my garage. The walkers and joggers have to drive miles to get there, miles from any coffee shop even! When I enter the park, which is the turnaround point for most of the walkers and joggers, I mean wow, they might be a mile and a half from where they parked their car. The horror, the horror.

When I got to my turnaround point, Peets adjacent to our former Los Altos location, I discovered that Peets is a whole lot busier at 10:30am on a Sunday than it is at 2pm. Packed busy. Also remembered that Peets is notoriously slow compared to the almost-next-door Starbucks. But better coffee and food. Much better. Worth the wait.

The ride back was uneventful; I didn’t push myself so hard that I’d start coughing again, and rode back via Arastradero to get in a tiny bit more climbing.

September 29th ahyyuuuuuuu’;[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[/;. (Ok, that was a cat walking across the keyboard. It happens). Where was I. Right. September 29th. Still wonderful weather. Definitely noticing the days getting shorter, but still nice. It’s hard to believe that just two months from now it’s going to be darker and colder. Might even see rain by then.