Riding for A Cause……

Every year, for the last 5 years, we’ve gotten a group of people together to do the Napa Valley Tour de Cure. You’ll notice I said “people” and not "riders" and this is an important distinction.
Had I used the word “riders” it would have implied that this group rides more than one time per year which for many is not the case and, gives testament to 1) how important this cause is and 2) how willing people are to suffer if they’re doing something good.

The Tour de Cure is a fund raiser bike ride that benefits the American Diabetes Association, a group that does an amazing amount of research and work to help people that are affected with this illness. This year, our team raised just over $6,000 for this important cause.

The interesting thing is that for many of the riders I talked to on the route, and for some on our team, this ride is the one time a year that they even get out on a bicycle. The Tour offers routes at 10, 25, 50, 80 and 100 miles and while just about anyone can roll out of bed and suffer 10 miles on a bike, the largest groups of riders appear to be the 25 and 50 mile groups. Riding 25 miles for someone that doesn't ride regularly is no small thing.

The ride starts in Yountville at the Veteran’s Home and does a loop north on 29 across the valley, south on the Silverado Trail, back across the valley and back up 29 to the beginning. The only difference in the routes is the cutoff across the valley determines how far north (and south) you end up going. It’s a gorgeous ride through one of California’s most beautiful valleys.

The first section winds along a narrow lane shaded by mature oaks that have been around as long as California has been a state before eventually spitting out onto Hwy 29. Hwy 29 is the main route up and down the valley and the traffic is indicative of just how popular this region is. This is probably the least pleasant part of the ride and even this is beautiful.

After heading north, my youngest daughter and I turned onto one of the many crossroads that bisect the valley. Immediately the traffic dies and we’re able to ride 2 abreast as we chat and admire the various vineyards and wineries.

Eventually we meet up with the Silverado Trail and begin our trek south. The northbound leg was in to the wind so once we’ve made the turn, the pace picks up as the wind pushes us along.

After the one rest stop on our route, we’re only doing the 25 mile loop, we’re treated to almond butter and bananas on bagels, trail mix, fresh fruit and jelly belly sport beans. Once back on the bikes we continue south for a ways, enjoying the push of the tailwind before heading back west across the valley.

It was once we’d crossed the valley that reality set in for those that hadn’t ridden much over the winter. The last 4-5 miles is back north towards Yountville and directly into an afternoon headwind. Surprisingly towards the end of this leg, I could tell my daughter was starting to suffer. She slowed way down and got quiet. The quietness was what really gave her away. She’s one of those eternally chipper and “up” personalities usually so I knew she wasn’t having fun.

The last little section of the ride is up the hill to the veteran’s home. As we got to the top of the hill I looked down at my daughter’s front tire and saw it was completely flat. She had no idea and neither did I although that could explain why she was having so much trouble on the last leg.

We did it though, rode 25 miles through one of the most beautiful areas in the state, if not the entire country….it’s a tough job but hey someone has to do it.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men….Often Go Awry….

Yesterday was to be the first official “training ride” for my upcoming birthday adventure ride. (I still have 26 days so there’s no rush) The plan was to leave work at “early” at 3:30 and head out to meet the gang at the base of Mt Diablo.

Well, as the quote from the Robert Burns poem indicates, the “plan” fell apart soon after its formation. Turns out I didn’t leave work till a few minutes after 4:00 and by the 4:45 "planned" start time I had still not even made it out of Hayward….yes our traffic SUCKS!

So, being the flexible and adaptable guy that I am (yep anyone that knows me knows I’m lying) I made a quick decision to bag the original plan and go to plan B.  Plan B, which I made up while sitting in traffic, was to stay on this side of the hill and ride out Redwood Rd as far as I could while still getting back in the daylight. Normally I’d do the zoo loop, but I’m not sure what time they close and I didn’t want to be lost in Oakland and running out of daylight.

I got to the Redwood Rd carwash, changed into my riding gear and was on the bike pedaling by 5:30. The first climb up Redwood towards Proctor is one of my least favorite climbs anywhere. It’s not that steep and its not that long…I just hate it.  Probably has something to do with the fact that I’m never warmed up by then, I usually hit it pretty hard and I suffer the entire way up.  By the time I get to the top, my legs are screaming, my lungs are collapsing and I’m huffing like an old steam train climbing Donner summit.

After that though, there’s a nice long downhill to a flat that allows my legs to loosen up and my lungs to be shoved back down inside my chest before the real climb up Redwood begins.  Redwood in't actually a brutal climb, I think it’s only about 1000ft to the top, but it is a long grind and having very little climbing miles logged, it had me huffing like a water buffalo in heat….the good thing is, I was mostly alone only seeing 2 or 3 other riders heading down as I climbed.

As I crested the top and began the downhill my legs were cooked…further testament to a winter of couch time and bad eating. The downhill though, again allowed me to recover and when I got to Pinehurst I felt good. So I turned for yet another climb. The climb up Pinehurst is fairly mild, about 1 ¼ miles and maybe 600 ft of climbing. This was actually the best climb of the afternoon. I felt good and tried my best to maintain a strong pace all the way up…..(evidently I didn’t feel as good as I thought since part way up some young skinny guy passed me as if my brakes were rubbing…..yeah, I checked and no they weren’t)

At the top of Pinehurst there’s a turnout and although the afternoon had up till that point been mostly cloudy and breezy, I pulled over into a nice sunny spot and enjoyed some water and an e-gel.
Sidenote – if you’re looking for a gel this is one of my favorites. It’s actually almost too sweet, but the fact that it goes down easy and contains less sugar than gu or clif shots and has way more electrolytes than either makes it my go-to favorite for gel products.

After enjoying both the sunshine and a rest, I headed back down Pinehurst and began the climb back up Redwood Rd. The climb wasn’t bad and soon I was enjoying the fruits of my labors with a long screaming descent back down to the golf course. Spin along the flats and then climb up the last little climb back to civilization and soon I was back at my truck loading the bike and headed for a long hot shower.

The ride for me was good on several levels. It was a decent amount of climbing without being a suffer-fest, there was absolutely no traffic so it allowed me to spin along and lose myself in making circles and it was great to measure myself on a ride I’ve done a hundred times to see where I’m at physically.

Unfortunately on the not so good side of things, it brought home just how out of shape I am. The front side of Redwood used to be a big ring climb for me. Sure I stood a lot and it was definitely not a cakewalk, but I had done it a number of times at the end of last season and was surprised when I had to drop into my small ring pretty quickly after starting....oh well, I'll get there eventually....

As Helen Keller said, "All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming"

How Much Fitness Can You Cram Into 27 Days????

Well, I guess I’m going to find out.  On May 28th, I and several friends will begin the ride to celebrate (lament?) my 50th year on this earth….the problem is that I’m not in any kind of shape to actually ride from here to Tahoe, so I’ll spend the rest of this month trying to get in to the kind of shape I need to be in to pull this off.

It was actually supposed to start last weekend with a 60 mile ride up in Chico with my sister and brother. Every year we get together for the Chico Wildflower ride and do the 60 mile “flatflower” loop which is a lot of fun, has gorgeous scenery and definitely has THE best food of all the organized rides I do. Unfortunately, my sister has an overuse injury from tennis and big back to back tournaments the next two weekends so she was hoping to take it easy. This combined with the fact that my brother hasn’t ridden at all this year and my basic laziness convinced us all just to do the 30 mile loop.
It was a great weekend though and hanging out with them and my brother in law the night before and all day on Sunday was way more fun than chalking up some random number for mileage.

So, this week I’ll try to get my act together and log some decent miles and elevation in an effort to coerce my body into some sort of shape by the end of the month. Tonight I’ll start with a ride up Mt Diablo. Granted, this isn’t much mileage, but it is almost 4,000 ft of climbing and the suffering that goes along with it should if nothing else act as penance for a winter of TV and couch surfing.

I’ll rest tomorrow, ride again on Thursday and then this weekend I’m going to try to do back to back rides. Saturday morning I’ll get out for an early ride and hopefully do at least 50 miles. Sunday we’ll be in Napa for the annual Tour de Cure which is another low mileage, but really fun ride we do with family and friends.

I guess the good news is that the anniversary of my half century on earth proves that if nothing else, at least I’m consistent. Its not that I procrastinate, I just prefer to put myself in positions where I’m forced to rise to the occasion…

One of my favorite quotes about procrastination is - "I love deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by." ~ Douglas Adams

Time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me…

It’s fitting that this old Rolling Stones song is in my head since I’m now just over a month away from riding my bike from here to Tahoe to “celebrate” my 50th birthday and I’m in the worst shape I’ve been in over the past few years. Normally, by this point in the year I’ve done a couple of metric centuries and the Sea Otter Mt Bike race.

I realize the Sea Otter isn’t really training for a long ride, but the fact that I didn’t race this year is indicative of my current level of fitness….or lack of fitness would probably be more apt….

It’s funny that in year’s past I’ve blogged about being too busy to ride and always thought at that point, that I had never been busier in my life. And I probably hadn’t been. Unfortunately, in retrospect, those years past were actually less chaotic and less busy than the current year seems to be. I’m not sure if this is just things looking better in the rearview mirror or whether life really is more chaotic and busy than it has been.

Regardless, the reality is that I’m fat and out of shape and I have just over 30 days to get back in shape…..no problem right? My buddy Jerry has mapped out a route for us to Tahoe that will start in San Francisco and heads north…yep, north. I know, you’re thinking, like I did, that Tahoe is east, but we’re headed north to Guerneville then east to Winters, Winters to Folsom, Folsom to Blue Cyn then finally Blue Cyn to Tahoe.

I actually wasn’t too concerned figuring we only had about 350 miles to go and 5 days to get there. Average 70 miles a day. My longest ride this year is 58 miles which is almost the same as 70. And, maybe the route would start out easy and I could actually get in shape during the ride….um…yeah….not so much. Jerry’s first day is 95 miles…..the second day is 94 miles AND there are a bunch of hills in between the coast and Winters which is right on Hwy 5….

As far as days 3-5, well, I’m really not too worried about those since I’ll probably be dead by then….hopefully they donate my bike to someone deserving…

Spring is HERE!!!....um…nevermind….

During the winter months, I can (and regularly do) use as the excuse for my added weight and lethargy (or do I have that backwards?) that it’s winter and thereby the “off season”.  This combined with an innate ability to procrastinate my way out of anything has allowed me to maintain one of my highest weights (and largest waistlines) in several years.

The reality though, is that by the time winter rolls around, I’m ready to be off the bike and on the couch a little more than I am during the nicer months. In season’s past I’ve used skiing as a lame attempt to stay fit but this year it’s been so crummy, I haven’t even been motivated to do that.

Oh sure, I’ve gotten several rides in and for the most part they’ve been “ok”….I’ve enjoyed the camaraderie and on a few the weather has been good and the scenery even better, but to be honest, the passion for the ride just hasn’t really been there. I would have been just as happy hanging out with those same friends at a restaurant over lunch and a couple beers…

This past weekend though, all of that changed. Jerry had scheduled one of my favorite rides. The Morgan Territory loop. This 50+ mile loop heads out of Danville, through Concord and around the backside of Mt Diablo into a little known and lightly traveled area of the East Bay Regional Park district that seems so remote it could be in another state.

This Saturday, unlike the past 3 weekends, held the promise of a beautiful Spring day and although we started out cold, the day quickly turned into one of those clear, sunshine filled days that make you want to work in the yard, barbecue, go to the beach or even….ride your bike.

You could tell we weren’t the only ones recovering from long-winter-itis too as San Ramon Valley Blvd had about 10x as many cyclists as they did cars and the section of the multi-use trail that we rode was like playing a video game of "dodge the jogger-walker-runners".

In addition to the beautiful weather, the challenging route and the complete lack of vehicle traffic for a major part of the ride, I have another motivator for getting back on the bike….I’ll be turning 50 next month. And, while achieving the half-century mark is a milestone in and of itself, I have decided that in order to celebrate said event, I and several of my friends, are going to ride our bicycles from the Bay Area to Lake Tahoe over a period of 5 days.

Granted, for a lot of people this sounds more like a torture test than a celebration, but personally I can’t imagine a better way to celebrate an important occasion like this than to go out and do something most people think is REALLY stupid….afterall, you only turn 50 once right?

If you take the combination of the beautiful weather and the great scenery combined with the knowledge that I’m nowhere near in shape to ride from here to Tahoe …you get one of the best rides I’ve had in the last several months.

So, having had a great first real ride of the new season and fired up to get back on the bike in a big way, I was stoked to try to get out of work early a couple of evenings this week and get some more seat-time…..at least I was until I watched the news Sunday evening and saw rain predicted for the entire coming week……oh well, guess I need to stock up on cookies and figure out where I put the TV remote….I guess I can always get in shape while riding to Tahoe...

Newton’s Laws of Motion

According to what I’ve read recently, Newton (the physicist not the cookie) came up with some laws that have been proven and supported. One of those laws, the Second Law of Motion, states that “The acceleration a of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force F and inversely proportional to the mass m, i.e., F = ma”.

Now I was never a good student, choosing instead to focus on the social and entertainment aspects of school instead of the traditional educational aspects, but from what I can determine, this means that a cyclist’s speed (acceleration) is directly proportional to the power (Force) they can produce and inversely proportional to their weight (mass) – And all of this is assuming no outside interference (wind, hills, draft, etc)

Well, with all the rain we’ve been having here in “sunny” California, I haven’t been out on the bike as much as I’d like. I have though been “fueling” for rides that never happen….which as you can imagine has increased my (m)Mass while not at all increasing my (f)Force.

Yesterday though, after church, the skies were only partly cloudy so I got my gear together, put air in my tires (they were low, not completely flat...it hasn't been that long), and headed out on the road bike for what I planned on being a fast, flat 20 mile loop that should get me home before the rains came back.

In planning most all of my rides, I try to include a decent amount of climbing. Its one of those things that, although it causes me much pain and suffering, I really enjoy. I like to climb. I like the way it forces me to focus on making circles and keeping my heart rate under control while preventing me from thinking about any of the other junk that is normally bouncing around in my head.

Yesterday’s route though was going to be almost completely flat so I figured I’d try to force myself into a similar state by ramping up my pace and hammering the whole route….unfortunately those stupid Laws of Motion that I mentioned above kind of got in the way.

At the end of last season, I found that I was able to maintain a pretty consistent 20-21mph rate on a flat road, riding alone and with little wind and including sections at 22-23mph. Usually this ended up generating an average of right around 20mph for a 20 mile loop. Yesterday though, after what seemed to me to be an all out effort, keeping my heart rate up and pushing hard, I got home to find that my 20 mile loop averaged 17.7mph per my Garmin.

Now, before you start calling me a fat slug, (which to be honest is the phrase I used after looking at my stats) I will say that the last section home, Mission Bl north to Industrial Bl. west was almost all either directly into a headwind or with a very stiff crosswind which were things that had a direct bearing on Mr. Newton’s laws (physicists call these mitigating factors)

The fundamental truth here though, ignoring my excuses, is that that the same force (f) applied to a larger mass(m+x) will produce a correspondingly smaller acceleration. Or more plainly stated, if I paid more attention to Mr. Newton and spent less time with Fig Newtons I’d be able to maintain a faster pace because my (m)ass would be smaller.

Life is a lot like salmon fishing….

Several years ago now I and a buddy went salmon fishing with a guide.  You know, one of those guys that has the really cool boat, all the awesome stories and for 150 bucks a person guarantees you’ll catch a fish big enough to put on your wall. (as if my wife would ever actually let me put a fish on the wall inside our house)

We met up at some small diner in the foothills where in addition to handing over our 300 dollars he allowed us to buy him breakfast while he regaled us with story after story of how this season was the best he remembered, and how he pitied the poor idiots that had to schlep into an office every day….(wait, did he just insult us, the guys paying his rent?)

Anyway, after filling our bellies with thick chunk bacon and home fries like you can only find in small towns up in the hills, we headed out to the launch, loaded up in his boat and headed up river at a rate that I’m pretty sure would be considered speeding on any highway till we got to the “exact spot”.  And here we sat for most of the day baking in the sun and listening to stories about how earlier in the week people couldn’t keep the fish off their lines….until….All of a sudden my buddy Sean’s rod slammed down and his reel started screaming as line peeled off faster than a fat guy running towards a donut shop.

This of course triggered several responses.  I immediately began to, a) hate Sean, b)work on a plan to knock him overboard and grab his fishing rod and c) build a story in my head as to why this was all justified. (yep, I’m a multi-tasker)
Sean on the other hand just started yelling and swearing and hanging on for dear life.
The professional, much to his credit, having seen all this before calmly released his anchor, started the motor and began following the fish downstream all the while telling us both to Calm the F%*# Down! (evidently he isn't opposed to cursing like I am)

Eventually, as I continued my plotting, Sean continued his hanging on and the professional continued following the fish, we hit a slow part of the river, guided both fish and boat into an eddy and boated the fish….a very nice 20+lb salmon.

So, what does a fishing story have to do with a cycling blog?  Well, nothing really.  It’s just that this past week has been kind of a rough one in our family for a lot of different reasons and this story popped in my head.
Life really is like salmon fishing.  Sometimes, when things are cruising along all nice and calm there are things that happen that create huge amounts of stress and chaos.  We in turn, can respond to those situations in a number of different ways…..scream and swear, plot and plan or we can untie the anchor, relax, hang on and see where things go….and to be honest, sometimes hanging on is all you can do….