Musings of a Cyclotic

I Gotta Keep Breathing (And Riding)

2010-12-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

So I rode with one of my favorite biking buddies today, Jeff - he's one of the first people I started to ride with on a regular basis many years ago - and is a constant source of support, always ready to go for a ride.

We used to ride all the time a few years ago - and today was a reminder of just how much fun it is to go for a ride with someone you connect with - we always tell fun stories, catch up on the latest gossip at our respective companies, chit-chat about life, etc.

Today's ride was not exactly one of our epic ones - just a short, simple ride - I did all of 7 miles today - and didn't feel quite as bad as I did on my first ride a couple of days ago - we rode for just over 1/2 hour (actual moving time, since I've setup my Garmin Edge 500 to auto-stop when my bike stops - cool feature!) - and I even "attacked" a few small hills. Well, perhaps "attack" is stretching the truth - a bit - but you get the idea - it felt like I was attacking those small hills. I'm sure an impartial observer would be asking why the old guy on the bike was moving so damn slow up that little itty-bitty bump in the road. But I was imagining it was more like climbing up Mt. Diablo or some other monster-sized mountain. Some day next year, I won't have to imagine anything - it'll be all too real!

When I talked to Jeff last night, he asked the usual - "Are you riding - or hiding?" - and for the last couple of years, it's been "I'm hiding!" - but this morning, he showed up promptly at 9:00 a.m. - and there I was, ready to ride! So we rode - and now I'm feeling better that I've done 2 rides in the last 3 days - exactly as planned.

Now I just gotta keep moving - or, to paraphrase the end of a great speech that Tom Hanks gave at the end of Castaway (one of my favorite movies):

"And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing (and riding). Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide (or bike ride) could bring?"

:)

Did I Just Do A Century Ride Today?

2010-12-01T17:13:00.000-08:00

Nope. It just FELT like a century ride, unfortunately - my first ride in a long, long time. Too long, as it turns out. I thought that getting onto the Comeback Trail would be tough - but it's going to be even tougher, as I found out today.

The ACTUAL ride was only about 30 minutes long - and wasn't even 10 miles long (more like 6.5 miles) - and it wasn't even hilly - it was FLAT! And I still died... :(

I guess something happens once you get past 55 (the last time I did a real ride, I wasn't even a Senior Citizen) - I'm 56 now - so THIS is what's it's like to be an old-timer, I guess. Ugh! I have a feeling it's going to be a tad harder to pull off those extra pounds, too.

But here's the good news - my new Garmin Edge 500 worked really, really well - I love it - and will be posting all my rides up on the GarminConnect website, with my handle (polarlight) - so everyone can watch me go from "Mr. Slow" to "Mr. Go"... :)

But it's gonna take awhile - I figure about 6 months before I can point with any pride to any rides I do - but it looks like I'll get some help along the way - I've already heard from a bunch of my riding buddies - Chimene, Andy, Jeff, and Jason - and I'm sure they'll help drag my butt around, firmly attached to the saddle of my bike - and hopefully get strong enough to cause them some anxiety when we hit some hill (like I did at one time - a very long time ago!)...

So today's initial ride was nothing to write home about - but at least it's a start - and that's all it was meant to be. It would have been closer to an hour, but I got started late (work crap!) and then spent a bunch of time getting my new Garmin Edge 500 configured just right - I mean, they now give you 3 (count 'em!) different displays to toggle through - and you can even have the toggling through the different screens done automatically while you ride! - and each screen can have up to 8 programmable fields - and you can choose from about a zillion (well, maybe closer to 42) different fields - nice! It'll be fun to get home tonight and upload the data to my PC - or maybe I'll just upload to the GarminConnect website, since it has all my older rides (used to be called MotionBased.com) - I'll decide later...

So it wasn't a century ride - but in about 6 months, I plan on doing a *real* century ride - and hopefully, get in good enough shape to tackle the Santa Cruz Mtn Challenge next summer - but that's just dreaming right now...first you crawl, then you walk, then you run, then you get on your bike (and die) - and then repeat as needed... :)

The Comeback Kid

2010-11-30T17:39:00.000-08:00

Unbelievable. I was doing so good - and was in such good shape. Then, I stopped riding. Why? Well, it certainly started innocently enough (heard that one before, I'm sure!) - I simply got burned out when trying to desperately train for the Death Ride with a couple of my riding buddies - actually, it was just one main riding buddy - Ed. He's a great guy - and a really strong rider - especially considering he's actually a few years older than me. Ed was able to retire - I'm still a working stiff - and he had time to ride as much as he wanted - and he really wanted to ride a LOT, to see how well he could do on the 2008 Death Ride (he ended up doing quite well, btw!) - and since I had done the Death Ride a few times, I was trying to get psyched up for that really hard ride - but I was working at a new company (SeaChange) - and I had been put onto a really hot project - lots of fun - but also lots of work...

So I tried to meet up with Ed as often as possible - and tried to play "catch up" on the miles (and the elevation gain) that you need to put into your legs to ride a successful Death Ride (in this case, "successful" means just finishing it before it gets dark!) - but alas, I was trying to ride too much in too short of a time period - and I simply burned out.

Yep - I just burned out. I was on a ride with Ed - starting in Palo Alto (right near where the Noon Ride takes off most days during the week - a racer's training ride) - and we were going to ride up and over to the coast and back - I don't even remember the exact climb we did to get over to the coast - all I remember is that I struggled immensely to get up the climb that took us to the coast - and then *really* struggled to get back from the coast - all I remember was stopping about 1/2 way up this one climb we were on - and I just said, "Screw it! I'm NOT doing the Death Ride this year - no way, no how! I'm DONE!". And that was it - I crawled my way up to the top of the climb, then drifted back down to Palo Alto to our start point - put my bike back in my car and told Ed he wasn't going to do the Death Ride with me - I was done.

Really done. I then decided to stay off my bike for a month or so, to just get away from all the training and racing I had been doing. But that one month turned into two months. Then three months. Then the legs began to really atrophy - and I started thinking about how painful it was going to be to start riding again. So the three months turned to four months - and so on, until today - two years and six months later - 30 months off the bike!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

So now I'm motivated again - I've gained a BUNCH of weight (probably 30 or 40 pounds - I'm actually afraid to find out!) - and it will be really, really hard to ride again. But ride I will. I know I will. How do I know? Well, I'm going to use my blog to keep all my dedicated followers informed (all one of us!) - and someday, maybe one of my kids will read this - and use it as inspiration to get themselves onto some kind of exercise track - and make it a a permanent part of their life!

To be truthful, I know that one of them is already on the right road - our middle son, Mitchell. He is in good shape and is on a really good diet, too (vegetarian - well, actually, he's a pescetarian, since he'll eat fish for protein) - and I'm confident he'll maintain those healthy habits all his life - because I'm going to really BUG HIM BIG TIME if I see him start to wander away (like I have - a few times in my life, unfortunately).

And our youngest son, Grant, is really into surfing - which involves a lot of exercise, too - although he doesn't do it often enough - you need to find something to gives you some kind of good aerobic exercise at least 3 or 4 times a week. I plan on starting out with 3 to 4 - and then slowly increasing it to 5 or 6 times a week, like I used to do when I was in the very best shape of my life.

But our oldest son, Jake, is kind of like me when I was in my early college career - after a couple of years just studying for classes (like Jake) - and totally stopping any kind of exercise routine (in high school, you HAVE to exercise!) - I had gained about 20 or 25 pounds (just like Jake has now) - and one day, I decided to get myself back into shape - so I looked around and decided to choose biking - what a great choice! I hope that Jake (soon!) finds something, too - and then sticks with it all his life, to keep himself as healthy as possible. Because after all is said and done (are you listening carefully, Jake?), your health is the only thing that really matters, along with your relationships - but you can't have any relationships with people unless you are able to visit them - and do things with them - so if you're bound to some hospital bed and in the poorest of poor health, you can't enjoy the fruits of all your hard labor - or enjoy your family and friends, either - so get in shape, then STAY in shape - and have fun, living life to the fullest. Okay, time to jump off my soapbox... :)

But THIS time around, it will be a little different. Rather than try to keep on pushing myself to ride faster and faster - and harder and harder - and get back into racing - I'm going to keep it light - and fun. With the emphasis on "fun". Oh, I'll do my fair share of huffing and puffing (especially in these first few months that I ride again) - but I'll keep things "fun" - I'll only ride harder when I feel like it - and it won't be to try and set some new record (although I'm sure I'll occasionally test myself, just to see how far I've come in my comeback).

To get started on the right foot, I've just had my trusty Trek Madone 5.2 bike all cleaned up and tuned up at my favorite bike shop, Chain Reaction (in Los Altos) - I bought my bike at the Chain Reaction store up in Redwood City, since I used to work up there (at SeaChange) - but now I'm at a new company (Panasonic in Cupertino) - and the other Chain Reaction store is now the closest to me - and I'll be starting on the comeback trail tomorrow, December 1, 2010 - and my first ride will be really nice and easy.

Oh - and I will be recording my rides, as usual - and I just purchased a new Garmin Edge 500 cyclometer to assist me in my comeback endeavor - and I'm really looking forward to recording a lot of FUN rides - and getting myself back in shape. I'm now 56 years old - and I know what I have to do.

So here we go...again... :)

So How Am I Doing So Far?

2008-03-18T16:32:00.000-07:00

It's early in the season and I've done several road races (no crits - at least, not yet!), with some mixed results, which is to be expected. And, this is probably a good time to assess how my climbing program is going, since *that* is certainly my greatest weakness as a cyclist.

Well, my very first road race, the Cantua Creek RR, was a resounding success, IMHO - I didn't quite make the top 10 (the current results show 22nd, but they made a mistake that has not yet been corrected - I will ultimately end up with 13th, and my friend, Gary Griffin, will be placed 14th instead of 13th, since I beat him by half a tire width - see my full race report right here). I was especially pleased with this first road race of the season, as I fully expected to finish AFTER Gary, who is a much better climber than me, by far - and yet, I somehow managed to actually beat him, albeit by the slightest of margins - and it wasn't on a course that really favored hill climbers, like Gary - it favored people like me, who can sprint pretty good up a relatively short climb - if that race had continued on for another 1/2 mile uphill or more, I'm sure Gary would have easily beaten me into submission at the end... :)

Then, my second road race, the Snelling RR, was a full-blown disaster - and to make things even worse, it was my very first race with my new team, Bicycle Trip! Not exactly how I hoped to start out my racing career with them! You can see the gory details of this disaster here, assuming you like to read stories that make you feel a whole lot better about yourself, as you compare your life to the sorry life of the story's author! However, in my defense for that particular race, it was a really nasty day, with horrendous headwinds - and I had been snookered (is that a word?) into doing the Masters 45+ open race with my new teammate, Dennis Pedersen... :)

Well, I didn't really get snookered - I actually thought that a Masters 45+ open road race would unfold like all the other road races I had done this year and last year - but *those* road races were with the Masters 45+ 4/5 group - and it turns out that the 45+ open category for Masters is a totally different beast than the 45+ 4/5 races - so now I know! Needless to say, I was completely unprepared for what happened at Snelling, so I suppose you can say I'm allowed to make one terrible mistake this year - you really have to choose your races wisely, which is pretty obvious, really!

My third road race this year, the Merco Credit Union Foothills RR, was interesting - I was actually racing the regular Cat 4 race with another new teammate on Bicycle Trip, Bryan King. It turns out this was the only race I could get into - the category I might have normally signed up for (Masters 35+ 4/5) was all filled up, unfortunately. I was a little bit leary about this race, since the regular Cat 4 group is primarily a bunch of kids - like Bryan - guys in their 20s and 30s, mostly - so I was about twice as old as the average kid (and I *do* mean "kid") in that race.

But - unlike the Masters 45+ open group, the regular Cat 4 group has *only* Cat 4 racers - no Cat 1, 2, and 3 guys, like you see in the Masters 45+ open races. So, I thought I had a fighting chance in the Merco race, and the distance was only about 50 miles, much like the road races I normally do with the Masters 45+ 4/5 group.

And, it turns out I was doing just fine in that race - except Bryan and I *both* got caught behind a crash just 2 miles from the end of the race - darn! - and ended up finishing the race, but way down towards the bottom of the list - and we both thought we had excellent chances of placing in the top 10 in that race - Bryan for sure, and me, quite likely - I guess we won't get a chance to find out until next year! If you need to see the longer story, check out my race report here.

My last race for this year, at this point, was just an unsanctioned time trial - the first Swanton Road TT, where I was doing okay for the first half, but got a terrible cramp in my right calf muscle after I did the turnaround, and had to pedal relatively easily for the return leg of that TT - ending up with an okay time, especially considering the strong winds we had to deal with, but at least 1.5 minutes slower than I might have done if I had been able to push as hard coming back as I did going out. My average heartrate going out was about 161 bpm, but it dropped down into the 152 bpm range for its average coming back on the course - and we had a nice tailwind coming back, too! Oh, well - I take solace in the fact that my "adjusted" time would have been reasonable for this time of year!

So how does it all add up? Overall, I'm relatively pleased - my climbing is not quite where I'd like it to be - but it's much better than a few months ago - and my weight has barely dropped down (I was supposed to have lost 20 pounds by now, but it's been more like 2 pounds!) - I figure if I can lose the weight I should have lost by now, my climbing would be good enough to entertain new PBs, left and right!

So my new short-term goal for the next 60 days is to get that weight down while I continue to improve my climbing. Working with Team Bicycle Trip, doing their weekly hill repeats (every Saturday morning and again on Wednesday afternoon) has certainly paid off for me - and I haven't even been as diligent as I could be! Imagine where I'd be if I was more consistent!

Okay - it's time to stop and start now, as in STOP blogging, STOP eating, and START riding more and START doing more hill repeats... :)

Memorial Ride for Kristy and Matt

2008-03-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday afternoon (March 15), I decided to go out to do the memorial ride for Kristy Gough and Matt Pederson, who were the 2 cyclists killed on Sunday (March 9) on Stevens Canyon Rd.

It was amazing - there were hundreds of cyclists - maybe even more than a thousand - that all congregated at Foothill College on El Monte Rd today, starting about 2:30 pm. The ride was scheduled to leave at 3:00 pm, heading down El Monte to Foothill, then following Foothill until it became Stevens Canyon, then end up at the memorial site where the accident happened. After the memorial, the entire group of cyclists would then return on the same route back to Foothill College.

The Channel 7 News team was there (maybe Channel 2, also - but I only saw Channel 7) - they were filming everything and doing some interviews with different cyclists. I also saw a helicopter hovering above - I'm not sure, but it might have been a news helicopter, just getting some aerial shots.

The Third Pillar Racing and Roaring Mouse Cycling teams left promptly at 3:00 pm, leading out a very slow procession of cyclists, with the Sheriff's office helping to providing traffic control all the way to the memorial site on Stevens Canyon Rd. You could see that all the people from the Sheriff's office that were present were very respectful and truly felt bad about what had happened last Sunday.

It was an amazing site seeing the hundreds of cyclists covering half of Foothill Blvd and then Stevens Canyon Rd as we headed out to the memorial site. We were allowed to totally take over the slow lane all along the route. When we got to the top of the small hill on Stevens Canyon Rd (just a short distance before the place where the accident happened), they had closed the road completely to allow all the cyclists to come to a stop at the memorial site.

Most of us were wearing small patches that had been handed out to us in the parking lot of Foothill College before the ride started.

Also, a lot of people were handed roses, including myself - and those with flowers - or anything else they might have brought with them - were allowed to come up to the memorial site and place their flower (or whatever memento they had) down on the site. It was a very moving experience - and it was generally very quiet as people moved slowly past the memorial site.

The saddest part was hearing Kristy's mom, who was crying uncontrollably for quite a long time. I only knew it was her because someone that knew Kristy's mom pointed her out to me.

Ride safe, everyone...

Cantua Creek Road Race, Masters 45+ 4/5, 2/16/2008

2008-02-18T11:17:00.000-08:00

One word - Wooohooo!! - or, is that 2 words: Woooo-Hoooo? - it doesn't really matter, as I survived long enough to write this report!

In my previous post, I was wondering if I was ready for this first road race of the 2008 season. My post suggested I was basically ready (except for the fact that I had not lost nearly enough weight!) - but secretly, I was a little worried. I had analyzed the data for this race very carefully, and figured out the race would probably boil down to 2 critical points:

1) The climbs up the 3 stair steps at the mid-way point of the race...

2) Those same climbs of the 3 stair steps at the end of the race!

My big fear was that I would get popped off the back at the first critical point - and if that happened, it was going to be a very long second lap, doing the solo thing - and with a pretty good headwind on the "out" part of the out-and-back (heading towards the north), it would be 12 long miles by myself into that headwind, then a very lonely 12 miles back to the end of the race, and dragging myself up those 3 climbs all by myself, with only the cows over at Harris Ranch cheering me on... :)

However, that's NOT what happened during my race, I'm quite happy to report!

First, let's describe the race course: You start out at the top of a 2.5-mile climb that is really 3 smaller climbs, each separated by a (very) small downhill section. Then you have a relatively flat 9.5-mile section into a headwind that pretty much parallels Hwy 5. In fact, you cross over Hwy 5 at one point, then just before the next overpass that would take you back over Hwy 5, there is a 180-degree turnaround just as the overpass starts to pitch up slightly. Now you head back on that 9.5-mile section, but this time you have a tailwind - and, of course, those last 2.5 miles of the course are those 3 fun stair-step climbs - the first 2 are each about 1/2-mile long, and the last one is the "big" one - about 3/4-mile long. The gradient of each climb is fairly mild - only about 5% to 6%, I'd say. However, even though the gradient is not too steep, when your speed never drops below 15 mph, it can still hurt - a lot! Don't kid yourself...racing, even on "flat" roads, can be hard when the speed is high enough.

But high speeds were not really the order of the day for our race. In fact, my average heartrate for the race was only 135 bpm, a new record low for me (at both the San Ardo RR and Henleyville RR last year, my heartrate averaged about 140 bpm).

I had decided as a pre-race strategy to just sit in the pack, close to the front, for the first lap, and conserve my energy. I had one teammate with me, Gary Griffin - and when we briefly discussed race strategy before the race, it was clear we both had the same exact strategy - just sit in and pray that we are still around at the end of the race to contest the uphill sprint! Gary is a stronger climber than me, so I figured that strategy would work especially well for him, and less so for me. However, I had one advantage for this race - I had been doing a lot of hill repeats in the last month or two - I became a convert to that training technique as I watched the members of Team Bicycle Trip almost winning the Low-Key Hill Climb series at the end of last year - and they do very regular Saturday morning hill repeats.

The concept is pretty simple - try to get one hour's worth of hard climbing in, done as 3 sets of 20 minutes, or 4 sets of 15 minutes, etc. I had the, uh, pleasure of joining Mark Edwards and his band of Merry Climbers for the first time a couple of months ago, when they did 5 sets of 12 minute hill intervals on Rodeo Gulch, one of my favorite places to ride. I had never tried to ride up Rodeo Gulch twice in one day, much less 5 times! Needless to say, I was complete toast at the end of that workout session - but I also noticed that my climbing started to improve considerably after that. Mark encouraged me to start working hill repeats into my training regime, and I took his advice to heart.

In fact, I started working my own set of mini hill repeats into my training rides during the week. Where I work in San Mateo, there are dozens of these short, steep hills - typically about 1/2-mile long, but with gradients averaging anywhere from 9% to 14% - steep! I developed these small courses where I'd do small loops that forced me to climb up various short steep climbs like this - doing anywhere from 3 to 6 of them on any particular day. I wanted to do the steeper hills for two reasons: 1) To help improve my raw leg strength; and 2) As a psychological trick, to make the hills in my races seem easier by comparison - pretty clever, huh?

So the 3 stair-step climbs of Cantua Creek, which were similar in length to the short hills I had been training on, were not nearly as steep - in fact, they were only about half as steep. I think all those mini hill repeats (as well as the Saturday morning longer hill repeats with Mark Edwards and Team Bicycle Trip) really paid off for Cantua Creek - a special "Thank you!" to Mark and all the great climbers on his team...it's quite motivating to be surrounded by all these really good climbers - it helps to make you work just a little harder than you might otherwise do by yourself...

Now for the race itself: We started out on the 2.5-mile downhill section, with the 2 minor climbs between each of the stair-step sections. Then we hit the flatter section with the headwind from the north. The pace of the pack was pretty tame - I think a lot of people wanted to catch up and chit-chat with each other - since this was probably the first road race of the new season for most of us, it seemed that old acquaintances were just exchanging pleasantries, finding out what they all got for Christmas, how little they had trained during the winter, etc.

Or, in my case, new acquaintances were being formed: Here we are, motoring along at this very pleasant pace early in the race, when this guy rolls up next to me and says, "Hi! I'm William! What's your name?" - of course, I told him who I was - and then he launches into his life story - pretty funny! But he was a nice guy - he had last raced about 10 years ago, and this was his first race in 10 years! But he had raced at Cantua Creek for its first 3 years, from 1996 to 1998 - and he patiently explained to me I shouldn't worry about the first 44.5 miles - the race will only happen in the last 3 miles, he assured me. Of course, I knew that relatively easy courses like Cantua Creek often boil down to a bunch sprint at the end, so I wasn't really surprised - but since he was the voice of experience, I thanked him for his reconnaissance info. He also reminded me not to try and go too hard too soon on the hill, which I had heard about from various race reports I had read earlier.

But I was thinking to myself that I'd be delighted to just be present for the final surge up the 3 hills at the end of the race - I was really concerned about the surge that I knew would happen the first time up those 3 hills, at the midpoint of the race.

On the way out to the first 180-degree turnaround, there were a couple of minor attacks, but I had no trouble keeping my good position in that top third of the 50-person pack. I think I generally hovered between 10th and 15th place the whole time. Every once in awhile, someone would take a solo flyer, but the pack would just let them dangle out there for a mile or two, then reel them back in with no problem. It was clear this was going to probably be a bunch sprint at the end of the race.

I thought our pack was exceptionally well-mannered - there were constant shouts of "Slowing!" or "Gravel!" or "Car Up!", etc. - everyone (at least around me) handled their bikes just fine and didn't do anything dangerous or stupid - maybe it's due to the fact that all of us are over 45 - and nobody wants to go to the hospital at our age, if at all possible... :)

When we did the 180-degree turnaround on that first lap and headed back to the start/finish area of the race, there were one or two attacks with that nice tailwind, and I again had no problem staying right where I wanted to be - near the front. I had not seen Gary more than once or twice for brief moments, so I assumed he was generally positioned just behind me in the pack.

As we approached the 3 climbs near the end of the first lap, my apprehension really grew - this would be THE BIG TEST - either I'd sink or swim with the pack at this point. I had visions of watching the pack disappear up the climb, as I looked across Hwy 5 and took comfort that the cows at Harris Ranch were secretly cheering me on, all alone in my quest to catch back onto the pack again...

But that's not what happened! In fact, as we started up the first of those 3 climbs, I thought there was something wrong with the pack - it felt like we were going very slow - I saw my heartrate rise up close to my time-trial rate (160 bpm), but that was it! The pack wasn't disappearing up the climb in front of me! In fact, I had actually moved up closer to the front - huh? Then, we hit the first small downhill section after that first climb, my heartrate dropped a bit, of course, and we started up the next climb. And the same thing happened - again! My heartrate climbed up to just 159 bpm this time, so it was ever-so-slightly easier than the first climb - and suddenly, we were descending down the second small downhill section. Wow! Two down and just one more to go - I was almost feeling giddy, as I realized I was probably going to be able to hang on to the turnaround spot at the finish line of the race.

But that third climb was THE BIG ONE - a massive, 3/4-mile long hill that gained about 100 feet, instead of those "puny" 1/2-mile bumps in the road we had just negotiated. And of course, the top of a climb is where there is always a strong surge - nobody just coasts their way to the top of a climb - in a race, they always try to sprint over the top, just to shake off all the newbies and 90-pound weaklings - but in this case, you don't go over the top - you go around the cones, doing a 180-degree turn right there at the finish line area of the race.

My heartrate climbed higher this time - up to 165 bpm as we surged to the top of that last climb - but I had managed to work my way to just about the front of the entire pack - in fact, I was about the 4th person to do the turnaround - now how cool is that? Here I was, worried about watching the pack pull away from me on the climb - but it was me who was pulling the pack up the hill - or, so I would like to believe. I suspect the truth is that the really clever guys were hiding their true strength, so they could catch you by surprise at the end of the race.

But I didn't care - we were at the halfway point of the race, heading back down the 3 stair-steps - and I was now in the lead group. I felt so good about my fortunate state of affairs, I decided to take a flyer off the front when we hit the first little uphill section after speeding down the first hill - I looked back and saw that one other guy decided to launch himself out of the pack and he hooked up with me. Then a third guy flew out of the bunch behind us and suddenly, there were 3 of us, in our own little breakaway!

Hey - this is pretty cool, I thought - but I had no intention of trying to make a break work at that point in the race. In retrospect, it might have been a good tactic to try, since there were 3 of us - but I quickly realized that the other 2 guys had no intention of trying to break away - they simply caught up to me, we exchanged smiles, and then they looked back and sat up. I imagined they were told to go neutralize my "attack" - ha! Little did they know I was doing nothing more than celebrating my good fortune of being with the main pack for the second of our 2 laps - wooohooo!!

So, we settled back into the pack and I reclaimed my spot near the front - about 8 or 9 positions from the front. I had no intention of trying to take any pulls at the front - I felt more than strong enough to do this, like I had done at the Henleyville RR back in September - but I was more than content to just sit in and watch the sparks fly at the end of the race.

We had a few more attacks on the way back out to the turnaround spot of the 2nd lap - and, in fact, there was one guy that actually broke away on a solo attack - he blasted off during that second lap and got a pretty good lead on the pack - maybe 30 seconds or so. But the pack didn't seem too worried about him - and we did reel him back in about a mile before the final attacks on the 3 climbs at the end of the race.

So now we're approaching the end of the race - and just as William had told me, the real race was about to start, just 3 miles from the top of the last hill. Not surprisingly, the first of the 3 climbs was done just a little harder than we had done on the first lap - but my heartrate was still in total control, not rising above 160 bpm. I remembered that no matter what happened, I had to resist from pushing too hard too soon - it's a long way to the top, as William had reminded me. Then, on the second hill, there was a ferocious attack by either 4 or 5 guys that just hammered their way out of the main pack, which was actually disintegrating in front of my eyes - there were guys getting spit out the back like they were old cows, ready to join their siblings across Hwy 5, over at Harris Ranch...

But I wasn't one of them, thankfully! No, I was bound and determined to stay as close to the leaders of our main group - those 4 or 5 mutants that blasted off were going way too fast for me to join them (at least, I think so) - I had visions of rolling past their cold, dead bodies somewhere before we got to the finish line - but, alas, this was not to be the case... :)

However, I was holding my own with the survivors of the main pack - and as what happens in so many road races like this, there were different groups all merging together for the finish - I know we got mixed in with other groups, because we all had numbers in the 700s - and there were other numbers (not in the 700s) floating around me as we buried ourselves in pain to get to the top of the last climb.

Now here's where it gets curious - I hadn't seen Gary for a long time - but I figured he'd just fly by me on one of the last climbs of the race - in fact, I started thinking that maybe he was one of those 4 or 5 mutants that had blasted out of the pack on the second climb...

But about 1/2 way up that last climb, Gary comes rolling by me - he didn't blast past me - just rolled quietly by - I was going to make a joke, but my eyeballs were hanging out of my head and my tongue was all twisted inside my mouth - no jokes today! I figured he'd just keep motoring past me and easily finish ahead of me, at least a few places. But we were both passing people, left and right, as various guys were blowing up on the climb. I felt like I was going to blow up, too - but as Gary got in front of me, he slowed ever so slightly for just a split moment - and I managed to grab onto his rear wheel. I just stared at his wheel and decided I would do whatever I could to hang on for dear life...

Then, after what seemed like several hours (but it was really more like a few seconds), I saw the 200-meter sign. 200 meters to go? That's it? Woohoo! Like a trained race horse that's just been let out of the gate, I knew it was time to 'sprint'. Of course, sprinting up a hill when you're totally maxed out is not an easy thing to do - I saw my heartrate was now essentially redlined - 172 bpm!! My max heartrate is only 175 bpm - so there wasn't much wiggle room left! But I let loose whatever was left in my legs for the sprint and I managed to pull up even with Gary just inches from the finish line - and with one last hard push, I actually nipped Gary at the line, beating him by about 1/2 a tire width! Is that possible? I guess so - and we had managed to come in just ahead of my new racing buddy, William, who thought he had sewn up 12th place - I have absolutely no idea how he could tell what place he had finished in - there was such chaos at the end, with several different groups finishing at about the same time.

We couldn't stick around to see the official results, but it looks like I might have snagged 10th place and Gary 11th place, since William finished just behind Gary.

A possible top-10 place - what a great way to start out the 2008 racing season!

Am I Ready For My First Road Race of 2008 - Cantua Creek?

2008-02-15T18:08:00.000-08:00

So, am I ready for the Cantua Creek Road Race tomorrow, my first road race of the season?

Let's see...

1. Create a "secret training" program to reclaim some lost climbing fitness from last year.

Check.

2. Join the Bicycle Trip team for some of their Saturday morning hill repeats, as another aid to reclaim that lost climbing fitness (man, those workouts are tough!).

Check.

3. Try to ride virtually every day, starting around last December 10, when I began my "secret training" program.

Check. (I've ridden 52 out of 67 possible days since last December 10 - I had a streak of 26 straight days from December 30 to January 24 - wow!)

4. Discover my own hill repeat courses near work and work them into my training schedule each week.

Check.

5. Achieve some new PBs on some of the shorter climbs that I do - the ones under 1 mile long.

Check. (I actually established 6 new PBs!)

6. Do a final test ride where I do about half the distance of the Cantua Creek RR (the race is about 48 miles) and about half the total climbing (the race is about 1600 feet) in about half the time (the race will be about 2:05 or so).

Check. (Today I did a 20 mile ride with 1100 feet of climbing at 17.6 mph while averaging only 122 bpm for my heartrate in a time of 1:08 - how cool is that? - and you can see my MotionBased.com recording of that ride right here)

7. Lose 20 pounds so I can keep the Bicycle Trip guys in my sights on their longer climbs.

Check. --- NOT!

Well, 6 out of 7 ain't too bad, right? Gotta lose that weight now... !

But, the good news is - I think I'll be able to hang with the main pack tomorrow for the whole race - and if I play it *real* smart, I'll try to go for a top 10 placing, assuming I'm still around at the end of the race. Stay tuned!

A special "Thank you!" goes to Dennis Pedersen, for all his help and encouragement during the last few months - it's been a pleasure, Dennis!

I guess my next blog entry will be something about tomorrow's big race - Cantua Creek, here I come!

Another Secret Revealed To Climb Faster

2008-01-31T10:30:00.000-08:00

So I was doing one of training rides recently, heading from where I work in San Mateo over to Woodside, to climb part way up Kings Mtn Rd - it's related to my "secret" training program that I talked about in an earlier posting ( you can read all about it right here ).

Well, as I'm approaching Tripp Rd, where I start my timer for the climb up Kings Mtn Rd, I happened to pass by 3 cyclists that were heading in my direction. I was riding slightly faster than them, preparing for the grind up the climb.

Of course, they knew nothing about my "secret" training program - or me, for that matter! But it was clear that something inspired them to pick up their pace, in order to shadow me up the climb - or maybe just pass me by, which would not be too hard to do, since I'm not exactly the fastest climber in the world.

In fact, I'm a fairly poor climber that is attempting to mold myself into a decent, "average" climber. In this case, "average" means that I can finish mid-pack in the Low-Key Hill Climb series this year. And that is no small task - if you are "average" (meaning you can score 100.0 points on any of the climbs in that series), you can probably climb better than your typical recreational cyclist - and it means you can probably hang on in the main pack for a road race that involves some climbing. And that is my main cycling goal this year - climb well enough to just "hang in" during a road race that has some climbs, and not get dropped from the main pack...

Now, back to the 3 cyclists that started to shadow me as I started climbing Kings Mtn Rd...

Well, as I said earlier, I'm not sure what inspired them to up their pace and start to shadow me up the climb, but I'm guessing it might have been my SCCCC cycling kit.

I joined the SCCCC race team in the middle of last year, just after I got my racing license in May of 2007. At the time, I was able to purchase only 1 jersey - so I had to wear my usual black biking shorts (bibs, actually) and black cycling shoes. But at the end of 2007, we were able to put in our clothing order for 2008, and I decided to order a whole lot of goodies - a couple of jerseys (short sleeve and long sleeve), a couple of bibs (shorts and knickers), some vests (including a really nice thermal vest), shoe covers (even thermal ones!), a couple of skinsuits for time trials - all in all, several hundreds of dollars worth of cycling clothes!

So now I can get all decked out in my SCCCC kit when I go for rides - and I've noticed that I no longer have any desire to wear anything *but* my cycling kit - it's kind of like a badge of honor, I guess...

In my mind, I was thinking these 3 guys wanted to see if they could keep up with a "professional" road racer, which is who they might have thought I was - who knows? Maybe they imagined I was a super climber, like Kevin Metcalfe. Or Mark Edwards. Or Clark Foy. Or Tim Clark. Little did they know that I was just me - someone desperately trying to become an "average" climber - and nowhere in the league of those great climbers I just mentioned. I'm really built more for sprinting and time-trialing - I don't have that real lightweight body that is the trademark of so many of the great climbers - and I don't have the time to train enough to increase my power to the point where I can use brute force to overcome my larger body type.

But I guess when I realized these 3 guys had decided to jump onto my tail, some kind of magic power overwhelmed me - and I felt I had to try and not totally embarrass the racing team I represented with my kit - so I started to push just a little harder and faster than I might normally do at the beginning of the Kings Mtn climb...

I figured they would probably stay with me for a mile or so, then swoosh right by me, to let me know that they could easily beat a "professional" racer...

But that didn't happen! In fact, after just a 1/2 mile or so, I glanced back and saw that all 3 had dropped off my tail and were apparently in great duress - if Phil Liggett were commentating, I could hear him now: "Those boys will really have to dig deep into their suitcase of courage!" - or maybe: "Those boys are in a spot of bother on this climb!" - perhaps even this: "Those boys' legs will be screaming for them to stop!"...

And here's what I imagined Phil would be saying about my performance at that moment in time: "He's dancing on his pedals in a most immodest way!" - or perhaps: "He climbs like an angel!" - maybe even this: "There's Steve Rosen, turning over those massive gears!"...

Well, in any case, I realized that wearing my SCCCC kit seemed to inspire me to ride just a little harder - and hence, a little faster - than I might normally ride - and that day, I ended up getting to my destination spot on the climb (about 1/2 way up for that day's goal) in a record time for me - woohooo!!

Oh, and those 3 cyclists? Well, they totally dropped out of sight by the time I reached the Huddart Park entrance (about 1.4 miles up the climb from Tripp Rd) - and after I reached my pre-determined spot for the day (2.2 miles up the climb), I congratulated myself on my excellent time (well, excellent for me, anyway!) - and then proceeded to head back down the mountain. As I passed by the Huddart Park entrance, I saw those 3 cyclists, who had stopped to take a brief rest - and they had this look of total disbelief on their faces! I think they had imagined that I had ridden all the way to the top of Kings Mtn Rd and was now coming back down to head home! I just smiled at them, suggesting that that is exactly what I had done... :)

So you want to climb just a little faster than the next guy? Well, join a cycling climb - and be sure to order your kit - and wear it every time you ride...

And now you've learned just one more secret to climbing faster - your mental attitude can be all the difference between winning - or losing - the race...

...and wearing your kit doesn't hurt, either!

Preview of the 2008 Low-Key Hill Climb (LKHC) Series

2008-01-23T09:59:00.000-08:00

For 2007, I watched on the sidelines with great interest as quite a few people participated in the the Low-Key Hill Climb series (check it out right here). I didn't do any of the climbs because I was so discouraged about how I had lost my climbing legs during the second half of 2007, when I got into racing big-time - but totally abandoned my great training program I had adhered to so religiously for the first half of 2007. Sigh...

But, since the LKHC participants seemed to enjoy my LKHC Converter I created for them (and me!) - you can check it out a previous blog entry about it here - I decided to attend the LKHC Awards ceremony last week at the Cupertino Community Hall - it was totally fun! I highly recommend you attend it next year - we got to see a Tour of California preview short film and other goodies, too. Ron Brunner created an excellent and very professional-looking summary video of the 2007 LKHC series of climbs - good work, Ron!

However, one highlight that was eagerly anticipated was the announced list of climbs for the 2008 LKHC series, starting October 1 this year.

I managed to remember the list of all 9 climbs, but don't remember the exact order (except for the first and last climbs, which are the same every year, by tradition - Montebello Rd is the first climb of the series and Mt Hamilton is the last climb of the series).

So - drum roll, please - here's the list for 2008:

1. Montebello Rd - 5.3 miles, 2030 feet
2. Metcalfe Rd - 2.2 miles, 1033 feet
3. Quimby Rd - 5.1 miles, 2000 feet
4. Alpine Rd (West) - 7.6 miles, 1950 feet
5. Montevina Rd - 3.9 miles, 1800 feet
6. Bear Gulch Rd (West) - 3.2 miles, 1020 feet
7. El Toyonal/Lomas Cantada - 2.8 miles, 1129 feet
8. Jamison Creek - 3.1 miles, 1470 feet
9. Mt Hamilton - 18.4 miles, 4360 feet

Here are a few quick notes on the above climbs:

For Montevina Rd, here's somebody's MotionBased.com recording of a ride they did:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2182336

For the El Toyonal/Lomas Cantada climb, it's in the Berkeley hills and was part of what someone called the Berkeley Hills Death Ride - here's their story (Note to self - I gotta try to do this ride one day!) :

http://www.inl.org/bicycle/deathride.html

For the Bear Gulch Rd West climb, here's somebody's MotionBased.com recording of a ride they did:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/4692266

Also, note that the start of the Bear Gulch Rd West climb is also the entrance to Neil Young's Broken Arrow ranch, if you head towards the ocean - maybe he'll come out and watch the climbers that day!

It looks like the 2008 climbs will be pretty interesting - I'm planning on doing all of the climbs in the series for this year - and I'm hoping to be climbing well enough late in the year to score an average of 100.0 points for each of those 9 climbs.

Scoring 100.0 points (the median time) for any of those climbs will be a tough goal to reach, since I'm not a natural climber - so I'll have to be climbing better than I ever have in my entire life!

To give you an example of how fast I need to do each of those climbs, here is my best guess at what I need to do to score 100.0 points (the MEDIAN time) for each of those climbs - I've also added what I think will be the WINNING time:

1. Montebello Rd--5.3 miles--2030 feet--36:00 / 26:05
2. Metcalfe Rd--2.2 miles--1033 feet--18:00 / 13:20
3. Quimby Rd--5.1 miles--2000 feet--35:00 / 25:45
4. Alpine Rd (West)--7.6 miles--1950 feet--35:00 / 25:05
5. Montevina Rd--3.9 miles--1800 feet--32:00 / 23:10
6. Bear Gulch Rd (West)--3.2 miles--1020 feet--18:00 / 13:10
7. El Toyonal/Lomas Cantada--2.8 miles--1129 feet--20:00 / 14:30
8. Jamison Creek--3.1 miles--1470 feet--26:00 / 18:55
9. Mt Hamilton--18.4 miles--4360 feet--90:00 / 73:00

Bottom line - I have my work cut out for me! I need to lose about 20 pounds AND somehow increase my power by about 5% - neither one is an easy task. Or, I could lose just 10 pounds, but then I'd have to increase my power by about 10% - much harder! I'd rather lose that extra 10 pounds than try to increase my power by another 5% over the 5% I *already* need to increase it by - either way, it's a tall order and a big goal!

But that's what life's all about, right? Setting goals and then going for them - even if you come up a little short, you'll still be a lot better off than if you had never even tried in the first place...

Another "Secret" Training Program - Revealed!

2008-01-23T09:33:00.000-08:00

For those of you following my blog (which means mostly Dennis Pedersen, of course!), you are aware of a "secret" training program that I started, in order to try and get my climbing legs back - you can read about it right here, in case your forgot about it...

Well, I'm happy to report that the "secret" training program is certainly starting to work - I'm only up to Day 8, which means my next ride up Kings Mtn Rd ("Day 9") will be a distance of 2.2 miles, with an elevation gain of about 800 feet. That ride will be about the half-way point up Kings Mtn Rd, which is a 4.3-mile climb that gains 1590 feet of elevation. My time for that half-way mark should be close to 15 minutes, which means I'll be able to zero in on a sub-30 minute time for that climb, which would be a new PB for me. As I lose a little more weight and gain some new power, I should be able to get that time down to just under 27 minutes by the end of the year, which is my eventual goal - at that point, I calculated I should be able to score 100.0 points on the Low-Key Hillclimb time for Kings Mtn (see the 2007 results for that climb right here). One of my big goals for 2008 is to average 100.0 points on all 9 of the climbs in this year's Low-Key Hillclimb series, which starts on October 1.

So, what is this "other secret" training program, you might be wondering? It's quite simple, really. I decided you just can't go out there and do the same ride up Kings Mtn every day - I actually did 3 days in a row one week, but you need to have some variety. So I had this new idea - I noticed that about this time last year, I was doing a bunch of rides that involved climbing up a variety of short, but steep climbs near where I work here in San Mateo.

In fact, I even scoped out a 42-mile ride that did almost 7000 feet of climbing by hitting 10 of those climbs - most of them are in the 0.5 mile to 1.2 mile range, but will climb 300 feet to 650 feet, meaning they each average something in the 9% to 12% range - pretty steep! I called this monster ride "The 10 Fingers of Death Ride" - you can see a recording of the entire ride right here - that recording was done in my car. But I then broke the ride up into a couple of parts, so I could easily do each half of the ride as one of my "lunch breaks" from work. I then proceeded to do the "Easy 5 Fingers of Death Ride" (check it out here) and the "Hard 5 Fingers of Death Ride" (view it here), since the first 5 climbs are, on average, a little easier than the last 5 climbs.

I noticed that a lot of the PBs I got in the first half of last year seemed to happen not too long after I had done some of those short, steep climbs - so I recently started mixing in some of those climbs into my training program, and noticed that they really seem to be helping me quite a bit. Hence, this is my other "secret" training program - doing regular rides up short, steep climbs. It obviously helps to build up leg strength, which is clearly important for climbing hills faster.

And there you have it...another "secret" training program...revealed!

Climbing Calculators

2007-12-18T18:04:00.000-08:00

It seems these days that everyone has some kind of cool climbing calculator - you've already read about my pretty cool Low Key Hill Climb Converter in a recent post (yeah - like my *last* post!).

Well it seems my beefed-up LKHC Converter spurred on others to see what they could cook up - and the top climber in this year's LKHC series, Tim Clark, came up with something pretty cool himself - what he calls his Climbing Power Calculator (version 0.1) - and here is what he says about it (I could paraphrase it, but Tim did a pretty good job of explaining it in an e-mail to the LKHC e-mail list - I hope you don't mind, Tim!) :

After seeing Steve Rosen's LKHC Climb Prediction page ... I got motivated to try to implement something in Adobe/Macromedia Flex.

Ultimately ... my goal is to have something which is capable of taking your 'Average Threshold Power' ... and applying it to the different (instantaneous) gradients throughout the climb ... hopefully giving you the best possible estimate of your time.

In order to do this ... I implemented the Power Profile spreadsheet that I found - which solves the quadratic equation for your climbing velocity based on a number of parameters (distance, grade, wind, rolling resistance, and POWER).

I also needed to be able to read the MotionBased (exported) XML files, so that I could get access to the Distance vs. Altitude data. I did this on the left 'pane' ... where it displays a plot of the MB data.

At present, it just pulls the (available) climb data for the climbs (I'm still missing a bunch), stuffs values into the Power Calc sheet, and allows you to Predict your Time based on the data. You can fool around with Rider Weight, Equip Weight, Head Wind, Power, etc ... and see how they would affect your times for the various climbs.

It's *FAR* from finished, but I thought I'd share it wit everybody, so that I can get feedback as I continue to fool around with it.

Well, I fooled around with Tim's new Climbing Power Calculator - and it's really pretty good. The main problem I see with his calculator is that it requires you to *know* your average power for a climb! Well, anyone with a power meter (like Tim and countless other more serious cyclists - especially the better racers) have access to this very important power information.

But others of us - me included - don't have power meters (yet!) - so with this in mind, I decided it would be useful to have YACC (Yet Another Climbing Calculator) - but I just call it The Climb Calculator.

So what's the big deal about this one?

Simple - I wanted a generic climb calculator, so I can play those "what if" games for *any* climb that I choose to do. And not just the LKHC climbs that most of us are so familiar with.

Also, what if *you* are convinced the elevation or distance info for one of the LKHC climbs is *wrong*?

Or, what if you think my choice of 50.0 watts of power needed to overcome tire pressure, wind resistance, extra cold weather, a bad hair day, etc. - is simply wrong and should really be 45.321 watts?

This Climb Calculator will feel familiar to you - except you can enter the *exact* height of a climb (in feet), and the *precise* distance (in miles) for that climb.

Then, do the usual - either enter time information (mins:secs) and/or weight information (and notice that you now enter the rider weight and the equipment weight as separate numbers - and it will automatically figure out the total weight - a good idea I saw in Tim Clark's cool calculator). You can also optionally enter in power information, if you have it!.

Note that if you enter in your average power information for a climb (and you don't have to - it will determine your power info from your weight and time, if you want), you can optionally enter in the "extra watts", i.e., that magic number (I use 50.0 for the LKHC Converter) that accounts for all the power you need to "move the bike", as Al Williams pointed out.

And, of course, this Climb Calculator let's you play all those fun "what if" games, by changing the rider weight (or, the equipment weight - or both!) and seeing the change in the climbing time. Or, you can change the average power output for your climb, and see the climbing time get re-calculated, etc.

I did this because I have good data for a lot of the climbs I do - dozens of major climbs, but also dozens of smaller climbs - some that are just a 1/2 mile long or so. Now I can see the effects of weight change or power change on all those climbs.

And, of course, for all those *big* climbs that we do, but have not been done by the LKHC (yet) - like Alba Rd - or Jamison Creek - or the San Bruno HC, etc. - you can now see what happens when you control yourself and stop having those second helpings of lasagna, that extra piece of apple pie, etc. - or do those extra hill repeats in the middle of winter and increase your power output by 2%, etc.

Have fun!

The LKHC Converter - first release now available

2007-12-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

Most of you that read this blog regularly (yeah - both of us) know about a great hill climbing series that is quite, uh, low key - the Low Key Hill Climb series (LKHC) - you can read all about this year's festivities right here.

I wanted to participate in the series this year, but we all know what a disaster it's been for me the last few months - I totally lost the (little) climbing ability I had so carefully gained in the first half of the year, as I delved back into the exciting world of bike racing for the first time in 30 years, starting back in about July of this year.

But a number of my friends did the LKHC series this year - and I always followed the action, anxiously waiting to see the results published later that day or the next (each climb was done on a Saturday, except for the last one, which is traditionally done on Thanksgiving morning and goes up Mt Hamilton).

I sent out some e-mails to some biking buddies of mine, to let them know about a great set of conversion charts that one of the organizers of the LKHC series, Dan Connelly, had put together for the 1995 and 1996 editions of the series. The LKHC series was abandoned for about 10 years, but was resurrected in 2006, and was so popular, they did it again this year - and gained even *more* converts! I suspect it will be even bigger in 2008.

The 1995 conversion chart and the 1996 conversion chart provided you with these cool conversion factors, so that if you knew your time up one of the climbs, you could use the conversion factors for that climb to calculate (or, predict) your expected times for all the other climbs.

I've used those conversion charts a lot in the last few months - in fact, a previous blog entry I wrote explained Why I Want To Climb OLH in 19:10. But I always calculated my predicted times the old-fashioned way, with a calculator, of course... :)

But one of my cycling buddies, Rich Seiter, sent me an Excel spreadsheet that allowed you to enter in your climbing time for one of the climbs, and then it would automatically calculate all your predicted times for the other climbs done that year - how cool! I made a few minor tweaks of his Excel spreadsheet and sent it out to all the rest of my biking buddies, with Rich's blessings, of course (thanks, Rich!).

But then I got to thinking - wouldn't it be cool to have an online version of that same concept? And hence, the LKHC Converter project was born - and now you can see the results for yourself:

The LKHC Converter

After I put out the first version of this web page, I let Dan Connelly know about it, and encouraged him to create similar conversion charts for the 2006 LKHC and 2007 LKHC series - and he said he'd do just that. He also asked me to let the LKHC e-mail list know about it - and so I did.

Naturally, I got all kinds of feedback - and as different ideas and requests came in, it got fancier and fancier - with more features and more goodies. The current version you see now represents about the 10th iteration of that web page!

So have some fun and play around with it - and drop me a note if you have any comments/suggestions to make - I'd love to hear your ideas.

And when Dan gets me those new conversion charts for 2006 and 2007, I'll be sure to update the LKHC Converter, of course.

I'm also working on creating a version of that same web page for our local cycling group - it would have a lot of the other climbs that many of us do in the local Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz area - but I won't have as many data points to use to create the tables that drive it, so it will mostly be useful to just a few of us, I suspect.

But who knows? Maybe this will be the start of a whole new career... :)

My "Secret" Training Program

2007-12-09T19:38:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess it won't be much of a secret, if I'm publishing it here on my blog - but there are only one or two of us that read my blog anyway, and we both know about my "secret" training program.

But I thought I'd put it out there for posterity's sake - who knows - it could be a valuable training tool for some poor sucker that used to be in pretty good shape, somehow lost their conditioning, and wants to get it back again. Gee - that could describe me this year! And hence, I've devised a new, "secret" training program to whip myself back into shape as soon as possible.

What's the rush, you might ask?

Well, for one thing, the first race of the season, the San Bruno Hillclimb, is on January 1st - just 3 weeks from now! It's only a 3.7 mile climb, gaining about 1400 feet of elevation - very similar to Old La Honda (which gains 1330 feet in 3.3 miles). In fact, your time up San Bruno should be not more than about 1 minute slower than your time up Old La Honda, mostly because of the slightly longer distance.

Another reason - the first road race of the season that I intend to ride is the Cantua Creek RR on February 16 - just 2 months from now.

And finally, the Tour of California will be happening February 17 through February 24, and a few of us will be taking a "sanity day" off on Wednesday, February 20, to ride up Sierra Rd in the morning, and watch the TOC roll up over the summit of Sierra towards the end of that day's stage race - and I want to be able to climb Sierra Rd in a good time (33 minutes would be real nice!) - and right now, I'd be lucky to do that climb in 43 minutes!

Well, to climb Sierra Rd in just 33 minutes, I'd have to be able to climb Old La Honda in record time (for me) - just 22:51 (my current PB from earlier this year was 23:18), or Kings Mtn Rd in just 28:55 - and I haven't even broken 30 minutes on Kings Mtn Rd yet!

So, I've got my work cut out for me! Oh, how do I know about those times for Old La Honda and Kings Mtn Rd? Simple - just check out my Low Key Hill Climb Converters web page - it has these cool calculators that allow you to enter in a known time for some climb (say, 33:00 for Sierra Rd on the 1995 Climbs converter) - and it will predict your climbing times on all the other climbs done that year in the Low Key Hill Climb series. Those converters were fun to do, based on the fine work (conversion charts) that Dan Connelly did on the 1995 and 1996 renditions of those hillclimb series.

So what does this all have to do with my "secret" training program? And just what IS the "secret" training program, anyway? And why is it such a "secret"?

Okay - all good questions. And, I have some answers. If you've read any of my earlier blogs, you know that I've had this problem recently - I inadvertently lost a lot of climbing conditioning as I got into road racing this year (in the second half of the year, starting in July). I was on a great training program in the first half of the year, doing lots of climbing - almost every day, in fact!

But once I discovered how much climbing ability I had lost a couple of months ago, I got quite depressed - and instead of starting to just climb again, I got more and more out of climbing shape - and also just lost conditioning, in general, as my riding volume decreased quite a bit! I started missing many days in a row - sometimes as much as a week without riding at all! What a mess...

But now I've hit upon a really good idea to get myself motivated again, in a way that will demand a lot of work, but will be fun at the same time, which I believe is one of the "secrets" to any training program - you have to design something that works for YOU - and not somebody else! That's been my mistake - I've been trying too hard to bounce back according to someone else's ideas about how to bounce back - and not due to anything that anyone else has told me - it's been completely created in my own head, where I'm looking for answers and asking questions from all kinds of people that I admire and respect - and listening to their answers and advice, but forgetting to listen to the one person that knows best - me!

So here's my "secret": You know best how to motivate yourself - so use whatever "tricks" it takes to motivate yourself, then apply those tricks and let nature take its course - how simple can that be?

And, here's my "trick": I'm going to ride from my work location every day (it's in San Mateo), climbing over some small hills to get to Canada Rd - then I'll do a very moderate 5.0-mile time trial along Canada Rd, heading for the base of Kings Mtn Rd. After doing the 5.0-mile time trial, I'll go nice and easy for a few miles to get to the start of the Kings Mtn climb, then climb it hard, starting at Tripp Rd, and going up exactly 1.4 miles (this will be about 10 minutes or so, which is 1/3 of the climb of Kings Mtn Rd). Then, I'll turn around and head back to work, doing another moderate-paced 5.0-mile time trial on Canada Rd. This will be day 1 (Monday, December 10). On day 2, I'll do the exact same ride, but add 0.1 miles to the hard climb - and "hard" means at a time-trial climbing pace, or zone 5.0+ (about 162 bpm for me). This extra 0.1 miles will be an extra 45 seconds of hard climbing or so. And, each day, I'll continue to add 0.1 miles to the climb - and by the end of 28 days, or on January 7, 2008 - I'll be able to do a hard time trial pace up Kings Mtn Rd, all the way to the top (which is 4.2 miles - or 1.4 miles plus the 2.8 miles that I will have added by then, in 0.1 mile increments).

Hopefully, this "secret" training program will result in me being able to climb Kings Mtn Rd in about 30 minutes, which would be a new PB for me. Then, all I have to do at that point is try and and take off another minute or so from my climbing time, but I will have a good 6 weeks to get that done, before the big day on Sierra Rd (on Wednesday, February 20).

Another benefit is that I will working on those 5.0-mile time trials on Canada Rd, which is where the Beat-the-Clock time trial series are held - and as I get in better conditioning, I'll mix in some days where I do those time trial segments at a harder and harder pace, until I am doing the 5.0-mile time trial segments at close to a true time-trial pace - so by the time the first Beat-the-Clock time trial comes along (which I believe will be in about the middle of February, like this year), I should be in good enough shape to do well for that 10.0-mile time trial, where I will try to match or beat my best time this year, which was 26:14, or 23 mph.

And, as an added plus, this "secret" training program should get me in good enough shape to be able to do the San Bruno Hill Climb on January 1st in a time of about 24:xx (under 25 minutes) - and I get this number by using a Kings Mtn climbing time of 30 minutes in that LKHC Converter page, and noting that the Old La Honda time would be about 23:42 - and as I said, your time up San Bruno should not be much more than one minute slower than your Old La Honda time.

Make sense? Well, it doesn't really matter if it makes sense to YOU - the key is, it makes sense to ME!

...And that is the big "secret"... :)

My Cycling Goals for 2008

2007-12-04T16:56:00.001-08:00

Okay, it's time to put it all out there - what I want to achieve in 2008, at least for my cycling "hobby" (or, "infatuation", as my wife describes it!).

Looking at my strengths from 2007, it's clear that I should aim high for any time trials that don't go straight uphill. This would include unsanctioned things like the Beat-the-Clock time trials on Canada Rd, or the Swanton Rd time trials. Of course, there are also the sanctioned flatter time trials - Dunlap TT, TT Championships in Sattley, Esparto TT, etc.

Another strength I observed from 2007 (just based on 4 crits and 2 road races) is that I can do well in those flat crits and flatter road races. However, I'm not super crazy about the crits - they're okay, but obviously quite dangerous - I never got involved in any crashes in the 4 crits that I did, but I sure came close! I got to personally see 2 or 3 good crashes, including 1 or 2 that were very close to me - but that's just bike racing, for sure...

I've identified the flatter road races that I *should* do well in - Snelling, Merco Credit Union Foothills, and Bariani / Zamora for the early season, then Dunnigan Hills, San Ardo, and Henleyville for the later season (and maybe Warnerville, a new road race for 2008, near Oakdale - but there are no details about the course yet).

And my weaknesses that I saw in 2007? Well, climbing - obviously! Anytime the road goes up for more than about 1 mile, I will be at a disadvantage until I can lose a bunch of weight and/or improve my power output in watts. So here are my climbing goals for 2008:

San Bruno HC - 22:59 (18:59)
Mt Diablo - 1:08:59 (59:59)
Old La Honda - 21:59 (18:59)
Kings Mtn - 27:59 (24:59)
E Hwy 9 - 39:59 (34:59)
Mt Hamilton - 1:39:59 (1:29:59)
Sierra Rd - 31:59 (27:59)
Page Mill Rd - 45:59 (39:59)

Yes, the goals are a bit lofty, especially considering that most of my current PBs on those climbs were set earlier this year, when I actually had climbing legs, which is not the case today. But you gotta stretch, right?

What are the numbers in parentheses, you might be asking? Why, those are my lifetime goals for those climbs - something to shoot for before I die one day... :)

My racing goals are pretty realistic for next year - I'm going to focus mostly on the flatter road races (where I have a chance to place in the top 10) and the flatter time trials, plus some crits. But I'm also going to try my hand at some of the tougher road races and time trials (i.e., hillier) when I feel ready - whatever that means! So, my goals:

Enter 6 of the flatter road races, placing in the top 10 for 3
Enter 3 of the flatter time trials, placing in the top 15 for all
Enter 4 of the tougher road races, finishing at least 2
Enter 2 of the tougher time trials, finishing them both
Enter at least 6 crits, including 2 hillier ones
Enter all Swanton TT races, breaking 33 minutes every time
Enter all Beat-the-Clock TT races, finishing in the top 15 for all
Earn at least half the upgrade points needed to get into Cat 3

There are also some goals that are the traditional goals I've set each year for the last few years - they are all related to participating in some of the organized bike rides that many of us enjoy doing each year:

Death Ride - finish in under 10 hours
Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge - finish in under 7 hours
Mt Diablo Challenge - finish in under 1:09
Enter all the LKHC series climbs and average 100 pts for each

Finally, I have my more immediate goals - the most important of which is to get myself back to the same climbing conditioning I had about the middle of 2007 - and attempt to get there by the first real road race of the season on February 16, Cantua Creek, which I also consider to be one of my 4 tougher road races, since it occurs relatively early in the season - the climbing is not severe, but it will certainly feel like it to me!

Lastly, I want to do well enough in the first half of the season, to consider getting an invitation to join either the Bike Trip or the San Jose Bicycle Club team for the last part of the year, where I can help them in the flatter road races and some crits. My current team, SCCCC, just doesn't have enough serious road racers that want to work as a team - and I've seen that both Bike Trip and San Jose Bicycle Club have road riders with that kind of dedication and teamwork ethics.

That's about it for 2008 - now it's time to get on my bike and start training seriously!

The Year (2007) in Review

2007-12-04T14:11:00.000-08:00

Yep, it's that time of year - gotta figure out what I want to accomplish for next year, at least from a cycling perspective (is there any other?)... :)

But before I try to figure that out, I need to do a quick review of what I did - right and wrong - for this year. I didn't plan on getting back into racing for 2007 - it just sorta happened! One of my cycling buddies had talked about doing some racing this year - and I thought it would be cool to try it again, myself. I mean, I had raced - way back when (in my college days) - so why not try it again? Ironically, the guy that initially motivated me about racing again turned out not to race this year - maybe he'll get into it for 2008!

Before I got into the serious racing stuff, I thought I'd start out with some easy things - like the Swanton Time Trial series - informal, needs no racing license - not too long (11 miles, 5.5 miles out and back, with a solid, one-mile climb just before the turnaround point) - you can read all about it right here. I also heard about this cool (and again, informal) time-trial series called Beat-the-Clock, which had the extra benefit of being a great charity cause, with all the proceeds going to the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) - read all about that great series right here.

Well, I did (finally!) do one of the Swanton Time Trial races, but not until it was near the end of the season (see the results of that race here). As you can see from the results, I did pretty good for my first Swanton TT - 34:14 - almost 20 mph (I was shooting for 33:00, which is exactly 20 mph).

And, I did 2 of the Beat-the-Clock time trials, both 10-mile TTs on a rolling course (Canada Rd in Woodside/San Mateo) - one in May, where I did 26:14, or just about 23 mph - wooohooo!! I did the second one in September, slipping a bit to 26:42 - but followed that ITT just 5 minutes later with a 2-man TT - we did 26:07, which was mostly my partner, who had done a better ITT (he was my 30-second man in the ITT), with an excellent time of 25:00.

After I did my first Beat-the-Clock TT, I decided it was time to get serious and get an official racing license, which I did in May - and promptly joined a local cycling club, the Santa Cruz County Cycling Club (SCCCC) - too many 'C's in our acronym! Then, with my fresh new racing license (#264162), I looked around to figure out what I'd do for my first race in 30 years! I decided to sign up for the Watsonville criterium - a few people I knew had said that it was a fun crit - and since it would only last 30 minutes or so, it couldn't be *that* bad, right? Well, it turned out to be a blast - and I even managed to get 8th place, after forming a breakaway with 7 other guys (yeah - I got last in the sprint finish, but that's not 'cause I'm a bad sprinter - I was just, uh, rusty - it was my first race in 30 years).

With that first race under my belt, I was hooked again - and totally motivated to do more races - a few more crits (although I never liked crits as much as I liked the regular road races) - and I had a couple of road races singled out - they were not too hilly, and not too long - good test cases for my re-entry into the cool world of bike racing!

And, I continued training - I had been doing a LOT of climbing in those first 6 months of the year, getting more PBs in May and June, as I continued to get stronger and faster.

Then I made a strategic error - I didn't realize it at the time, but it turned out to have some dramatic effects on my conditioning. I decided to start doing a lot of the 'Noon Goon' rides, as I affectionately called them. They are great training rides - leaving at noon every weekday from Palo Alto and, after a 10 to 15 minute warmup, going at a race-type pace for the next hour or so. My strategic error? I started limiting my training mostly to these shorter, faster rides on the weekdays (instead of the climbing routes I had been doing by myself) - and the weekends consisted of either doing races or more of those same shorter and faster routes - but not too much climbing.

Well - that strategy paid of well for the crits and flatter road races that I chose to race (4 crits and 2 road races) - but when I went to get ready for the Mt Diablo Challenge race in early October, I found out I had lost a lot of my climbing ability!

It turns out that I'm one of those types of riders that needs to climb all the time to keep myself in climbing shape - I'm not a natural climber, so when I start to get in better climbing shape (from climbing, of course!), I need to keep climbing - a lot - just to not go backwards!

It was depressing to see how bad I was on the longer, harder climbs in September and October - and I continued to beat myself up the last couple of months, bemoaning how much conditioning I had lost. I noticed that when I tried to push it on the climbs, I was a LONG way from any of my PBs that I had established earlier this year.

So it was fun getting back into racing, but I paid a dear price for my training strategy - and now I have to figure out how to re-capture the motivation - I'm terribly de-motivated right now, as I've seen other cycling friends of mine get better and stronger (especially on the climbs), while I've been pedaling backwards at an alarming rate!

So, how do I stop the carnage and start moving forwards again? That, my friends, is the crux of my dilemma these days.

Fortunately, I have a secret game plan that I'm putting into action - and if it works, I'll have a very interesting blog entry to create in about one month! I won't reveal the secrets right now, as I want to get some more feedback before I announce to the world (uh, yeah - all two of you!) a very interesting idea I had that can be used to 'get back into the game', so to speak...

Next up will be a blog entry about my cycling goals for next year - I've been putting a lot of thought into it - and I have some very definite things I want to do for next year - and they don't all involve winning races...

Stay tuned!

So What's The Big Deal About Losing A Pound Or Two?

2007-11-30T13:00:00.002-08:00

I saw that my friend, Dennis Pederson, created a recent blog entry about his cycling goals for 2008 (you can read all about it right here).

He mentioned that one of his goals was to increase his FTP (Functional Threshold Power) from his estimated 265 watts to 276 watts - and was wondering if that would allow him to break 19 minutes on the benchmark climb of the Bay Area, Old La Honda (OLH). His PB on OLH is currently 19:50, even though I suspect he could actually do that climb a little faster right now (that's a challenge for you, Dennis!).

So, I did some calculations of my own, and sent him a little note about it:

You said you believe your FTP power is 265 watts - that might be correct, but using your 19:50 time on OLH, I came up with this value: 260.6 watts (I'll explain how shortly).

You were wondering if raising your FTP to 276 watts would allow you to break 19 minutes on OLH. Raising your FTP from 265 watts to 276 watts is about 5%.

If we use *my* value of 260.6 watts, and increase it by 5%, which is another 13.0 watts, we get about 273.6 watts. And by my calculations, an FTP of 273.6 watts on OLH would translate to a time of 1133 seconds (18:53), or almost one minute faster, which would allow you to reach your goal of getting under 19 minutes.

So there!

Oh, how did I come up with my numbers? Simple - I use a very cool webpage, that I think I told you about before - or, if not, here it is:

http://www.chuck-wright.com/calculators/watts.html

If you plug in your weight of 172 (152 for you, and 20 for your bike and accessories) - in the Mechanical box, and plug in 1330 feet (the rise in elevation of OLH), then put in 1190 (19:50 for your PB on OLH) for the Time in seconds, you see the calculated power is 260.6 watts - now, start plugging in lower numbers for the time - when you get to 1133 (or a time of 18:53), you will see the calculated power is 273.7 watts, which is the 5% gain you were wondering about.

After sending him the above e-mail, I then thought about the fact that he had mentioned in his blog entry that he would also like to lose about 5 pounds, to get from his current weight of 152 pounds to just 147 pounds (I can only dream about getting to a weight like that!) - so I decided to do some additional calculations to figure out what losing just 5 pounds might do to his time on OLH - and I sent him this note:

Oh, I forgot to add this tidbit:

If you reduce your weight by just 5 pounds, so the total weight going up OLH is 167 instead of 172 (you + bike), then for that same power of 273.7 watts, your time drops to just 1100 seconds, which is a time of 18:20 - and now you're just 20 seconds from breaking 18 minutes! If you can drop 8 pounds, and get it to just 164 pounds for the total weight, you now hit the magic time of 18:00 exactly!

If ever there was a reason to drop 8 pounds, that would be it!

So is losing a pound or two going to make any difference in how fast you climb a mountain?

You bet!

What A Difference A Day Makes !

2007-10-18T12:03:00.000-07:00

Good news - I'm back in the game - on this morning's ride with one of my biking buddies, Ed, I did the Hwy 9 climb in 48:05 - about 4:20 faster than just a few days ago (when I did 52:25) - Wooohooo!!

Interestingly, my average heartrate was identical on both climbs - 153 bpm !!

The difference? Pacing. I approached the climb much like I did my PB ride of Hwy 9 back in late April of this year - where I started out much easier, then started pushing harder after hitting the halfway mark of the climb (in terms of time, not distance).

So, comparing my splits today with my PB ride back in April, I was only 2 minutes down at the half-way mark (22:00 in April, and 24:00 today) - then I pushed the pace harder for the second half, when it gets a little steeper on average, and saw my heartrate steadily rise up, just like on my PB ride.

So, for the second half, my PB ride was done in 21:43 (for a total time of 43:43) and today I did that second half in 24:05, losing just a little over 2 more minutes from my PB time back in April.

And when I did that PB ride in April, I weighed 11 pounds less than today - according to Joe Friel, that ll pounds (5 kg) is worth 15 seconds per kilometer, and the Hwy 9 climb is 11 kilometers, so my weight penalized me 165 seconds, or almost 3 minutes!

So, subtracting 2:45 (165 seconds) from today's time of 48:05, you get 45:20 - which is my theoretical time on today's climb if my weight were the same as last April.

And 45:20 is only about 1:30 slower than my PB time back in April. Of course, I need to lose the weight to turn that theoretical time into a real time!

Bottom line? I don't feel quite so bad now.

Oh - more good news! Yesterday's disaster on Page Mill? It appears I had a slow leak in my rear tire! When I met Ed this morning and got my bike out of my car, my rear tire was totally flat! I took out the tube and pumped it up quite a bit, looking for the leak, which we could not find. So I tossed the tube into the back of my car, and when we got back from our ride this morning, the tube's pressure was down quite a bit!

So it looks like I was climbing up Page Mill with a bum rear tire - I hadn't even thought about having a slow leak after I got to the top and saw my horrible time of 1:01:15 (which was about 8 minutes slower than my time last week).

I guess I should have realized that something was wrong, because my descent back to my car took quite a bit longer than when Dennis and I did the descent last week.

Duh!

So now I'm all psyched up again about getting myself back on track with my climbing program. I've decided I'm going to try and mimic the training I did back in the earlier part of this year, when I really did a good job of improving my climbing.

Back then, I did a lot of rides for fun, but I made a point of hitting a lot of shorter climbs, some mild, and some quite steep - where I would turn on the after-jets and burn it up the climb - these climbs were often just 1/2 mile to 1 mile in length - so the climbs took anywhere from 3 or 4 minutes to 12 minutes (Crestview Rd is one of those harder ones - 1.36 miles, but 650 feet of climbing - ouch!).

Then, I started mixing in longer climbs (like Hwy 9 or Old La Honda or Kings Mtn Rd) and would then push it up those climbs - but only after getting in some "base" climbing on the shorter stuff.

Plus, I rode just about every day - doing lots of climbing most days. It's just that some days, my climbs would be "fun climbs", where I went at a very mellow pace, kind of like a cycling tourist - looking around and checking out the scenery, instead of suffering and doing that "blank stare" at the pavement in front of you, wondering when the pain and suffering would mercifully come to an end... :)

So that's what I'm going to do for the next couple of months. And this is a good plan, too, as I need to re-discover how fun cycling can be, but still mix in some useful training days, to keep improving on my climbing, which is my weakest area.

Another bonus about focusing on the shorter (and often steeper) climbs - the first race of next season is the San Bruno Hillclimb, on New Year's Day. I want to do that race - and focusing on the short, steep climbs will help, since that hillclimb is not super long - it's just 3.7 miles, and averages about 7% for the grade. This makes is similar to Old La Honda.

In fact, your theoretical time on the San Bruno Hillclimb should be within 30 seconds to a minute of your time on Old La Honda.

I haven't decided what my target time will be for the San Bruno Hillclimb - it will mostly depend on how I am progressing as we get near Christmas. I'll have plenty of data from my local training rides to see where I am at - hopefully, I will be getting close to my various PBs that I established earlier this year (in April, May, and June).

All I know is that after yesterday's disastrous climb up Page Mill Rd, I was going to call Ed and tell him I wanted to bail on this mornings ride - in fact, I was thinking about bailing on riding for the rest of this year!

But I'm glad I didn't bail - and I'm glad I decided to guts it out and do today's ride up Hwy 9, which gave me faith again that things aren't always as bad as they seem sometimes...

Yep, what a difference a day makes!

Why I Want To Climb OLH in 19:10

2007-10-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

For 2008, I want to climb Old La Honda (OLH) in 19:10, which is about 4 minutes faster than my current PB (Personal Best) of 23:18.

Why 19:10?

Well, sometimes, when you're browsing around on the web, you find these little nuggets of gold - and I happened to just find this wonderful Climbing Conversion Chart from the first Low Key Hill Climb (LKHC) series that was done back in 1995 - check out this chart near the bottom of this page.

In particular, it will help you predict your times on various climbs in the Bay Area, based on your known time up any of those climbs.

So, let's use, for example, a very well known time up OLH that my friend, Dennis Pedersen did recently - a time of 19:50.

I always thought I wanted to break 20 minutes going up OLH some day for a couple of reasons:

1) It's fun to belong to the sub-anything crowd for a particular climb, and for OLH, under 20 minutes is that "anything" number, at least for me!

2) I figured that if I could break 20 minutes on OLH, then I should be able to break the magic hour mark for climbing Mt Diablo - and if you can get under 60 minutes for the Mt Diablo Challenge, you get this free t-shirt that tells the world you did just that - and that is one of the "Real Big Goals" in my biking life.

Now, Dennis did 19:50 on OLH recently, so what would be his time up various climbs that I do all the time?

So, using the chart, we can convert his OLH time of 19:50 into a Page Mill Rd time - the conversion factor for Page Mill (week 3) is 2.0921, using the chart.

So, 19:50 == 19.833 minutes

And, 19.833 * 2.0921 = 41.5 == 41:30

Thus, his OLH time of 19:50 should translate to a Page Mill time of 41:30. Pretty cool, huh? I think Dennis and I thought his Page Mill time should be close to 42 minutes or so - I had a slightly different algorithm - take the OLH time, add 1 minute, and double it, which would give us a predicted time of 41:40.

Using the same chart, this would mean his Kings Mtn Rd time would be this:

19.833 * 1.2655 = 25.1 == 25:06

Now, his Bike Trip teammate, Mark Edwards, did 21:46 on Kings Mtn Rd in a recent LKHC climb (he got 2nd place, too - check out the results here), so this means Dennis would have finished just a little over 3 minutes behind Mark, and just after Scott Martin on his team, who did 24:55 - so Dennis would have been 26th out of 75 guys that entered that hillclimb contest a little over a week ago. Excellent, Dennis!

And, Dennis' time on Mt Diablo would be very close to the magic 1 hour mark:

19.833 * 3.1290 = 62.1 == 1:02:06

Of course, you can use the chart to figure out what kind of time you need to do on OLH to break an hour for the Mt Diablo climb - the conversion factor for Mt Diablo is 3.1290, so you get this:

60.000 / 3.1290 = 19.175 == 19:10.5

This means, if you can climb OLH in 19:10, you can (theoretically) climb Mt Diablo in just under an hour.

So, is there any evidence to back up these numbers? Well, let's look at Martin Hyland. He did the first LKHC this year, up Montebello Rd (week 1) and did a time of 32:59 (see the full results here).

And, to convert this to an OLH time, the chart says to use 0.5827:

32:59 == 32.9833
32.9833 * 0.5827 = 19.2 == 19:12

And, Martin, it just so happens, did the Mt Diablo Challenge this year - just a week after doing his time of 32:59 on Montebello Rd. And Martin's time?

59:30.8 ( You can see all the results here)

How about that?

So, now you know why I want to climb OLH in 19:10 by the time we get to this time of year (October) in 2008.

Because if I can climb OLH in 19:10, then I can break 60 minutes for the Mt Diablo Challenge in 2008.

And get that free t-shirt.

The Streak (or, I Was Almost A Mutant)

2007-10-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

I was just reflecting in an e-mail to my friend, Dennis Pedersen, about how I was doing a lot of climbing in the early part of this year.

And, when I was looking back at some of my records, I totally forgot about "The Streak", which was this magical period from February 28 through April 19 of this year, when I rode my bike every day - and most of those days involved a fair amount of climbing. You can see a record of all my rides (with my Garmin, anyway) right here.

In fact, during "The Streak", I rode for 51 days straight, and did 156,600 feet of climbing, which is an average of 3100 feet of climbing per day!

I also happened to have set a fair number of PBs (Personal Bests) during that streak, or just after the streak finally ended. I was even getting PBs on dead-tired legs (see my comments on day 12 of "The Streak" right here) !!

I didn't happen to plan "The Streak" - it was just one of those things that started spontaneously - I don't think I even paid any attention to it until I noticed I had ridden about 12 days straight - I think my previous "streak" was about 10 days of riding. So, I was suddenly on this roll...

And, during "The Streak", I even got sick for about a week, but still continued to ride (just doing easier rides for several days).

And why did "The Streak" finally come to an end? Simple - my youngest son, Grant, and I had to drive down to Oceanside for a couple of days for his surfing contest. I was going to bring my bike, but decided it probably would not really work out, since it was going to be just me and Grant for 2 or 3 days - it was a chance to do some good father/son bonding, which is what happened. Thus, my greatest streak came to a close at 51 days.

All in all, it was probably the single greatest period of my life on a bike - I was getting stronger, faster, and feeling healthier than ever - and my weight dropped down, too - which helped me immensely in setting those new PBs during that time.

Maybe I should start "The Next Streak"... :)

Gee, I was almost a mutant...

The 10 Fingers of Death Ride

2007-10-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

I work in San Mateo, which turns out to be the epicenter of a lot of very cool short and steep climbs. Since I bring my bike to work every day (and try to get out for rides 3 or 4 times during the weekdays), I decided earlier this year to map out an insane ride, where I manage to ride up 10 of the steepest roads I could find here in the San Mateo area.

Now, for those of us that ride a lot in the Santa Cruz mountains (which I do all the time, since I live in Scotts Valley), a typical ride just about anywhere will result in about 1,000 feet of climbing for every 10 miles that you ride, or 100 feet for every mile.

So, a typical 30-mile ride would be 3,000 feet of climbing, etc. - but I wanted to map out a tough ride where you would do closer to 150 feet of climbing for every mile you ride - about 50% more the typical ride you'd do in the Santa Cruz mountains.

And hence was born "The 10 Fingers of Death Ride" - an epic bike ride that, in only 42.6 miles does 6800 feet of climbing - about 160 feet of climbing for every mile - ouch!

There are 10 roads that are included in this insane ride - and it's partially insane because the climbing you do are not on these long, gentle grades (like Highway 9), but the climbing is done on shorter, steeper climbs - the kind that tend to average anywhere from 9% to 12% (and that's just the average!). These are roads that are like Jamison Creek, or Alba Rd, or Bohlman - On Orbit - Bohlman - but just not as long.

And here are the 10 roads (the "fingers", if you will), in their order of appearance on this insane ride:

1. Glendora / De Anza - 0.61 miles, 215 feet, 6.8% grade
2. Bunker Hill - 0.51 miles, 300 feet, 11.4% grade
3. Woodridge Rd - 0.51 miles, 290 feet, 11.0% grade
4. Tartan Trail Rd - 1.11 miles, 500 feet, 10.0% grade
5. Crestview Dr - 1.36 miles, 650 feet, 9.3% grade
6. Club Dr - 1.29 miles, 605 feet, 8.9% grade
7. Hastings Dr - 0.67 miles, 450 feet, 12.7% grade
8. Melendy Dr - 1.37 miles, 640 feet, 8.8% grade
9. Alameda de Las Pulgas - 0.75 miles, 340 feet, 8.6% grade
10. West Hillsdale Blvd - 0.51 miles, 300 feet, 12.0% grade

As you can see, this is not a ride for wimps! In fact, this is not a ride for anybody that has an ounce of sanity in their brain.

But, for any regular, crazy cyclist - a cyclotic, if you will (hee-hee!), this is a dream ride - one for the ages, one to tell your grandchildren about one day.

Now, I don't have the time to do this kind of ride during the regular workday week - I figured out this ride would take me about 3.5 hours to complete (Lance Armstrong could probably do it in about 2 hours!) - I have to limit my rides to somewhere between one and two hours. But one day, I'll do this ride on a weekend day - and hopefully, find a couple of other crazies to join me!

Is it possible to do this ride? Of course - in fact, to test it out, I decided to break it up into two rides that I could do during the weekdays, as part of my regular training rides that are based from where I work.

So, one day I did what I call the "Easy 5 Fingers of Death Ride", where I did the first 4 climbs of my insane ride, plus the last climb. It was about 20 miles and did 2800 feet of climbing and took me about 1.5 hours to complete - you can see the data from this ride right here.

Then, about a week later, I decided to tackle what I called the "Hard 5 Fingers of Death Ride" - basically, the last 5 climbs of the insane ride. It was about 22 miles and did 4000 feet of climbing, taking me about 2.0 hours to complete - and you can see the data for this ride right here.

Oh - and if you want to see a recording of the entire ride, where I first scoped it out by car, you can see the that data right here.

Okay, so who out there would like to join me one Saturday or Sunday to do this ride? The drinks are on me... :)

How NOT To Do A Climb

2007-10-14T22:38:00.000-07:00

I did a ride today with a couple of my biking buddies, Ed and Sheila - and I had a lot of hopes that it would be a fun ride for me, even though I dreaded the fact that climbing up Highway 9 from Saratoga to Saratoga Gap was going to be a lot harder than normal.

Why would it be harder? Well, as you probably know from my recent posts, my climbing legs sort of did a disappearing act in the last couple of months, as I did a lot of shorter and flatter rides, even though they were often very fast rides (like 20 to 24 mph - mostly because I was doing training rides with the Noon Goons or actual races on the weekends and having a blast!).

But all those great climbing rides I was doing in the first half of this year were no longer a part of my weekly diet - and my recent attempts to do some long climbs resulted in total disasters!

We had planned to climb Highway 9 first, as a warmup climb - and then do one of the grand-daddys of climbs in the Bay Area, Bohlman - On Orbit - Bohlman (affectionately known as B-O-B). In fact, the Low Key Hillclimb (LKHC) series had just done the B-O-B climb yesterday (Saturday morning) - I didn't join them for a couple of reasons: One, I was taking my youngest son to surf team practice and two, I didn't want to embarras myself by being the last person to finish the climb, which would have most likely been the case!

So Ed and Sheila and I did a little 10-minute warmup from the Starbucks on Saratoga Rd, and when we got to the town of Saratoga, we warmed up a little stronger while going through the town, and when we hit the Bend-Of-Death after you get through the town (where there is a strong left-turn bend), we hit our timers and took off for the climb up Highway 9.

Now, I know that Ed has been getting himself into pretty good climbing shape lately, since he climbs up Sierra Rd near his home in Fremont about once or twice a week - and he also does a lot of mountain biking up Mission Peak, which keeps his legs used to climbing up a big hill.

But I haven't been quite so diligent, and it was interesting when we took off - I started out exactly right, going moderate, keeping my heartrate in the 140 to 150 bpm range (zone 3 for me, where my max heartrate is about 175 bpm). But as we hit those first little rollers on Highway 9, I started pushing a moderate/hard pace (150 to 160 bpm, or zone 4), and then pushed it up into the hard/hard pace (zone 5, above 160 bpm) - and by the time we got to the bridge at mile 2.1 (where Sanborn Rd meets Highway 9), I was 40 seconds FASTER than my PB time back in April of this year! I was cooking - and out there ahead of both Ed and Sheila.

But then, after that bridge, the road pitches up a little stronger, and I realized that I was just going too hard - Ed passed me up as I decided to consciously slow myself down a little - and I watched him pull away from me, which made me feel bad (since I was usually the first one to the top of Highway 9 when we used to ride together a couple of years ago). How depressing!

And, by the time I reached the big hairpin turn at mile 4.4, I was now down by 1:25 from my PB time (my PB on that climb back on April 25 of this year was 43:43).

Normally, being down by just a little over a minute, with just 2.4 miles left to climb would have been fine with me, since I'm 11 pounds heavier right now than when I got that PB back in April, and I haven't done too much climbing in the last 2 or 3 months.

But then, disaster hit - I just couldn't turn the pedals comfortably and get my heartrate back up to hard/hard - it was stuck in a moderate pace, hovering around 150 bpm - basically, I had blown up!

OMG!

And, in the next 2.4 miles, I lost almost 3 minutes PER MILE, losing another 7:15 of time - ugh!!! But, that's what happens when you blow - you just can't turn the pedals very well, and it's possible to lose a lot of time in a very short distance - and that is exactly what happened to me. Sigh.

So, in the end, I did a time of just 52:25, which was close to 9 minutes slower than my PB time of 43:43 just 6 short months ago - oh, brother!

The profile for my heartrate data on my PB ride in April was perfect - I started out moderate (140 to 150), rose to moderate/hard (150 to 159), then rose to hard/hard (160 to 170) for the last 2.4 miles.

To put that into concrete time, I did the last 2.4 miles in my April PB ride in just 17:15, my best ever (I would normally do this in about 19 to 20 minutes). My average heartrate for that last 2.4 miles was about 165 bpm.

For today's ride, I did that same 2.4 miles in 24:30 - quite a difference! My average heartrate for that last 2.4 miles today was only about 150 bpm.

Now, Ed did quite well today - his time for the 6.8 miles was about 44:30, just 45 seconds slower than my PB time of about 43:45 last April.

Ed was actually up by 45 seconds at the big hairpin turn (when you have 2.4 miles left) - and, as he said, his legs felt rather dead towards the end of the climb - he ended up doing that last 2.4 miles in 18:45, which is still an excellent time - but was 1:30 slower than my PB time, which is why he ended up 45 seconds slower than my PB time today.

The bottom line? When you start a climb, you need to stay well within yourself - especially in the first half of a longer climb, so you have something left for that last half.

You also need to keep your weight down, by monitoring it daily - and if you see it starting to creep up, it's time to put the brakes on those second helpings and cut back!

Today, I went out so fast, I was almost a minute faster than my PB ride back in April, which is ridiculous, since I'm not in the same climbing shape - I should have paced myself so I was staying consistently below my PB pace from last April - and if I had done that, I would probably have had a more consistent and stronger second half for today's climb - and not lost so much time so quickly in that last couple of miles.

I think if I had done the climb properly, I would have been about 2 minutes down at the hairpin turn (28:30), and then done about 19:30 for the last 2.4 miles, for a total time of 48:00 - this would have still have been about 4 minutes slower than my PB back in April, but I'd consider that a relative success, since my extra 11 pounds is probably responsible for an additional loss of about 3 minutes ( every 2.2 pounds extra slows you down 3 seconds per kilometer on a moderate 5% climb - so the 11-kilometer climb of Highway 9 translates to an extra 165 seconds for me, almost 3 minutes!).

So, taking the 11 pounds off my body and attacking the climb properly would get me to within 1 minute of my PB time, and would allow me to just about match Ed's time from today.

I'll have a chance to test this theory in early December, when I plan to have lost the extra 11 pounds... :)

And I think I'll try to climb Highway 9 again this week, and attack it like I did when I did my PB ride back in April, and see if I can get anywhere close to the 48:00 time that I should have done for today's ride.

Boy, sometimes your best laid plans...

It's The Fat, Stupid!

2007-10-11T16:31:00.000-07:00

So, I think I've figured out yet another reason - perhaps the main reason - why my climbing performance is suffering a little these days.

For those of you (most likely, all one of you - and you know who you are, Dennis!) that have followed my recent posts, you know that I've been just a tad disappointed that my ability to climb a hill has deteriorated in the last couple of months, which happened to coincide with my entry back into the world of bike racing.

"Aha!", you'll say - training for races makes you weaker, right? All those Noon Goon rides and crits and flatter road races have been really bad for you, right? Well, not really, as it might turn out.

This blog entry is a remarkably boring analysis of why you need to watch your diet - especially if you want to keep your racing edge.

So, I was reading Joel Friel's excellent book, "Cycling Past 50" (okay, so I'm 53 and "over-the-hill" - but I can still beat a lot of guys half my age on a road race course!) - and I came across this very interesting tidbit on pages 70-71 (oh, you can buy his book at Amazon.com right here):

"It's been estimated that every extra kilogram of fat (2.2 pounds) adds three seconds in a one-kilometer climb (0.62 miles) on a moderate grade of about 5 percent."

Really?

And I was telling my friend, Dennis Pedersen, just the other day, that I thought part of my problem in my recent poor climbing performance was due to the fact that I was about 10 pounds heavier now than when I was at my climbing fitness peak back in mid-July, just before I started getting back into the racing scene.

Hmmmmmm......so, I decided to do the math, to see what effect 10 or 11 pounds might have on climbing my old nemesis, Old La Honda (OLH).

Now, OLH is not a moderate grade of 5 percent - it's a lot meaner - like an average grade of 7.5% - so I decided to give myself a five second penalty for each kilogram of extra fat. I'll justify this value just a little later...

Okay - let's see...11 pounds would be exactly 5 kilograms, so I'll just say I'm 5 kilograms over my mid-July weight (okay - I'll go eat a couple of donuts to make that absolutely true). So my time penalty for those 5 kilograms is about 25 seconds for each kilometer of the climb. Hmmmm.....interesting!

And, OLH is 3.3 miles in length, which is about 5 kilometers (actually, closer to 5.5, but we'll just use 5 kilometers).

So, 25 seconds for each of those 5 kilometers gives me a time penalty of ... 125 seconds, or about 2 minutes!

Now, I recently did OLH in 27:02, as you all know - but I told Dennis that I thought this was a poor representation of the actual baseline for me right now - I went out way too hard on that ITT up OLH (remember - I got to the halfway point in just 11:45, which was only 10 seconds slower than my halfway point on my PB time of 23:18 - and you can see the data for that PB ride right here - the PB climb is the data associated with Lap 2). I lost about 4 minutes in that second half of the OLH climb.

So......I told Dennis that my most probable time for OLH right now would be 25 minutes, about 2 minutes slower than my PB time earlier this year.

And now, I have some evidence to suggest where those 2 minutes got lost - not so much in my legs (which I always thought made some sense, but it's not like I haven't been using my legs for the last few months!) - it sounds like those 2 minutes are buried in the extra fat rolling around my tummy!

If you subtract off that 2 minutes from my likely time of 25 minutes for OLH right now (where I pace myself appropriately for the entire climb), you get a magic time of about 23 minutes!

Oh, remember I said I could justify that value of 5 seconds per kilogram of extra fat? Well, in my interest of trying to be accurate (and fair) to myself, I did a little more research and found this interesting tidbit on Wikipedia:

"The formula for power suggests that 1 lb. saved is worth 0.06 mph (0.1 km/h) on a 7% grade"

You can find this little gem right here, if you want to read all the details.

Well, OLH is about 7% - and this means my extra 10 pounds would slow me down by 0.6 mph for the climb. For that 3.22 mile climb, if you use my average speed for my PB (8.3 mph) and subtract 0.6 mph, you get 7.7 mph - and if you then re-calculate what my time would be doing that climb at 7.7 mph, you get a time of 25:06 - about 2 minutes slower than my PB time of 23:18 !!

So, as you can see, my use of 5 seconds / kilogram for the time penalty on OLH is quite justified - and is probably fairly accurate, too...

And just what does this all mean?

Wooohoooo!! This means that all I have to do is lose those 10 or 11 pounds and I'll probably be able to match my PB time up OLH back on August 1.

Oh - and those two donuts I told you I'd eat? Uh, no way, Charlie - it's veggies and water for me, until I get back to my old climbing weight... :)

Okay, so now I don't feel so bad - it's the fat, stupid!

Closing Down The Gap

2007-10-10T16:18:00.000-07:00

So today, one of my cycling buddies, Dennis Pedersen, and I started a new fall/winter training program that will include climbing up Page Mill Road on Wednesdays, starting at about noon. Neither one of us had ever climbed UP Page Mill, even though both of us thought we had descended Page Mill in the far, distant past.

Our plan was simple - we wanted to do 2 relatively hard efforts (about 90% of your max heartrate) for 20 minutes each. When Dennis and I met on Old Page Mill at noon, I told him I might cheat a little and only put out about 85% of my max heartrate, since I'm typically a little conservative when doing a climb for the first time - I like to "scope it out", so to speak - get an idea of all the little nuances of the climb, like where it hurts the most - like those dang switchback turns that often hit 15% to 20%, unless you cheat and swing over to the wrong side of the road to flatten the bend a bit - but this can be dangerous, and is not particularly recommended - traffic coming down the mountain will be going a lot faster than you are going up the mountain!

And I had already "virtually" scoped out the climb by analyzing various people that had uploaded their ride data to MotionBased.com - what a cool site! I have a Garmin Edge 305 cyclometer - and anyone that has a Garmin can upload their data to MotionBased.com, which has much better software for analyzing your data than the stock software that comes with your Garmin (their Training Center program).

I had also driven up Page Mill several times, as it happens to be one of the "escape routes" when I commute home from San Mateo. If I get to the Page Mill exit on Hwy 280 and see a long line of cars parked on the freeway, I will often decide to take "the scenic route" home, going up Page Mill to Skyline, then Skyline to Black Rd, and down Black Rd to Hwy 17, where I latch back onto the freeway system and scoot on over to Scotts Valley, where I live.

So, the combination of having driven up Page Mill, and looking at the MotionBased.com data from different cyclists that had gone up Page Mill allowed me to inform Dennis that I had a basic game plan for attacking Page Mill to get our 2 20-minute workouts.

Here's the profile of the climb up Page Mill: The first 1.0 mile (starting at Arastradero) is fairly mild - just a 3% average grade or so. Then, from mile 1.0 to mile 4.5, it kicks up fairly strong (this is the hardest section of Page Mill, no doubt). In that 3.5 miles, you gain about 1500 feet, so the average grade is between 9% and 10% - and that's just the average! There are spots that hit 15% to 20% (yep - those damn switchbacks!). Then, after you hit the 4.5 mile mark, the next mile is fairly easy (back to a reasonable - and pleasing - 4% average grade). Then, the last 3 miles, from mile 5.5 to mile 8.5 is a series of uphill rollers, i.e., rollers that keep getting you up higher and higher. You climb another 600 feet in that 3 miles, which is an average grade of just 4% again - but they are rollers, so the aveage is a little misleading. Still, the top half of Page Mill is a piece of cake, compared to that tough 3.5 mile section you slog through between mile 1.0 and mile 4.5, for sure!

So I proposed a gameplan to Dennis - we go fairly mild for the first mile, then when the road starts to kick up, we do our 20-minute interval, which should get us to somewhere around the 4.0 mile mark. Then, we go easy for 5 minutes and do the last 20 minutes hard again.

Well, Dennis stuck to the plan, almost exactly as I mapped it out. He got to the 4.0 mile mark in just about 20 minutes (that is, 20 minutes after I said, "Go!", which was at the 1.0 mile spot of the climb). Then, he patiently waited for me to arrive, which was about 3 minutes later, we calculated. You see, even though Dennis got to the 4.0 mile mark as instructed, I was lagging behind, since I'm not climbing quite as strong as Dennis (that's an understatement!). So, when my 20 minutes were up, I was only at the 3.5 mile mark. It took me another 3 minutes to do that 1/2 mile to get to where Dennis had kindly parked himself, waiting patiently for me.

So we discussed what we had experienced so far and decided that Dennis would most likely do the rest of the climb in just another 20 minutes or so. And I would most likely take a few more minutes than that, again! So we started off rather easy, which is actually hard to do, since we had another 1/2 mile of steeper grades before we got to the "easy" part of Page Mill, at mile 4.5 - and after a couple of minutes, Dennis blasted off ahead of me, to head for the top.

And, right on schedule, he got to the top in 20 minutes (after going easy for 2 minutes with me).

And me? Well, I kind of cheated again and didn't really push it at 90% of my max heartrate - it was more like just 80% to 85% - so I lost a couple of minutes for the last half of the climb. Unfortunately, it makes it easy for you to do this, since Page Mill really lets up for those last couple of miles.

So, how did we do? Well, we figured out that Dennis probably did the entire climb in about 46 minutes or so - and I had an actual, official time: 53:31 - not too shabby, all things considered.

I believe that Dennis can do the climb in about 42 minutes, if he made an all-out effort for the entire climb. To see why, just check out the times of the guys that did Old La Honda (OLH) in last year's LKHC (week 2) and compare to their times on the Page Mill climb (week 6):

http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/2006/week2/results.html

http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/2006/week6/results.html

Check out, for example, the times of Ron Brunner, Fred Stamm, and Peter Tapscott:

RB -- 20:18 (OLH) --- 41:46 (Page Mill)
FS -- 20:03 (OLH) --- 42:53 (Page Mill)
PT -- 19:58 (OLH) --- 41:20 (Page Mill)

It looks like the algorithm for converting OLH times to Page Mill times is pretty simple:

Page Mill time = (OLH time + 1:00) * 2

Since Dennis did 19:50 on OLH last week (when I did that disasterous time of 27:02), there's every reason to expect his Page Mill time would have been right there, in the 42 minute range.

And, today's result on Page Mill backs up my algorithm - I did 53:30, but I'm pretty sure it could have easily done about 52 minutes if I had pushed a little harder on the top half.

So, reversing the algorithm, you get an OLH time for me of about 25 minutes ( 52/2 - 1 ), which is what I was telling Dennis earlier today - I don't think my time last week was a good baseline - 27:02 - I know I had lost my climbing legs over the last couple of months, but I figured that was good for a 2 minute loss on OLH, and not 4 minutes!

See? I'm a genius, right?

On the other hand, if I can get back to my OLH time of about 23 minutes (doable in the next couple of months), then my Page Mill time should end up in the 48 minute range.

So, this means I'll end up about 6 minutes behind Dennis, when I get my climbing legs back in the next month or two.

But by that time, Dennis will have most likely be approaching the OLH times of someone like David Kelly - he did 17:53 last year in week 2 of the LKHC. And, his Page Mill time was a very respectable time of 37:35 ( (18+1) * 2 = 38 ).

So even as I get better, so will Dennis - and the gap will still be there.

Or will it?

Obviously, I have a lot more room for improvement than Dennis does - we'll both reach some natural limit to our improvement - I just hope that I can end up close enough to him so we can work together in a few races next year, tearing the legs off all those guys that spent their fall and winter months watching football and pigging out during Thanksgiving and Xmas...

Well, I still like to dream, anyway... :)

Going Backwards

2007-10-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

So today, my friend, Dennis Pedersen, and I joined the Noon Goon ride in Palo Alto. Our intent was to start out the ride with them, which includes a nice climb up Old La Honda (OLH). But at the top of OLH, we were intending to slide back down to the bottom of the hill and - oh, no! - do the climb - again!

So, you might be wondering - why the hell would we do that? Simple. Today was the official start of the off-season for us - and we both want to improve our climbing for races that we intend to do next year. We'll both do our fair share of crits and the flatter road races, but it would be nice to be able to hang with the main pack on some of the hillier road races, too - the ones that have significant climbs in them (in this case, "significant" means something more than a mile long, and gaining more than just a few hundred feet of elevation).

So Dennis proposed that we start doing a series of 2x20 climbing efforts - this is where you climb at about 90% of your max heartrate for 20 minutes - and you do it 2 times (hence, the "2x20" nomenclature). We'll be doing other hill-climbing feats of pain, too - like 4-minute hill repeats (5 or 6 of them - ouch!), and other equally horrific painful activities - all meant to make you stronger, of course ("That which does not kill you...yeah, yeah, yeah...") - and since climbing OLH takes a decent climber about 20 minutes (usually a little less), then doing OLH twice made total sense.

So we meet with the Noon Goons at precisely 12 Noon (that's partially how they get their nickname from me) - and head out for a nice, 25-minute warmup to the base of OLH. I was a little hesitant about doing this climb just once, mind you - I last climbed it about 2 months ago and did a PB (that's Personal Best, just to be clear) of about 23:18 or so. Not a great time, but good for me - and I was confident about 2 months ago that I could keep chipping away at that time and get it into the very low 20s by the end of this year. My modest goal for the year was 22:00 flat - and I was sure I could meet this goal - maybe even get it down into the 21:xx range. In fact, a time of 21:18 would have been perfect, since there's this guy, Lucas Pereira, who did 21:19 several years ago when he participated in the Low-Key Hill Climb series back in 1997 (see his personal cycling records here).

I always thought it would be great if I could, one day, match the records of Lucas Pereira, just because his time for various climbs were well beyond my capabilities just a few short years ago, when I first came across his Personal Cycling Records page. I'm sure that Lucas Pereira could care less that there is someone out there attempting to match his accomplishments - he even says this at the top of that page:

This page is mainly for my own use. The records are nothing special, but I figured I would write them down so that I don't forget.

Yeah, I know what you mean, Lucas - and that's how I feel about my own records (the PBs) - they're mostly just for my own benefit. But it's always fun to have someone that you are competing with - besides yourself - just to make the game a little more fun and interesting.

So when I did the Beat-the-Clock Canada Road Time Trial back at the end of May this year (see the results here), I was delighted with my time for the 10-mile TT - 26:14 - which translates to just under 23.0 mph !! Why was I delighted? Because I had done better than Lucas Pereira, who did a lesser version of this time trial on Canada Rd (a shorter, 7.6-mile version, but on the same road) - he did 19:58, which translates to just 22.8 mph - so I had gone a longer distance (2.4 miles longer), and averaged just a little faster speed! Woohoooo!!!

Now granted, there isn't much climbing in that time trial (just a few hundred feet), but it showed that I had made great progress, indeed! Lucas had also climbed Mt Diablo in 1:10:40 - and I had done that same climb in 1:15:30 just a couple of weeks before that Canada Rd time trial, with my friend, Ed (you can see a recording of that ride here) - and I wasn't even trying to go that hard that day - I estimated I could have ridden up Mt Diablo 5 to 7 minutes faster than that, which would put me right there with Lucas' time! Maybe even a little faster! Not only that, but another biking buddy of mine, Mike Tolaio, had climbed Mt Diablo in a best time of 1:09:35 - and so there was an excellent chance I could have done a better time than Mike - and he's someone that was always able to out-climb me on any given day. This year, I've been riding fairly consistently, but Mike has not (he's been devoting a lot of time to his son's baseball development).

So what is the point of all this? Well, getting back to Old La Honda and the ride we did today, I was feeling hesitant - mostly because I just knew it was going to be a painful ride up the climb - and not just because of the difficulty of doing the climb, but also because I have not been climbing much the last couple of months - I've been riding with the Noon Goons during the week, and then doing crits or flatter road races on the weekends, which are a ton of fun, but don't really help you climb any faster.

So today I found out the truth - I'm going backwards! My time up OLH today: 27:02 - almost 4 minutes slower than just 2 months ago! How can that be?

Well, it's not quite as bad as it sounds, at first. If you looked at my time when I was about 1/2 way up the climb, things were looking bright. True, my average heartrate was more like 95% of my max (close to 165 bpm) instead of the 90% rate I was supposed to target (about 157 bpm) - but my time at the 1.0-mile mark was just 6:45 - only 10 seconds slower than my PB time. At the 1/2 way point (mile 1.6), I was at 11:55, just 30 seconds off my PB time. So I was starting to slip, but not too much.

Then, my world blew up - or, at least, my legs blew up. Suddenly, I had that horrible feeling I was about to slow to a crawl - and, I did. At the next checkpoint, mile 2.0, I had a time of 15:50 - a full 1:30 slower than my PB, so I had just lost a full minute in just 0.4 of a mile - not a good sign! And, I knew the last 1.2 miles were going to be equally painful and slow - and, they were! At mile 2.2 (where you travel through these incredibly beautiful pair of redwoods - like a magical door), I was at 19:00, now I was 2:30 down - oh, no! - I had lost another minute! At the 3.0-mile mark, I was at 25:30, now down by 3:30 - oh, brother - I was losing time real quickly - was there a hole in the bottom of the hour glass? How could so much sand escape? Finally, I rounded the final bend and dropped dead at the mailboxes, with a final time of 27:02 - I had officially lost almost 4 minutes from my PB of 23:18 just 2 months ago, on August 1 (you can see a recording of that ride here). Horror of horrors!

Then, I had a bit of good luck - Dennis thought his head tube was a bit loose, and decided he didn't think it would be a good idea to do another climb up OLH. Well, I could have told him that - and I didn't need to pretend my head tube was loose, either - my legs had learned to "Just Say No!" - and they did! So, I didn't (do another climb, that is) - and Dennis kindly kept me company as I limped back to the start area. But we did get in a couple of practice lead-out sprints on the way back - I felt much better, once I was on semi-level ground again!

So what does this all mean? Have I progressed backwards that much in such a short time? Well, yes - and no - I definitely went out too hard, which I said I wasn't going to do - but I did, anyway. The lesson there is: Follow your plan - if you were smart enough to come up with a training plan, then try to at least follow the training plan! Otherwise, why make a plan? Why not just do random rides at random times on random days? So, I think I learned a good lesson here. I'm fairly certain that if I had just started out by working my way up to the 90% heartrate (about 157 bpm), and stayed there for the entire climb, I would have hit the 1/2 way point a little slower (like at about 12:30 or 12:45), but then finished a lot stronger, and would have only lost about 2 minutes from my PB, to finish at about 25 minutes or so.

Thus, I would have been down about 2 minutes, which is a lot more palatable than down by 4 minutes!

Oh, and my friend, Dennis? I had predicted that he would break 20 minutes, based on my observation of his performances over the last few months. And his time? 19:50. Boy, I'm getting awful good at predicting other people's performances - now it's time to work on my own! So congrats to Dennis - he is now officially in the "sub-20" crowd for OLH - and it seems that everyone who considers themselves an avid cyclist knows his/her time up OLH - it's a classic benchmark climb in the Bay Area. It's not the steepest climb (it averages about 7.5%), nor is it the longest (it's about 3.25 miles), but it does climb 1330 feet - and if you can do it in less than 20 minutes, you belong to a fairly elite club of cyclists - and I hope to be there by the Spring of next year, with a little help and encouragement from Dennis and his new training program for me, which will focus on a lot of climbing during the next 4 to 5 months, in preparation for some of the hillier road races next year.

So, I'm going backwards - but it's all about the journey, right? This has been a fun year - I got back into racing, which I hadn't done for 30 years - and I'm able to hang in for a lot of the Noon Goon rides, as well as crits and the flatter road races - and at age 53, that ain't too bad! I mean, I could be 60 pounds overweight and unable to ride around the block, which happens to describe me just 4 short years ago. So I'm not doing too bad - most of the weight is gone (and just why is that last 10 to 15 pounds so hard to drop, anyway?) - and my enthusiasm for biking is at an all-time high (too high, if you ask my family!).

And besides, next year, Dennis and I plan to be bona-fide mutants, tearing the legs off unsuspecting victims on a weekly basis...right, Dennis?

Yeah, right... :)

Someday, I Want To Be A Mutant

2007-09-28T17:13:00.001-07:00

Just to clarify, a "mutant" is actually a good thing, in the small world of bike racing. I first picked up the term "mutant" when reading some of the race reports of one of my friends, Dennis Pedersen - you can read some of those reports at the Santa Cruz County Cycling Club (SCCCC) Race Team Reports here.

So, just what is a "mutant"? Well, it's basically one of those guys that can rip off the legs of his competitors, especially during a longer climb up some mountain. In other words, an especially strong racer that usually makes his peers suffer during a race - and suffer a lot!

Dennis and I have often joked in our race reports about various "mutants" that we have both observed. In fact, two in particular happened to show up for one of our races, at the Giro di San Francisco - you can read my own report here and Dennis' right here.

Those pair of mutants I referred to in my race report are Kevin Metcalfe and Don Langley. Between the two of them, they win a lot of races, to be sure. And Kevin, in particular, is what I'd call a "super-mutant" - he's 46 years old, but you'd think he was fresh out of college - he has quite the racing palmares (that's like your resume in the bike racing world) - just check out Kevin's results over the last dozen years!

Kevin has also participated in the annual Mt Diablo Challenge hillclimb that is held the first Sunday of every October - and has usually placed in the top 2 or 3, with a time of about 47+ minutes - that's averaging more than 13.5 mph up an 11-mile climb that gains about 3400 feet of climbing - amazing!

Also, Kevin just placed 6th in the recent Masters World TT Championships held in Austria - he did the 12.5-mile course that gains 1400 feet in just 25:40, an average speed of 29.0 mph!! And he was only about 30 seconds away from 1st place! That's almost as fast as the pros go when they do time-trials in events like the Tour de France - truly a "super-mutant", as you can see!

As you can tell, I very much admire cyclists like Kevin Metcalfe - I'm only 7 years older than him, but I'm nowhere close to matching his abilities in the mountains - even accounting for my slightly advanced age.

So Kevin's a "mutant" (or, "super-mutant", whatever) - and so it amused me to no end when I happened to come across a race report that he wrote in the AMD Discovery Masters Team blog about a race he did this year - the Patterson Pass Road Race. Kevin normally races in the open 45+ races (meaning open to any category - and it's usually a bunch of Cat 1 and Cat 2 racers, as well as former Pros, who have simply gotten a little older - but not too much slower!). But for the Patterson Pass Road Race, Kevin decided to race with the Pro/1/2 crowd - it's just like the open 45+ crowd, but includes mostly the younger guys (the guys that *will* race in the open 45+ races, once they get old enough - like in 20 years!).

And why was I so amused when reading his race report for the Patterson Pass race? Well, here is a paragraph he wrote near the beginning of his report (you can read his full report right here):

"At the start line there were many Giant Strawberries including pro triathlete Chris Lieto. Also on the line was one of my old Sacramento team mates Mike Sayers and two of his BMC guys. And the usual crowd of mutants bent on making me suffer."

So I just had to laugh to myself - here's a guy that I consider a "super-mutant" - and he's complaining about the guys that *he* considers to be "mutants".

So I guess it's all relative, after all.

But, I'd still like to be known to my peers as a "mutant" one day...

Bikecology, Bob Jackson, and Ron Cooper

2007-09-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it's interesting how your life is actually a lot more intertwined with someone else's life - even though neither one of you realizes it at the time. But more on that later...

I started this blog soon after my friend, Dennis Pedersen, started his blog ( you can read his musings here ). Dennis is one of the few cyclists on my team, the Santa Cruz County Cycling Club (SCCCC), who likes to do road races - the SCCCC is really more of a cyclocross club, judging by their focus on those kinds of races. In fact, Dennis will now be doing a lot his road races for a new team he just joined, The Bicycle Trip. Maybe I'll get a chance to join him one day, after I improve my climbing next year (I'll devote a separate article to this one day).

Although I've only known Dennis for a relatively short time, I've noticed that he and I have a lot in common, mostly bike-related, of course. He started actively racing road bikes in the last two or three years, and I just started racing road again in the last two or three months, although I originally raced road bikes way back in the mid-1970s for a couple of years.

And, Dennis is quite passionate about training and racing, which is something that I've rediscovered in myself these last couple of years (And that is why next year will entail a full racing schedule for me - my wife, Becky, doesn't know that yet - but my passion for bike riding/racing is no secret to her - and she and my kids have started to show a lot more interest in supporting my "bad habit", as they like to think of it)....

So I was reading one of Dennis' recent posts, entitled My Cycling History and was quite amused when I saw him make a reference to a catalog for a bike store that he used to read ( because, as he pointed out, it was all he could afford back in those days! ).

Well, the catalog he mentioned was for a bike store called Bikecology - and it amused me for a very simple reason: I worked there for a couple of years, as a part-time job while putting myself through school at UCLA - and I think I just saw Dennis smile, assuming he's reading it right now (right, Dennis?).

And, I was even more amused when Dennis made a reference to the Bob Jackson bike that he dreamed of owning one day, but was way too expensive for him at the time. Well, we sold Bob Jackson bikes at Bikecology, as well as another English-built custom bike, Ron Cooper. They were both great bikes - and I, too, dreamed of the day when I could afford one of those cool bikes - I had a relatively mid-range Nishiki at the time ( it was all that I could afford, being a poor college student, of course ). Here's a cool link I found that compared these two great bikes: http://www.veloworks.com/roncooper/cooper1976.html.

Well, since I worked as a part-time mechanic at Bikecology, I was presented a unique opportunity one day. One of our customers had ordered a black Ron Cooper frame and when it arrived at our shop ( on Santa Monica Blvd. ), the manager of the shop noticed there was a very minor ding in the top tube of the frame (probably happened after it left England, during shipping to our store). When he showed it to the customer, they didn't like the ding and said they would wait until a replacement frame could be sent from England. The ding was not critical, in terms of the integrity of the frame - it was just a small cosmetic thing.

Now my manager, a really strong cyclist named Manny, knew I was just getting into road racing and asked me if I would be interested in buying the "damaged" frame from him - at a very good discount from the normal wholesale price. Really? Wooooooohooooo!!! I had (barely) enough in my bank account to buy just the frame, which just happened to be the size I needed. And Manny was kind enough to let me build up the bike after work, and even loaned me the money to purchase a lot of the high-end Suntour components I used to outfit my new bike - Campy was just way too expensive!

I was so excited about the prospect of having this incredible racing machine - and promptly went out to train even harder with my racing buddy, Danny Escalzo. He and I had accidentally gotten involved in road racing when we inadvertently joined a famous training ride in the local area - the Sunday Death Ride, which was a lot like any of the big group training rides that happen every weekend here in the Bay Area (like the Spectrum Ride or the Crow's Nest Ride on Saturday mornings).

Danny and I were out for one of our fun Sunday rides, riding from where we lived near UCLA down to Highway 1 (via Sunset Blvd), then turning north on Highway 1 to head up towards Oxnard and back (about a 100 mile ride). After riding for a couple of miles along Highway 1, we were suddenly passed by a huge pack of riders - at least 60 or 70 that day - and quickly hopped onto the back of the pack to ride with them. It turned out to be that famous Sunday Death Ride (which we had never heard about, since we weren't into racing at that point) - and after successfully staying with the pack all the way up to the turnaround point (which was at a little mini-market somewhere near Leo Carrillo State Beach) and then back to Santa Monica, we were invited by a guy named Maury to join his club, the North Hollywood Wheelmen.

So we did. And thus began my passion with racing road bikes - on the coolest racing bike I could ever imagine!

I entered a lot of road races and criteriums with my black Ron Cooper bike back in those fun college days during the mid-1970s. It was a truly magical time and passed all too quickly.

It's too bad I wandered away from the bike racing world after I graduated from UCLA and came up here to the Bay Area to start my career. But, at least I have a chance to enjoy those times once again, racing my new '08 Trek Madone (a black one, no less!) with my new club, Team Santa Cruz ( SCCCC ) - and hopefully, getting to employ some sort of team tactics with Dennis and a few others on both SCCCC and Team Bicycle Trip.

It's so interesting to see how lives become intertwined sometimes...and in the most unexpected ways, too! I hadn't thought about Bikecology and my first real racing bike, that Ron Cooper, for a very long time...

Thanks, Dennis!

Did I Actually Beat These Guys?

2007-09-13T17:52:00.000-07:00

From my earlier posts, you might know that I did my first
road race in 30 years a few weeks ago - the San Ardo RR
( you can read about it here ).

One of the things I like to do for my races is scope out
the competition, of course - and with everything getting
blasted out onto the web these days, it's not all that hard
to do if you race bicycles.

Some of the promoters of various races use BikeReg.com or
SportsBaseOnline.com to register the entrants - and both of
those websites allow you to look at a list of all the current
registered cyclists for the different race categories - how
nice!

So, you can look at the list of names in your race, and then
go to usacycling.org to check out their racing palmares.

Having looked at a lot of names over the past few months
( starting about the time I got interested in racing bikes
again ), I happened to become familiar with a number of racers -
not by face, mind you - like everything else on the web these
days, just virtually. And occasionally, I get to actually
meet some of these individuals at the races I'm now starting
to attend ( or the training rides - like those Noon Goon rides
I do out of Palo Alto a few times during the weekdays ).

So I happened to be browsing through the race results for
my San Ardo race ( you can see for yourself here ) and suddenly,
I saw 2 names that popped out at me - Frederick Stamm and
John Novitsky - and I noticed that I had actually placed
ahead of both of those guys! I got 16th, Frederick got 21st,
and John got 26th.

So what's the big deal about that?

Well, first of all, I could have easily placed a lot higher -
top 10 for sure, and top 5 maybe - but I had made a really
dumb tactical error towards the end of the race (duh!).

But more importantly, I had actually beaten both those guys -
and these are guys I had dreamed of one day beating, mostly
because they are both strong riders that regularly do quite
well in road races and hillclimb events - climbing hills is
my one main weakness that I intend to work on this next year -
but these guys can climb quite well, especially considering
that they are about my age (John is 49 and Frederick is 55 -
and I'm 53).

John Novitsky can time-trial really well, too - he beat just
about everybody in the Beat-the-Clock Canada Road time trials
this last year ( check out the results page here ).

And you can check out John's racing palmares and see his
accomplishments in some of the races he's done over the
last few years - impressive!

I got to know Frederick Stamm's name because of the
Low Key Hillclimb Series that was held last year
( it was originally held about 10 or 11 years ago for a
couple of years ) - and Frederick consistently placed quite
well on the hillclimbs - especially considering that he's
55 years old! I plan on doing the climbing series this year -
it's coming up soon! - and I always thought it would be nice
if I could eventually climb as well as Frederick Stamm,
among others.

And he has an impressive racing palmares, too - as you
can see by checking out his racing results over the last few
years. So I thought it would be cool to someday be able to
compete with him in a race.

And now, I see that in my first road race in 30 years, I actually
beat both these guys! - woooohoooo!!!

Now, the San Ardo race didn't exactly play to their strengths -
in fact, one reason I picked that race as my first road race in
30 years was precisely because it wasn't too hilly - just a lot
of rollers and a long flat stretch on the backside of the course.

But still...how cool is that? Maybe I'll have a chance to be more
competitive next year - especially if I get some assistance in my
training from Dennis Pedersen and the new team he just joined,
Bicycle Trip.

I can't wait to see what happens next year with my racing...

I (finally!) Got Dennis His Video Up On YouTube

2007-09-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago, I did the Timpani Criterium (you can check
out my race report for all the gory details) - and I got there early,
mostly to videotape the Cat 4 race, where my teammate,
Dennis Pedersen, was trying to place at least 5th (in order to
upgrade into Cat 3 before the end of this racing season).

Well, Dennis got 2nd place (congrats, Dennis!) - and I told him I
caught it all on videotape - he told me he had never seen himself
racing on video, so I promised to get the video up on YouTube
ASAP.

Then I managed to "misplace" the magic USB cable you need to
pull the video off the camcorder and onto your PC - oops! And,
I got busy with the usual stuff that engulfs your daily life - every
once in awhile, Dennis would query me, "Hey - how about that
video, Steve?" ....uh, any day now, Dennis...

In the meantime, I enlisted the aid of my son, Mitchell, to tape
our Giro di San Francisco crit (you can read the coverage of
that disaster of a race, if you want), as well as my somewhat
comical redemption at the Benicia Town Race (details can be
found here).

Side note: Dennis just sent me an e-mail to a link of some
nice guy that took pictures at our Benicia Town Race - that
picture you see above shows me in my blue SCCCC kit (on the
right side of the photo). I'm even smiling - this was most
likely just before my seatpost slipped down to my top tube
and hampered the rest of my race (but, I finished, anyway!).

Back to my story: I had just about given up finding that
damn cable and was about to buy a new USB cable for the
camcorder when I got lucky and found the missing cable -
wooohooo!! That night, I pulled off the video for that
Timpani crit race - and now, Dennis - here it is, for
posterity's sake:

Timpani Criterium Cat 4 Race on YouTube

And with that, I removed one of those monkeys that's been
riding on my back... :)

I would have pulled off the other videos, too - but our internet
connection really sucked last night - it took an amazingly long
time just to upload that one video. We'll try again tonight for
those other videos...

Enjoy the show, Dennis!

Noon Goon "Race" Report

2007-09-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

So here I sit, creating the first entry of my first blog - and I'm
asking myself, "Why would anyone waste their time creating
a blog, knowing full well that virtually nobody will ever read
your awesome insights into all things that constitute your life?"

Okay, so my Mom will probably read my blog - and I'll
probably read it - several times over, just to make sure it is
grammatically correct - but nobody else really cares, right?
I guess this is just one way to record some of the minutia that
consumes your day...maybe my kids will discover this blog
one day, when I'm too old and fragile to communicate with
anyone - and they'll at least get a little glimpse of my life
back in my younger, healthier days!

In my case, that minutia will probably have something to do
with one of my great passions these days, biking! And hence,
you will get to read about the "musings of a cyclotic" - I don't
know what inspired me to think of "cyclotic", but it seemed to
fit, for a variety of reasons.

Today's topic? Gee - could it have anything to do with bikes?
Okay, so one of the things I do these days is train - I got back
into bike racing recently - and it's a total blast! It takes me
back to my college days, when I used to race bikes with a lot of
passion - and some relative success, too!

One of the training rides I do during the weekdays is the Palo Alto
Noon Ride - it leaves from the same spot (Old Page Mill Rd),
at the same time (12:00 Noon), every day during the week,
all year round. I suppose especially nasty weather days might
reduce the number of participants, but most days there will be
anywhere from 10 to 30 cyclists, most of them amateur bike racers
like me, just getting out for a little noon-time training ride - the
rides usually only last about an hour - maybe a little longer on
certain days - but it's a *fast* hour or so. And they are just training
rides, but more often than not, they are really unsanctioned bike
races - and so today, I present to you a typical "race report", so you
can see what consititues one of my typical noon-time training rides...

I'll often refer to my fellow cyclists on these rides as the Noon Goons -
it sounds derogatory, but it's actually an affectionate reference to
a bunch of guys (and gals!) that I truly respect - I think each and
every one of them understands the hard work it takes to reach the
level where you can do one of these rides and survive to the end -
I honestly believe every one of the Noon Goons is a special person,
with that unique understanding of something quite extraordinary -
riding a bike at the extreme physical limits of your abilities. This
blog is probably more a testament to these great cyclists - they're
all winners, in my book - even the ones that inevitably get dropped
at some point during the ride - 'cause you just *know* they're
going to come back again one day - and kick your ass!

==========================================================================
Noon Goon Race - Monday Edition, Palo Alto / Woodside, CA USA, 9/10/2007

Normally, the Monday edition of the Noon Ride out of Palo Alto is
what we like to refer to as a 'recovery ride' - just a bunch of friendly
amateur racers out for a little noon-time spin to help flush out the
lactic acid that built up from the previous weekend's races.

And, in this case, *some* of us had actually raced on the previous
weekend - I, for one, had done the Benicia Town Race just the day
before, on Sunday morning - it was a somewhat hilly crit - not quite
as intense as the Cat's Hill crit, but it did register a respectable
1100 feet of climbing in the 16-mile race - I had done the 35+ 4/5
race, which lasted almost exactly 40 minutes - you can see my race
report here for the gory details:

http://www.santacruzcycling.org/teamsc/2007/racereport/#992007SteveRosen

So the Benicia Town Race was a relatively intense effort for the 40
minutes that it lasted, and Monday's Noon Goon ride *should* have
been a nice, relaxing, 'recovery' ride. And, in fact, that is exactly
how it started out - it wasn't clear that too many people had raced
last weekend - I think only a couple of us had actually raced up at
Benicia - but the Monday ride can go both ways on any given week -
sometimes it's easy and mellow (averaging about 20 mph) - and other
weeks, it gets fast and nasty (averaging more than 22 mph). And you
have to remember, those average speeds include a *very* easy
rollout for the first few miles (down Old Page Mill to Page Mill, then
a right on Arastradero and over to Alpine Rd), as well as a few
'biking stops' at stop signs and signals. In fact, the pack usually rolls
through most of the stop signs in a very responsible manner - and
almost always stops completely at a signal with a red light (though
I've personally witnessed a couple of exceptions - arrgghh!!).

This particular Monday looked like it was going to be one of those
'nice' Mondays - a true recovery ride, with no hard efforts or any
attempts to simulate a real race. It was a fairly large pack, too -
probably about 30 cyclists (normally, Mondays will only have 15 to
20 show up). People were calmly chatting as we rolled down
Old Page Mill to Page Mill, then turned right onto Arastradero
and climbed easily up the Arastradero hills, on our way over to
Alpine Rd.

Sometimes, you can get a hint of things to come, based on how the
Arastradero hills are climbed - and today, it was very mellow, which
I now realize was the calm before the storm!

As we turned onto Alpine Rd, a couple of guys broke off the front
and started hammering their way up to Portola Rd. Now, when this
happens, the pack usually reacts right away and the breakaway gets
chased down within moments - it's very rare - almost never the case -
for a breakaway to take off and stay away for the rest of the ride.
When these two guys broke off the front, the pack just smiled and
said, "Goodbye! - see you next week!" - and continued to roll easily
up Alpine Rd - ah yes, this was going to be a very 'nice' day, indeed!
The pack was saying they didn't care if a couple of hammer-heads
wanted to impress themselves for the next hour or so.

But then something happened - a half dozen others near the front
decided after another mile or so to go for the breakaway duo, who
by now had already turned the corner and were speeding down
Portola Rd - and these 6 or 7 guys *really* put on the hurt,
pushing *very* hard in that last 1/2 mile before you turn right
at Portola Rd.

So, this seemed to be the official beginning of "the race" - it looks
like the first 4 miles from the start area was just a little promenade
zone - we could have had a race motorcycle out in front, keeping us
under control until that decisive moment on Alpine Rd.

Now, it looks like there were 2 camps in the crowd - one camp (like
me) wanted a nice, 'easy' day - and the other camp said, "Race time!
- Let's go!" ... and since I happened to be up near the front of the
pack when this all erupted, I got swept up in the "race" camp - and
we were off! My heartrate quickly shot up to time-trial pace (about
160 bpm) - and then it went into the dreaded "red zone" - about
167 bpm, which I can do for short distances, but not for the next
hour straight!

As we approached the turn at Portola Rd, I saw Yukie Nakamura
of team Tibco blast off from the front - she was going to bridge up to
the breakaway group of 6 or 7 that had already decided to go after
the "dynamic duo" that were well down Portola Rd by that time.
Yukie is a fairly regular participant in the Noon Goon rides - she's a
very strong woman, who mostly does the Cat 1/2/3 women's races
and has been racing for a long time - just check out her racing
palmares:

http://www.usacycling.org/results/index.php?compid=179928&all=1

Yukie can easily beat me on a hill - she's light and strong - an
excellent strength-to-weight ratio - typical of those little mountain
goats - but she can bridge gaps, too - and she had just blasted off
to catch the group that was chasing the lead duo.

At this point, I had to make a decision - do I fade back and just
hang with the "Let's go easy today" camp - or do I join the race?

Well, before I had made up my mind, my legs made an instantaneous
decision - maybe I just wanted to play a little game and see if I
could bridge up to Yukie, who was well on her way to bridging up
to those 6 or 7 guys that were trying to reel in the initial breakaway.

And suddenly, here I was, sprinting like a madman to catch up to
Yukie, which I did - and then we worked together to latch onto the
main group of 6 or 7 - and then all of us worked real hard (including
me!) to reel in the original breakaway - we were *flying* down
Portola Rd - and when we got those 2 guys in sight, they were dead
ducks - we caught them just before you hit the Portola Rd / Sandhill
Rd split - and as we split off to the left to stay on Portola Rd, we
were all together - about 10 or 12 of us, since another couple of guys
had decided to bridge up to Yukie and I as we joined the 6 or 7 that
we were initially chasing on Portola Rd.

The pace relaxed a little bit as we continued on Portola Rd, past
the Mtn Home split and then over towards Hwy 84 (Woodside Rd) -
I decided to pull the pack up to Woodside Rd and upped the pace
quite a bit as we headed over towards Tripp Rd. Somewhere on
Woodside Rd, before we got to Tripp, a few other guys took over
duties and continued to push a strong pace, right onto Tripp, heading
towards Kings Mtn Rd.

At Kings Mtn, we turned right (as usual) and started to pick up the
pace again as we headed into "The Maze", which is just a few little
country roads (Manuella, Albion, and Olive Hill) that allow you to
wind your way over to Canada Rd without seeing too many cars or
people.

"The Maze" is always an interesting part of the Noon Goon ride, as
there is a traditional sprint up the Albion hill, to where it meets
Olive Hill Rd - this is the first of two traditional sprints on the
regular Noon Goon Monday ride - the other one being the end of
the ride, on Foothill, just before we get back to Page Mill Rd.

As usual, a big surge happened in "The Maze" and everyone sprinted
like wild dogs up Albion - I decided to conserve a little energy and not
contest the sprint - I just followed Yukie up the hill - there were
several guys that were much stronger sprinters on an uphill than
either of us!

The 12 of us (not sure of the exact count, but it was something
like that) were clearly far away from the rest of the pack, who
had obviously decided not to chase us down - or if they were, they
weren't succeeding! Actually, they might have been trying - but
we were pushing a pretty strong pace for most of our ride.

When we got down to Canada Rd and Woodside Rd (where the
infamous Roberts Market is located), we made a rolling 'stop' and
headed up to Whiskey Hill Rd, where the pace stayed fairly mellow -
everyone knew to conserve a little energy for the Sandhill climb -
it's just a 1/2 mile or so - and not very steep - but if you are climbing
it at 18 to 21 mph, it can feel pretty tough! And today was no
exception - the climb up Sandhill started out pretty mellow, but the
pace intensified quite a bit as we got closer to the top (typical in a
race - the surge over the top of a climb).

This is where I experienced something truly fun - I was climbing
okay, but had let a small gap open up as we pushed the speed up to
a 20 mph pace on the hill - I just can't climb quite that strong -
at least not for very long! But suddenly, a "hand of god" came
swooping down from out of the skies and I felt this sudden new
source of energy pushing me up the hill - it was a friendly Cat 1
guy (I'm guessing at his category - I just know he was a lot stronger
than me!) that was shoving me along to close down the gap! What
a rush! I said "Thanks!" and proceeded to quickly close down the
small gap, dragging the Cat 1 guy (and those behind him) with me...
what fun! And what a nice thing to do, too! I suppose he realized
that I was in a little over my head with this group - and he saw that
I had been doing my fair share of the work earlier - so he was just
making sure I stayed in contact with our breakaway group as we
crested Sandhill and started the fun plunge down towards Juniper
Serra.

As we descended down towards Juniper Serra, I had recovered
well enough to lead the group for the last 1/2 mile and into the right
turn onto Alpine Rd (but only for a 1/2 block, since you then turn
left onto Juniper Serra).

When we got onto Juniper Serra, the pace quickly picked up strong
again - and we motored along towards Foothill. At one point, we
had to stop for a red light, which we all did - and then went right
back into "race" mode as we headed for the final sprint, just before
you get to Page Mill Rd.

As we approached the last couple of hundred meters, everyone went
into "sprint" mode, but I decided to just ease up and coast on in -
it had been a fun day, and I was truly toast! No sprint for me today...

And, about 3 or 4 minutes later, the rest of the pack came sprinting
down Foothill - it was fun realizing that I had participated in a
true breakaway group that succeeded to the end of the ride - a rare
thing for the Noon Goon rides! What fun!

Here are some general stats for my ride today:

22.1 mph - Average speed (including our easy rollout and stops)
46.6 mph - Maximum speed (now *that* is pretty darn fast!)
147 bpm - Average heartrate (zone 4.4 for me)
20.24 mi - Distance
1328 ft - Total climbing
54:58 - Total time for the ride - a new record!

Normally, a Monday Noon Goon ride is about 1 hour long - and the
average speed is usually about 20 mph or so. This was a full 5
minutes faster - pretty fast for a Monday ride!

If you want to see just how hard this "race" was today, just check
out my recording of the ride:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/3918684

In retrospect, although my legs were asking for a 'recovery' ride,
I'm glad I decided to torture them and go for the 'race' instead -
it was good training, both physically - and mentally!