Monthly Archives: June 2011

Kevin does Kings under 30 minutes, Big group, NO RAIN!!!

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I’m ready to declare the end of rain. From now through November, it’s clear skies and warmer temps. Windbreakers are to be left at home, the rain bike can be safely stashed under the house, and you no longer have a good excuse for continuing to carry around your “hibernation fuel” around your belly. Good times are ahead!


And a very good time it was this morning, perhaps one of the last times that I have to head up the hill a bit ahead of the group when riding with Kevin (my son Kevin, not the pilot). Kevin’s wanted to break the 30 minute barrier up Kings Mtn for some time; Tuesday he missed it by 15 seconds, and today, for the first part of the climb, I thought he’d be lucky to get 32. We hit the traditional half-way timing point at just over 16 minutes, not a good sign. In fact, the three timing points I use to gauge my progress on the first half of the climb were all looking pretty bleak, with each successive one being further off the mark than the one before. My theory is that Kevin had eaten way too much way too soon before the ride (a very large bowl of cereal) and was seriously bogged down.

But then something clicked. Kevin claims he started doing his new chant-

Never stopping,
Never sleeping,
Never eating,
Always riding.

It worked. On that nasty steep section in the middle, before the open part, Kevin kicked it up a notch. Or two. We hit the “open” timing point (road marker that says 1.41 on it, the distance in miles to the top) at 20:30, still below the 20 minutes “required” for a 30 minute time at that point, but still accelerating. Normally, if you’re going full-tilt, it’s 4 minutes from the last hairpin (at the archery range road) to the top, and you really do have to be pushing to pull that off. We were, if I recall correctly, just outside of that. But by the time we got to the penultimate timing point we had pulled even with a fast pace, at 28 minutes. Just two minutes left, and as long as he didn’t die, he had a chance. Let me tell you I had a very tough time staying on his wheel on that final stretch, and he finished in 29:42. 18 seconds to spare.

But the ride wasn’t all about Kevin. This was our largest group to date; not even sure how many, probably a dozen or so, and a good opportunity to edit an all-around video of the entire ride, which you can see below. You’ll notice it has the same soundtrack as the video of Kevin’s climb, and actually starts out showing Kevin finishing Kings (and then the rest of the group coming up behind; we had a 5 minute head start on them).

Sorry about the blotchy screen in the lower-right corner for the last couple of minutes; a bit of crud kicked up from a rider in front and stuck to the lens. Obviously, the answer is to ride in front of everybody, but that fails on two counts. First, I’d have to be faster than everyone else, and second, a video without bikes in it is hardly worth calling a video, is it?

Breakfast with the Tuesday-morning ride

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Eric, Karl, Kevin, Kevin & George (who turned 56 today!) at Alice's Restaurant. Low calorie fare, of course! Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks would have added "Damn fine coffee too!"

Finally, a long-range (and short-range!) forecast with no rain!!! A bit of mist up on Skyline, but that’s not so bad. This morning Kevin (my son, not the pilot) and I headed up a few minutes early, along with Millo. This was Kevin’s first real post-high-school ride so we made it a mini-event with breakfast at Alice’s Restaurant, but we’ll get to that a bit later. First things first, it was time to get that 30-minute-King’s Mountain-monkey off Kevin’s back. Or so we thought. I hit my timer at the right place, but Kevin forgot to hit his. No problem, right? Except that my Garmin ’705 computer has been having a habit of dying at random intervals lately, and on the way up the hill, it died after about 8 minutes or so! This meant that the only way we’d be able to time the ride would be after the fact, by looking at either his Garmin’s output (and figure out where the starting & stopping points were) or the video I was shooting.

Kevin started out pretty slowly up the hill, slow enough that I had my doubts we’d come anything close to 30 minutes. But, as before, he started speeding up as soon as it got steeper, and by the half-way point, I’m thinking maybe he’s got a chance. We jettisoned Millo at the park entrance (not because he couldn’t keep up, no issue there, but he had to get back early) and continued on, wondering if we were going to get caught, wondering how we were doing. Flying blind, as it were. We get to the top, not knowing how it went, but a bit hopeful because nobody caught us on the way up and we actually had to wait several minutes for the rest to show up (the rest being Marcus, Darryl, Kevin, Karl, Eric & George). Later we were to find out he’d finished at 30:15, respectable, but not yet there.

From there it was the usual quick run to Sky Londa, with Kevin fitting right into the group on the descent, riding in perfect formation while I hung back a bit because A) I was trying to film it and B) I don’t feel as comfortable as Kevin does riding so closely to others at high speeds. Guess Kevin’s training at the track has paid off. We then stopped off at Alice’s and ordered breakfast, letting them know we’d be back in about 20 minutes. The waitress had some concern that our food might be ready before we would be back, but it seemed to work out perfectly, as we arrived back to a table set with 5 of the 6 plates with the final one arriving almost instantly. This is the life! I had the “Agusta” which, while more than I should have eaten, ended up being my only food between 9am and 9pm (two eggs, two sausages & two pancakes, plus a cup of really good coffee).

I’m thinking Kevin won’t need a head start by the middle of summer, maybe even sooner. And I’m thinking we should do the breakfast ride thing more often than once every three years or so!

Hope nobody believed the weatherman and didn’t ride today!

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On our way to the Sequoia Century. Looked like, and was, a very nice day!

I went to bed last night not knowing what I’d be waking up to; the weather report said it was going to rain during the night, let up for a while, and then showers throughout the day. Not the weather report you want to hear for the day of the Sequoia Century, one of my favorite rides, and an essential part of getting Kevin in shape for France. I had a “Plan B” in place, getting my rain bike ready and opting for the 100k instead of 100 miles if I woke up to rain. Even that wouldn’t be much fun; two hours of rain is about as much as I can take and still consider it “fun”; anything past that is pretty miserable.

Coyotes along Skyline

But when the alarm went off at 6:30am (yuck!), I looked out the window and saw dry roads and broken skies. I got Kevin up about 15 minutes later, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and by 7:20am we were out the door and riding towards the start, at the Palo Alto VA hospital, a half hour away. Back in the day we would have driven, but why? For the Sequoia Century, it makes more sense to start from home and end at home, since it comes within 3 or 4 miles on the return. When we got to the start things were pretty quiet for a sold-out ride; I suspect quite a few people assumed the worst and didn’t even set their alarm clocks. They missed a great day to ride!

Kevin at the Boulder Creek rest stop

Oh sure, it wasn’t great by historical standards, but in my revisionist weather world, any day that it’s not actually raining is a good, even great day to ride. We’ve suffered through so much these past five months, so much rain to be specific, and sure it’s great to not have to worry about a water shortage, but from a purely selfish standpoint, droughts are great for the bicycle business and it’s not such a bad thing to get people into water conservation because California’s future is going to have even more people, and thus more demand on resources, than we have today.


Saw quite a few of our customers on the ride, including Sam (and fan of Amy in our Los Altos store), and everyone was having a good time… with the exception of the guy we came across on the Bear Creek Road descent who’d had a run-in with a car and had likely broken his hip or pelvis, an injury that takes quite a while to heal. Bear Creek (which runs between Boulder Creek and Skyline) is infamous for careless and callous drivers, and today was unfortunately no exception. But the high points included seeing three coyotes (a pair up on Skyline and another walking across the road on the Alpine descent) and watching Kevin kick into high gear twice, first on the upper stretches of Highway 9 climbing up from Boulder Creek, and then again on the upper parts of Tunitas Creek. This was notable because he was pretty spent before finding his legs again, and it’s now becoming clear to him that his performance climbing is a function not just of his legs but his mind as well. And, of course, thanks go to the Western Wheelers Bicycle Club for an exceptionally well-run event!

Chain Reaction's traditional "Secret Soda Stop" at the top of Tunitas Creek, manned by Sal (his 5th or 6th year at this!) and Patrick, who provided mechanical services.

It wasn’t our fastest century; 14.5mph average speed, compared to 15.7 on last-Sunday’s Santa Cruz loop, but at 102 miles & 9264ft of climbing, it was quite a bit tougher (and yes, I’ll admit that our 15.7mph average the prior week was aided a bit by some strong tail winds on the coast). But we did make it back within 30 seconds of our planned time of 3:45pm, allowing us to take showers and get dressed before Kevin’s 4pm graduation open house. –Mike–

A ride just a bit more “eventful” than necessary

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Kevin (my son, not the pilot) is now out of school so today was his first “summer” Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride. OK, it’s not actually summer, and OK, it’s not actually even feeling like normal spring weather either, with overcast skies and cooler temps. But it’s dry, and lately, that counts for something. We headed out a few minutes early, to give Kevin a head start up the hill, so the faster guys (and girl) would have a rabbit to catch. And for a while, we were doing a pretty good rabbit imitation, with Kevin starting out slowly but working up to a pretty good speed by the time we got to the park entrance.

In fact, once past the park, it was looking like this was finally going to be the ride that Kevin could get the 30 minute monkey off his back (his previous best being about 30 minutes, 40 seconds). Things were looking really good until just past the half-way hairpin. I hear Kevin call out “Seizure!” and look back to see him quickly coming to a stop. At this point you’ve got about 8 seconds before he becomes… I don’t want to say useless, but unable to do anything. There’s a drill for this- I tell him to get off the bike and lie on the ground. Which he quickly did, before losing consciousness for about a minute and a half, attracting attention from a car heading up the hill and a cyclist coming down, both of whom I had to explain that this is not something to worry about, it’s a “normal” thing in our abnormal world. Within 4 minutes of his seizure we were back on our way up the hill, and heading up fast enough that only two of the faster guys (Marcus & John) were able to pass us, if I’m recalling correctly, and we were able to hold off at least one person we saw behind (Eric) as Kevin quickly came back up to speed.

It’s comforting to know that his seizures don’t have to cut the ride short or even have a negative effect on his performance, but it would be even-more-comforting to not have them at all.

Kevin holding onto the "train" for dear life on West-Side Old LaHonda

Kevin holding onto the "train" for dear life on West-Side Old LaHonda

At the regroup at the top we had, let’s see, Marcus, John, Eric, Karen, Darryl (whom we haven’t seen in a very long time!), Karl… seems like there were more? We had a reasonable pace until things started breaking up a bit on West-side Old LaHonda (often the case), where I told Kevin to stay on Karl’s wheel, which he dutifully did until the steeper part just before the forest. That’s when the wheels came off, but not completely, as I paced him through the forest and back up to Skyline, not that far behind the fast guys at the front. But the fun was yet to come.

Heading down 84 into Woodside, Kevin and I held back a bit from the fast pace at the front; I’m not sure if Kevin’s getting a bit more cautious about descending after his non-seizure-related crash that tore up his knee back in September, or because he’s concerned about the possibility of an ill-timed seizure, but I’m not going to push him to go faster downhill (I’m sure once we get to France he’ll once again get competitive with the locals and be flying down faster than I’d like!). But today it turned out to be a good thing to be a bit behind, as coming around one corner we saw two of our riders (John & Karen) on the ground and a car across the road. Actually, Karen was already up by the time we got there, and John wasn’t that bad off as I helped him to his feet (just a bloody knee).

The car had been coming up the road and turned into a driveway on the opposite side, right at one of the corners, giving us no warning whatsoever. She (the driver) should feel fortunate we were bikes and not a car; anytime she’s making that turn she’s playing a percentage game, making an assumption that it won’t be at the exact time that someone’s coming down the hill. At least this time is was primarily damage to John’s bike and not much to his body (or Karen’s) despite having slid on the pavement in an attempt to avoid hitting the car.

I’m now left to wonder if paranoid people should be riding routinely with video cameras, recording what’s going on around them. Rather 1984-ish to say the least!  –Mike–

 

Yes, I rode yesterday

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Hate it when I miss a day’s Almost-Daily Diary Entry. Things just got a bit out of hand yesterday; too many things to get done in far too little time. We were engaged in further remodeling of our Redwood City location (not much you’ll really notice, just different types of racks to display bikes a bit better and open things up more). But I’ll try to recount the ride as best I can recall.

Roll call. Well darned if I can remember completely; I’ll take a look at some of the video I shot and try to figure it out. Karl and George were there at the start, and we later picked up Marcus just before the climb (hate that; why can’t he join us at the top and spare us the agony of his speed up the hill?). Millo was there at the top. Oh, right, Chris showed up for the first time, rocketing up from behind.

This is what a nasty tar stripe looks like. Nothing nasty, but I slid out pretty badly on this one!

Wet. Yes, it was wet. Drizzly, almost rain, with tar stripes feeling like they’d been painted over with grease on the descents. For those who like their hills green, this is great weather. But y’know, I’m ready for seasonal brown. It’s time. But the weather for Sunday’s Sequoia Century is not looking very good right now!