Monthly Archives: July 2012

Little bikes ready for a big trip!

Ride reports (not Tu/Th), Tdf trip planning
If you can climb Tunitas comfortably on your bike, you can climb just about anything.

Just over two years ago we had our “proof of concept” ride, a trip out to the coast to make sure it was going to be possible to use folding Bike Fridays to tame the mountains of France. Today it was time for a shake-down cruise, our Bike Friday’s no longer needing to prove their capabilities, just needing to make sure everything was in good order for our date with the Pyrenees later this week.

Today’s ride was exactly the same route I took on Wednesday, deliberately chosen so I could tell how much difference there really is between a semi-loaded Bike Friday and my pretty-darned-awesome carbon Trek Madone. About 10%. As in, each of the climbs took pretty close to 10% longer to climb on the Bike Fridays as on the Madones. We can live with that.

This trip it’s going to be tough keeping Kevin under control; today, on Tunitas, he ditched me fast when it was time to try and catch some guys who’d just passed him. And yes, it totally went to his head when they told him that he was pretty Bad-A cranking so quickly on a bike with small wheels. Me? I got passed by a few guys too, but something interesting that I discovered is that my top speed has been somewhat self-limited on some of my rides; if I push down harder on the pedals, I go faster. Sounds obvious, but on the morning rides, I’m so limited by breathing issues that I never really get the chance to stomp on the pedals and kinda forgot that I could. A long way of saying that, when an extremely-fit woman from Orinda caught up to me just as it starts to get less steep, I was able to hang with her the rest of the way. No record times, about 50 minutes or so, but I felt pretty good about the day. I’m ready for the Pyrenees!

3rd day went well!

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Not too many times I get to ride three days in a row, and today was day 3! Oh sure, it would have been nicer if it hadn’t been wet and a bit cold (45 degrees) up on Skyline this morning, but y’know, it’s not so bad when you’re riding with a good group of guys (no problem with women but we haven’t seen Karen for a week or two). Of course Kevin (the pilot) claimed he was going to be slug-slow and of course I didn’t believe him, but at least this time, even heading up through the park, I stayed with him.

About that wet & drizzle & cold up on Skyline… that used to be the norm for the summer. If anyone would know that, it would be me, having ridden this loop untold thousands of times over the past 35+ years. In the summer you’d look up to the hills in the morning and see the fog at the top; sometimes it would burn off before you got there, sometimes not, but when you looked out the window at 7am, it was always there. Not sure when things changed; could have been 20+ years ago, but the fog went away until just a couple years ago.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s me that’s in a fog. For a few years things cleared up; perhaps I had a period of clarity between being young & mixed up and being older and living with memories out of step with what my lungs and legs are capable of.

Maybe things will clear up in France. Just 6 days to go before my son and I join the ‘Tour. Wonder how this latest scandal, the “Gang of 5” who have supposedly testified against Lance and admitted to their own doping, will play out. The fog of the Tour de France. Doesn’t matter. For three weeks out of the year, each and every year, France becomes the center of the universe for cycling. We may have ideas of cheering on for our own favorites, obviously athletes sponsored by Trek, but that’s really a pretty small part of the story. There’s something about riding up the same climbs the pros will be racing up, something about thousands of other cyclists tracing the same path, something about the tens and hundreds of thousands of fans along the way, with nothing better to do than cheer us on as we head up the hill… as they say, it’s all good!