All posts by Mike

Rode Tuesday in the rain, this morning in the muck. Oh, and cheated with an e-bike today. This is normal?

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Tuesday morning… it wouldn’t have been that tough to skip the ride. Rain. Not much, but rain nonetheless. Did I really want my first ride back up to Skyline to be in the rain? But it’s not like there’s a choice these days, rain being such a common thing lately. Kevin was surprisingly up for it though. First time up the hill so I was thinking what, 48 minutes? Could I even make it the whole way? Of course I did, and it was just under 42 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised. Kevin wanted to do the run across Skyline, but I wasn’t all that keen of descending 84 in the wet, with cars behind us wanting us to go faster. The last thing I want to do is crash and re-injure my pelvis, so we simply headed back down the way we came. Not much of a ride, but if you consider the percentage of climbing per mile, pretty good.

This morning, it finally looked like we could get in a dry ride. I woke up a bit earlier than normal (my wife decided to have some weird dream where she suddenly started yelling at someone at 6:33am), looked out the window and… no rain! Which meant I’d try riding the Trek Domane + e-bike that I’ve been wanting to demo on the regular ride for a while.

I could get used to an e-bike. I could probably get fat too! Kevin, Kevin & JR showed up for the ride, and yes, even in a very low power mode (Eco/Sport/Tour/Turbo and I rode up the hill in Sport) you could fly. By fly I mean a 12mph pace even though I’m out of shape. 12mph would easy, super easy. Can’t imagine how fast I could go if went up in “Turbo” mode. Actually, I can. Strava keeps separate KOM records for e-bikes, and some guy blitzed up Kings, via the park, in just under 10 minutes. Average speed over 17mph. I’m thinking… do I go for it? Do I pull out all the stop and see what this Domane e-bike can do?

From a more practical standpoint, the ride was 24 miles, 2,8154ft of climbing, and I had 47% of battery power remaining at the end. I’m pretty sure I could do a coast run via Old LaHonda, 84 to the coast, and return via Tunitas. For most of the ride Eco mode is more than adequate, giving you roughly 3mph more speed than normal. Only when you hit a climb over 3% or so do you need to kick it up to Sport.

Wished I hadn’t discovered Strava has a separate category for E-bikes!

First post-cracked-pelvis bike ride!!!

Personal stuff, Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

It will be 6 weeks this Tuesday morning since Kevin and I crashed on black ice, putting my cycling on ice and doing a real number on my sanity. The ortho doc said 6 weeks off the bike, period. A couple weeks ago I asked for updated x-rays to see if that could be shortened a bit, but no, he said things looked just as expected, everything right on plan. Just not MY plan.

I gave an update to the doc a few days ago, pointing out my capabilities (can get around without crutches, climbing stairs normally, etc), reminded him of what a nice day it was going to be Sunday, and asked if I could have my sentence reduced by 3 days. HE SAID YES!!!

Not wanting to risk a setback, I planned a flattish route where I could draft Kevin as much as possible, keeping the watts relatively low. The minimum ride would be “the loop” and, if I was up to it, extending the southern end to Los Altos. I told Kevin he needed to keep the watts down a bit, because I didn’t know what would happen if I tried to push things. Not just from the standpoint of recovering from the injury, but also because it’s a virtual certainly I’d be in terrible shape. The Garmin was confirming my lack of shape, giving me an initial fitness score of -4 I think? No wonder; in the past six weeks my weight drifted up slightly to 173 and since then dropped to 161.5. Especially the past two weeks I haven’t felt like eating much and have been pretty anxious.

That weight thing. On the one hand, it’s been a long-time dream to get my weight down to where it presently is. The problem? This isn’t a “real” weight loss. Most likely muscle that’s missing, and I need that! We’ll see how it plays out over the next few weeks.

A very rare selfie, with a Kevin photo-bomb
Getting back to the ride, Strava clearly shows how much out-of-shape I was, assigning sky-high “effort” numbers despite pretty low wattage. Which means my heart rate was much higher than it normally would be. In fact, my heart rate was tracking effort in an overly-reactive manner. Nevertheless I felt like I could develop a bit of power when needed. Peaked at 675 watts. Average was pretty low (148 watts) but truthfully, that’s still higher than expected. Had coffee and food at the Peet’s near our former Los Altos location (which still hasn’t been rented, by the way) before heading back.

It’s good to be back.