All posts by Mike

Cars behaving badly, fog on Skyline, not enough sleep. What’s not to like?

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride
Starting out over Jefferson this morning, it was apparent, no matter how our ride went, somebody was having a worse day than us.

So what’s going on with the roads these days? It’s like everywhere we go, something is under construction. We didn’t get more than a mile away from home before coming to the scene above, where a car had recently taken out a utility pole. Kind of surprised they let us through, but also glad since any detour would have added quite a bit of time, and we arrive at the start of the Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride with typically 90 seconds to spare.

Next roadwork came on Kings Mtn, just after turning onto it from Albion. One lane with a signal while they repair the other lane. This has been going on for a few weeks; tough to say how much longer.

Pretty picture but kinda done with pretty pictures and prefer no leg warmers and drier roads.

Then comes the main obstacle, Kings Mtn itself. Despite a lack of sleep, despite Kevin claiming he wasn’t feeling fast, Kevin (kid, not the pilot, who’s been AWOL recently) set a pretty gnarly pace up the first half of the climb, with me coming off the back just past the park entrance. I held up pretty well to the half-way point and died thereafter, which is unfortunate. A steadier pace and I would have had the best time this year and possibly in the 28-something region. Still, right now, low-29s are passable. Better than I was doing this time last year.

Skyline. This is July, right? But it’s cool and foggy up top. Again. 45 degrees (better than 41, which you’d see on a “nice” foggy winter day) and pretty rays cast by the sun through the trees. I’m kinda done with pretty rays. Let’s get back to dry roads and no leg warmers.

And still another one-lane signal-controlled construction, on Skyline just prior to Sky L’onda. The one they’ve been working on for a year maybe? At least today, when Kevin hit the signal button, it immediately turned green.

Finally the last impediment, the closed section of West Old LaHonda where the pavement fell away. Oh. Wait. That’s not the last piece of closed or damaged road. They’re going to be spending a lot of time putting in a new pipe on Olive Hill/Albion, so after 8am you have to ride through Woodside to get to Canada. No more “maze” on the return.

Oh. Darn. I forgot about the Jefferson thing, where we could get through earlier but was now fully closed off, requiring that we head up the steep part of California. Definitely not in my legs, but didn’t seem an issue for Kevin. Hate that.

Maybe it’s training for when Kevin and I are in France in a couple of weeks, facing road closures for the ‘Tour.

The coast is *not* clear; ride re-routed w/better-than-expected results!

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

The coast was not clear today, causing an en-route re-route since we didn’t bring cooler-weather gear.
Things didn’t go quite as planned today; they went better. It was Sunday, so naturally we’d do the normal Pescadero/Tunitas ride, but, as we rode over the top, it was clear it wasn’t clear. Still a bit of fog along the coast, and we were running light, not even thinking about bringing leg warmers. I mean, it’s summer, right? And after that awful Spring we lived through, who wants to wear leg warmers again? I mean like ever?

The first part of the re-route was easy. Climb West Alpine. Kevin’s favorite ride. From there? Kevin thought we should head north on Skyline and descend Kings. Not hard enough, ugly enough or long enough for me. I figured, if we were going to abandon the planned ride, we had to replace it with something we normally wouldn’t do, something different, something… ugly. Which meant heading the “wrong” direction on Skyline. South to 9, down to Redwood Gulch, and into Los Altos for a late refueling stop.

The climb up West Alpine went unexpectedly well. Really well. Even though I had to double-back and wait 20 seconds when Kevin got held up by car traffic on the flat lead-in, my 43:07 time from Pescadero Road to Skyline was my best in just over 4 years. It’s now pretty much evident I’ve turned back the clock two years, posting climbing times as fast as I was prior to my diagnosis of ET and having to take the bone marrow suppression drugs that drop my hematocrit. The difference I notice lately is that I have little trouble, when the pitch gets steeper, kicking up to 350 watts for a minute or so. I can even see 400 now and then without the expected consequence of feeling like death afterward. I first noticed this a couple weeks ago when I was able to hammer the Hammer of Thor segment on Tunitas.

Some of this newfound speed on the climbs may come from the weight I lost when I broke my pelvis. At first I had some concern it wasn’t a healthy weight drop, but I’ve clearly managed to stabilize about 8 pounds lighter than I was before, and dragging 8 pounds less weight uphill makes a big difference.

Descending 9 is interesting but not all that much fun; descending Redwood Gulch even less so! But soon enough we were at the Peets near our former Los Altos location, enjoying coffee and a breakfast cheese & bacon thing for me, a chicken something-or-other for Kevin. Funny thinking, at that point, that the worst of the ride is yet to come, because it’s mostly flat. Fortunately the headwind was pretty light, so not so bad getting home.