Category Archives: Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

Ride reports for everything *but* the Tuesday-Thursday morning ride

Wow. Where did the Chamrousse come from?

Ride reports (not Tu/Th), Tdf trip planning

Today we were supposed to see our first stage of the Tour de France, but our midnight arrival on the scene last night kind of killed that, and any ideas of just being silly anyway were squashed when I did the 8am appointment to pick up the rental car, and instead of the cute little Renault Kangoo, a car we’ve not-so-secretly lusted after since Kevin and I started coming here together for the ‘Tour, they brought out a full-size cargo van. Umm… no. Trying to find a parking space for a beast like that? No way no how. Tomorrow they’re supposed to present us with a medium-sized car instead.

So what do we do to get our feet wet? We, or I, decided why not do something different, why not ride an area we’ve not ridden before. There’s this hill, the Charmousse, last used, I think, in the 2014 TdF.

Another time, another version of me, the Chamrousse wouldn’t have been that big a deal. But the current version of me doesn’t tolerate heat very well if I haven’t spent a lot of time getting used to it, and the current version of me was in real trouble going up that hill, with temps right around 100F for a good part of the climb. My sweatband seemed to be working against me; I think it’s kind of like how a dam works really well, until it doesn’t. I just couldn’t get much power to the pedals. Kevin thought it was maybe the rack with stuff loaded down that was making a difference (he was riding au naturel), but that explains being slower; it doesn’t explain the low power numbers. Some of it may be due to the meds I take for my mild bone marrow cancer thing, maybe. And some, sure, my lungs don’t work like they used to, but this was epic-worse than anything I’d experience climbing Kings.

And heck, as long as I’m complaining, the Chamrousse is way too wide to be fun, which also means a lot less shade too. But the kilometers did (slowly) tick off, and we did eventually make it to the very top, where, as France would have it, there was a very nice little cafe run be a very nice middle-aged woman serving up cokes in glasses with plenty of ice.

Tomorrow hopefully goes better; it’s only the Galibier after all. Our first TdF intercept, with full camera gear.

Oof. Easy ride, hard ride, regular ride.

Ride reports (not Tu/Th), Tdf trip planning, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

Interesting last few days as Kevin and I get ready to head to France. Originally, we were going to do big ride on Sunday, followed by an exploratory ride Monday where we’d be looking for commute routes from Foster City to Redwood City (because Kevin’s moving to Fosher City). But the weather wasn’t cooperating Sunday; the coast was almost cold and definitely damp.

So Sunday we did a dual-purpose ride. Not just mapping out the convoluted route between Foster City and Redwood City (and yeah, it’s really kind of nuts!), but also a shakedown cruise of the Bike Fridays, making sure they were ready for France. Not much needed aside from having to replace the front wheel on mine, a victim of the insane thunderstorm we descended through in 2020 (literally wore away enough of the rim’s side that it was beginning to distort). These bikes are now 12 years old; who knew? Their first trip to France was in 2010! Hard to believe. They’ve held up pretty well despite a whole lot of folding & reassembly. Over those years they’ve saved is about $3000 in extra bike fees each, although United recently changed their policies and now allow bikes as a standard piece of luggage.

Monday. Time to do reverse-Pescadero with the West Alpine “kicker.” Neither of us really felt in shape for it, but with France coming up in a week, not much choice! Felt kinda sorta ok going up Old LaHonda, and kinda sorta ok heading out to the coast. With a mild tailwind the Stage Road section to Pescadero was a bit nicer than the normal direction, and I was finally beginning to feel a bit lively, able to put Kevin on the ropes on the first climb. Something I don’t get to do very often anymore! Standard lunch in Pescadero (splitting a sandwich, cookie for Kevin, pastry for me) before heading out over Haskins the hard way, and then a real tough grind up West Alpine. Kevin was not feeling it, not at all. Thankfully it was at least warm, which is something we need to get used to; it’s going to be VERY warm in France. Beautiful views up on Skyline!

We returned home pretty tired, wondering how we were going to survive the regular Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride, just 15 hours away. Especially when my Garmin said I was supposed to take it easy for… 87 hours!!!???

This morning we woke up to really gray skies, although pretty warm. Kind of like… France. Karen showed up, so it wasn’t going to be as easy as it would have been otherwise. Surprisingly, it didn’t go too badly. I was expecting 35 minutes, maybe worse, and it was “only” 31:30 or so. But really, really wet up top. Bike’s a mess! But we really felt better than we thought we would. One thing I did notice later- I was a lot hungrier than normal.

One more good ride to go, then we get onto a plane Sunday flying from San Francisco to Munich, which we hope is on time because there’s only 50 minutes between landing and the flight to Lyon. Then we take a train straight from the airport (Europe’s really good that way, having train stations built into airports) to Grenoble, where a 300ft walk puts us right at our favorite apartment. More to come!