Tag Archives: bicycle

First pre-France test of Bike Fridays

Personal stuff, Ride reports (not Tu/Th), Web Rides, , , , ,

It was meant to be a longer ride, but that wasn’t the fault of our Bike Fridays. The plan was initially Woodside, Old LaHonda, Pescadero, loop down to Gazos Creek and back to Pescadero, north on Stage and back via Tunitas. Due to the warm weather we decided to drop the Gazos Creek section, but more pruning was soon to come.

Since we were on our Bike Fridays and not our lighter-weight and more-responsive Trek carbon bikes, I knew we’d be climbing Old LaHonda a bit slower than Kevin’s recent and rapidly-improving times, but the presence of large numbers of rabbits (cyclists ahead of us) and the fear of being passed by dogs (cyclists behind) was propelling Kevin strongly; so strongly in fact that, at the half-way point, he was slightly ahead of his best time ever (23:24). But literally within 20 feet of the top he had one of his more-significant seizures, causing great concern among the many cyclists who traditionally assemble at the top of the climb. I let them know he’d be fine in just a couple of minutes, but it’s got to be an odd thing for someone not familiar with epilepsy to see a cyclist struggle to get off his bike and then stagger around a bit before collapsing to the ground. Me? Old stuff. I know he’ll be fine shortly, and just make sure he gets laid gently on the ground (although today I couldn’t get to him in time).

Kevin sitting in the window at the San Gregorio General Store, talking with Dario (friend & customer)
Riders approaching Highway 1 on Stage Road, just north of San Gregorio

Within a couple of minutes he was mostly fine, but had lost his desire to keep going. I knew this was temporary so we moved on, but by the time we got to La Honda I decided we’d alter the ride a bit more and drop the Pescadero loop in favor of a slightly-shorter Los Lobitos addition. Given a bit more time (and, ironically, a bit of climbing), Kevin would have been fine with the original plan, and in fact by San Gregorio he was feeling very good.

Heading north on Highway 1
Kevin on the easy part of Los Lobitos; looking across the ravine you can see the hard part.

We fueled up with a Coke and Clif Bar and then set out to tame Stage Road, Los Lobitos and Tunitas Creek. While it had been getting quite toasty on the bay side of the mountain (and in the picture showing riders climbing Stage Road, you can see it’s rather heat-hazy up on Skyline in the distance), it was a very comfortable mid-70s on the coast. Dario, a customer we came across at San Gregorio General Store, rode with us as far as Los Lobitos and then continued on to Half Moon Bay (where he’d be eating lunch before turning back and doing Higgins Purissima and then Tunitas). Los Lobitos is one of those roads that starts out deceptively-easy and fun, and then turns into a pretty nasty, steep climb that winds around and eventually connects with Tunitas a few miles in from the coast.

The "other side" of Los Lobitos, seen in the prior photo

By this time Kevin was back to his old self again, riding strongly on the steepest sections and taking advantage of his superior lungs. Hearing Dad’s lungs noisily trying to snag spare oxygen seems to make him climb even faster. That’s OK, I still have more power in my legs; I just have to use them wisely, knowing that a sustained effort is going to put me into oxygen debt that I won’t quickly recover from.

Los Lobitos was the one piece of road we saw no other cyclists on. Actually, we did come across one cyclists, riding in the opposite direction, but no rabbits, no dogs.

Kevin riding up Tunitas Creek, clearly working it hard

Tunitas Creek? Same as it ever was. Steep, creek still running (surprisingly strongly), and today, so many cyclists on it you’d think there was an organized ride going on. Kevin kept a strong pace the whole way up the hill, clearly enjoying the fact that his current level of fitness allows him to pass so many others on the climbs these days. We did adopt a mellower pace on the flatter section up on top.

If we’d known how hot it was going to get as we descended back into Woodside, we might have spent more time on the coast! By the time we got home we felt like we’d had a far tougher ride than the 46 miles indicated, but the ride’s main mission, proving that the Bike Fridays were ready to tackle France in less than two weeks, was accomplished. The time I spent Saturday getting it set up identically to my Madone paid off very well. Now if I could just fix Kevin’s epilepsy as easily as I can deal with bike problems. –Mike–

 

A ride just a bit more “eventful” than necessary

Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride, , , ,

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–