Tag Archives: bike friday

Live from France (Ski station at top of Gavernie)

20120714-170429.jpg

From some place high above Gavernie. Would be scenic if not for the clouds.

(And would be more wordy if I hadn’t uploaded that from my iPhone while on the ride, and I wasn’t carrying my regular glasses so to say I’m blind when it comes to using the tiny screen and keyboard is an understatement!)

Today was our first day out on the Bike Fridays in France; a supposed-to-be-easy ride that turned into 72 miles and quite a bit of climbing. See, I’d read about this national park at the end of a road that was supposed to have awe-inspiring views of waterfalls and glaciers and all sorts of stuff we might have been able to see where it not for the clouds that had moved in on us. But it was a good ride, we both rode pretty strongly (and for once, I think I was the better climber overall, or at least towards the end) and Strava says we did really well despite riding pretty heavy bikes and, in my case, loaded down with all sorts of gear.

Tomorrow is our first day to intercept the ‘Tour, in the mountains above Foix. Film at 11. But for now you can see the Strava details and another French encounter with sheep.

Little bikes ready for a big trip!

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!