Tag Archives: climbing

One hot ride today! 65 very tough miles. 95 degrees.

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90, 95 degrees, who's counting?

What better way to prepare for the heat we’re likely to encounter in France than riding up Page Mill Road when it’s 90-95 degrees? Making it especially tough is having Page Mill as the first hill of the day. That’s one mean way to start a ride. Page Mill is one of those hills it’s really tough to get a rhythm on; that bottom section starting just past the golf course/country club turnoff is just plain ugly, and it’s not until you get past Foothill Park that you can really get a handle on it. And that handle is pretty darned slippery, especially between park gates 3 & 4, where it’s gut-wrenchingly steep and you’re thinking why didn’t you go up Old LaHonda instead, an easier grade with lots of shade?

Adding insult to injury is Strava claiming I got a personal best on the climb, at 47 minutes. Umm… no. It wasn’t that long ago I did it in 44, and my son probably could have closed in on that time today too, except that he was being relatively-civil and stayed with me all the way up. OK, it seemed like it wasn’t that long ago, but since I loaded the last three years worth of data from my Garmin into Strava, maybe it was longer ago than I thought!

A beautiful day on West Alpine

We wasted no time heading down West Alpine for another date with Haskins Grade, a climb that Kevin claims to hate but is getting much better at, getting his own personal best today at 9:52 despite not climbing it for time. At least not until the last half mile or so when he noticed his time was pretty good and rode the rest hard. Funny how that works.

I’d like to say it was a fun run out to Pescadero, but not really; the stiff headwind and heat made it pretty tough. The upside? It’s rare that a cold Coke tastes as good as it did today!

Heading north on Stage we once again faced a headwind, yet did pretty good times up the two hills, primarily because motivation was provided by rabbits (cyclists ahead of us). Speaking of rabbits, I should have mentioned we had earlier seen a rabbit the size of a small deer as we rode Arastradero between Alpine and Page Mill. It was seriously huge!

The lower and middle sections of Page Mill proved to be Kevin’s undoing; we’d normally climb Tunitas in 45 minutes or so, but he was barely able to turn the pedals for a while. He can out-climb me dramatically on the first couple big hills of the day, but eventually he wears out and I keep on going. He did a miraculous recovery when the steep stuff ended though, charging the rest of the way at a pretty respectable pace.

In the end a tough ride with the unexpectedly-high temps causing a pretty significant weight loss (6.5 pounds for me) due to not drinking enough, even though I tried. Maybe I did drink enough and I burned 6.5 pounds of fat? Don’t I wish!

We want YOU! Join the (free) Strava Chain Reaction Team!

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If you’ve got a Garmin bike computer, or a GPS-enabled phone (many Androids and iPhone 3GS, 4 & 4S models), you can easily keep track of your rides on-line, for free! And who knows when we might offer special discounts and events just for members of our Chain Reaction Team Strava. We just started, and we’re needing some help because I was gone for 10 days this month (and my son got lazy while I was gone and didn’t log any rides either).

If you haven’t joined Strava, try it out. Like I said, it’s free (you can pay $59/year for advanced stuff if you want, but the free version does pretty amazing stuff), and you can sign up here. Once you’re a member, follow this link and join our team! No obligation, nothing to buy. :-)      –Mike–

Big group on the Tuesday ride

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Big group at Old LaHonda & Skyline. Left to right, Kevin J, Mike (not me), Kevin S, Chris, Eric, George, Karen, Todd, Marcus, Mike (not me again) & Karl. Missing (turned off earlier) is Jim.

So now I go to bed the night before the Tuesday/Thursday ride wondering how badly I’m going to get beat up… by my son. I knew this was coming, but I didn’t realize how rapidly he would progress. It was only a couple months ago (literally) that Kevin finally broke 30 minutes up Kings and could actually ride with our group without holding us up. And now, he can squeeze off a 26-something time more reliably than I can.

But today I never got to find out how badly he might beat me. Maybe a quarter mile before the start of the climb, one of my two computers came off the handlebar, without me noticing, but Karl let me know he’d seen if fly off and hit the side of the road. OK… I briefly considered whether it was worth sacrificing the climb for a computer… maybe it would still be there when I got back… but it might be tough figuring out exactly where it had landed later, so I watched the others head on up the hill while I made a u-turn and retrieved the computer. Did anyone offer to stay behind and ride up with me? Er, no, but Chris was a late arrival and was coming up behind, trying to catch the group. Yeah, sure, I can just have Chris pace me back up the hill. Right. For about 100 meters or so, and then he vanished. Poof. Gone. Didn’t see him again until the top of the hill.

Eventually I did catch up to Kevin, Todd & Karl. Yes, Karl, who’s recovering nicely from his latest collarbone/clavicle issue. They had been soft-pedaling for a while, actually having conversations, while my lungs are searching for every available atom of oxygen (I was going to say “molecule of air” but is air a molecule? Apparently yes.) I was dying; probably 27:20 or so, a lot of time to be thinking about everybody else already well ahead of me, riding faster, finishing soon.

Very big group this morning. 12 at least, given that there are 11 in the photo plus me, and there might have been one guy who turned off before then (yes, there was one more, Jim I think). A bit foggy at the top, fairly cool, and just damp enough to give me the creeps descending (Kevin doesn’t seem to have such trouble, but then Kevin doesn’t have the years of experience descending that I have, some of those descents ending up on my side instead of my wheels).

For the final sprint it was all Chris. Kevin wasn’t anywhere in sight; obviously, it’s time I get him back to sprinting again (since maybe emphasizing sprinting will slow him down on the climbs).

Any wheel in a storm

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OK, it wasn’t really a storm, but the roads were wet enough from last-night’s rain that it was time to get the rain bike out of the garage, with its fenders, wider all-weather non-slip tires and cheaper wheels that I don’t mind so much about grinding into the ground from brake wear. It’s simply nowhere near as fun or efficient to ride as my Madone, but it’s a lot more fun riding in the muck than sitting at home thinking about riding in the muck.

Just a few of us out there this morning; myself, John, Karen and George. Unfortunately for me, all three are stronger than I am on Kings, causing me to lose contact just about three quarters of the way up the climb, but never more than half a corner behind. Still, despite having to fight my way up the hill on tires that are anything but responsive (if you don’t think tires can completely change the personality of your bike, think again!), I did get up in just under 30 minutes, definitely faster than I thought I’d be doing. Oh, right, I’ll blame my rain bike for one other thing- Flinstone bearings. It’s making an awful racket from both the crankset and the rear wheel, undoubtedly caused by bearings that are no longer round.

That’s the beauty of a true rain bike. You replace things when they’re destroyed, rather than worrying about something not working quite right. But- please, please, PLEASE don’t treat your nice bike like that!!! One ride in the rain, just one, can cause enough damage to require a couple of hours of cleaning and continued riding in the rain will require far more frequent replacement of tires, brake pads and even wheels. If you’ve got a nice road bike that you place value in having run properly with good shifting & brakes, get a second bike for rain.

Getting back to the ride, I did start feeling better as it went on, becoming increasingly confident I could hold onto whatever wheel was in front of me,  although I didn’t have a choice in wheels as we headed west towards Old LaHonda, since both John and Karen had to get early and cut the ride short. Thankfully George was in a merciful mood today!