Took a few times to get the quality reasonable; the default upload quality was horrible, so I rendered it as a high-quality AVI file, about 1.2 gigs, and uploaded that. Now it’s watchable! You can even select 1080 HQ resolution.
2 hours 47 minutes edited down to 10 minutes that gives you an idea of what this ride is like (“this ride” being Woodside, Old LaHonda, San Gregorio, Tunitas Creek, Kings Mtn, Woodside). –Mike–
Bracket the usual Tuesday & Thursday rides with today’s spin to the coast, care of the July 4th holiday, and you get my first back-to-back-to-back riding days for quite a while. And just in time, since my son and I leave for France a week from tomorrow, where we’ll likely have 5, maybe even 6 good days of riding in a row.
The Sheriff’s dept was out in force today, cracking down on cyclists in Woodside. They were catching quite a few, probably for not stopping at stop signs.
Just me today; Kevin went off paintballing with his friends. The way he’s been riding lately, I need the extra miles a lot more than he does. Besides, it’s not so bad for me to ride solo once in a while, see how well I can motivate myself and climb at my own pace, whatever that pace is.
Back in the day, I could have used a ride like this as an easy-going joy ride, without trying to redline it on the climbs or push so strongly into the wind. That was before Strava. Now, with every aspect of every ride recorded and scored for all to see, the temptation is always present to give it what you’ve got. Today was no exception.
Two women asking for directions at the western base of Old LaHonda. Women may have outnumbered men on the road today.
I chose what’s commonly referred to as the “Coastal Classic”- Woodside, Pescadero, San Gregorio, Tunitas. Also known as “the usual.” A good barometer of your present shape, with some good climbs and just enough distance to test your endurance a bit. I think I passed the test. My Old LaHonda time was 22-something; sure, I wish it was fster, but that’s where I am right now, particularly on the first climb of the day. I felt slow on Haskins but my time fortunately said otherwise, and I got a recent personal best on one of the Stage Road climbs, as well as Stage Road from end-to-end. Tunitas? About 4 minutes off my best time, but I’m OK with that.
Am I ready for France? Bike-wise, sure. But tons to do at the shop before I go, making sure things can run smoothly for 11 days. And it’s just a week away.
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!
Riding up Tunitas Creek in the rain
I can’t really blame anyone for not showing up for the annual TurkeyDay Trot this morning; the weather forecast had been for rain, starting at about 8am, and ending about noon. And our ride started this morning at 8am, and finished… just before noon! This was one of those rare times the weatherman really got it nailed; I woke up around 6:15am when my wife got up to do something with the turkey (what, I’m not sure) and it was completely dry out and not even that threatening-looking! But I went back to sleep knowing this, too, shall pass.
So yes, we got pretty wet, and it was reasonably cold, but hardly epic. In fact, it was disappointing it didn’t rain harder, because we were dressed for whatever came our way. I even had a rack on my rain bike with a rack-top bag filled with extra jackets and gloves, just in case.
The original plan had been to do the Pescadero/Tunitas loop, but this was one of those days where the motivation wasn’t there, and I was easily able to rationalize the need to get back at a reasonable hour to get the “Black Friday” sale email finished. And Kevin (yes, my son at least rode with me!) was pushing to cut it back even shorter!
As it was Kevin bonked, and running out of fuel on a day when even the San Gregorio General Store is closed (a very rare event; where did people go for Bloody Mary’s to take the edge off their hangovers?) caused problems because… he had forgotten to put the Honey Stinger energy bars back into his seat bag. But we did have enough Cytomax to get him up over Tunitas and home. Of course he first tried to ditch me at the bottom, but I got even further up the hill.
Stage Road between San Gregorio and Highway 1
It didn’t seem like that tough a ride. Head up Page Mill, down the other side to Pescadero, Stage Road to Tunitas Creek and back. Nothing convoluted. But what we didn’t count on was much-warmer temperatures (high-80s, not hot by any means) and forgetting that Page Mill towards the beginning of a ride is just plain rude.
Kevin continues to ride strongly, but our idea of caffeine holding off his seizures didn’t work out as he had two on this ride, one about 2/3rds of the way up Page Mill, and another one much later, about 2/3rds of the way up Tunitas. The first one left him a bit groggy but on Tunitas, he couldn’t wait to get back up on the bike and continue the climb; his total down time was almost exactly a minute, and having recently passed a number of other cyclists on the way up, he wanted to make sure they didn’t have a chance to catch back up.
Oh, guess I should point out that a bit earlier, he had dropped me on the climb and it looked like he was gone for good, but I gradually began to claw my way back up to him, doing the best Levi Leipheimer imitation I could muster.
The high point of the ride? Seeing so many of our customers out there on bikes we’ve sold them, some of them recently, some of them 20 years old.
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–
Any doubts about Kevin getting back in shape in time for France were erased today
Question was, would today be that “day off” that he couldn’t afford? My concern was that last night was Senior Prom (an event I didn’t attend back in the day because it conflicted with a bike race) and Kevin didn’t get in until 1:30am. Would I be able to roll him out of bed and onto a bike before the sun went down? Turned out not to be much trouble; Kevin woke up around 9:30 if I recall correctly, and not being terribly energetic for a while, it wasn’t until noon that we finally got out… but that’s plenty of time for what some refer to as the “coastal classic”- up Old LaHonda and down the other side, over Haskins Grade to Pescadero, north on Stage to Tunitas and back up to Skyline and down Kings to Woodside.
Lots of people on the east side of the hills today, but darned few on the coast. In fact, there was only one other cyclist at the Pescadero Bakery, a nice guy from Bonny Doon who hitched a ride into town on our wheels (which I don’t mind; if you see Kevin and I out on the road, and I’m plowing into a head wind, go ahead and grab a wheel). My guess is that most were at the Grizzly Peak Century, which is what Kevin and I would have been riding if not for Senior Prom (I did offer, when I picked him up, that we could go home, get dressed for the ride, grab our bikes and just head over… who needs sleep?).
Anyone not riding missed the best day of the year so far. Temps ran from mid-60s to low-80s, with the only downside being a persistant headwind regardless of what direction you were riding. What was a bit sad was not having many “rabbits” (cyclists ahead of you) to catch. Even on Old LaHonda, where you normally encounter a steady stream of rabbits (those you’re chasing) and dogs (those chasing you).
We didn’t charge any of the climbs flat out, but did put the hammer down once we got to the upper reaches of Tunitas, where it flattens out. That’s a real good test for how Kevin’s doing, because as he tires, he’ll often have trouble holding onto a wheel (a wheel which you need all that much more when you’re tired!), but today I was able to gradually crank up the speed and he held on. In France, that will become even-more important, as we’ll need to catch “trains” of riders speeding by if we want to get around quickly and efficiently.
Most of the “infrastructure” for the 2011 trip to the Tour de France has been handled; plane tickets, train tickets, car rental, hotels, and some route planning. What’s needed is a feeling that Kevin and I are ready for a far-more-ambitious schedule of riding than we’ve done on any of the three prior trips to the ‘Tour with Kevin; in particular, there’s a 100 mile day, a huge loop without any possibility of shortcuts, featuring the Col du Glandon and the massive Galibier. 74 days is just not that far off, and Kevin got off to a pretty bad start this year with his kidney issues, so it was a very good thing we got this ride in!
Faithful readers will recall that, in last Tuesday’s entry, when our morning ride was enjoying yet another incredible day to ride and regretting that they had to get to work, I mentioned my job involves getting others to enjoy the same sort of thing we were. And today, at the top of Old LaHonda, I came across someone we had sold a new bike to just a couple days ago, on his very first ride up to Skyline. How cool is that?
Obviously lots of people out riding today, most of them a bit earlier than I got out, trying to get back before the Superbowl. I would have been in that earlier crowd, except that Kevin (my son, not the pilot) got out of bed limping pretty badly and had to make a trip to Kaiser (something he’s rather used to by now). Turns out he’d messed up a tendon at LaCrosse practice on Friday, so no riding or LaCrosse for a week. So instead of getting out at 9:30, it was shortly after 12 that I got going, something you wouldn’t do in the summer because you’d be facing the climbs in the heat of the day. Well guess what? February 6, 2011, which is technically the middle of winter, and it was in the mid-70s and I’m even feeling like I got too much sun.
My original plan, or the slightly-modified version without Kevin, was to do a speed run, no stopping for rest anywhere, just get out, do the Old LaHonda/Pescadero/Tunitas loop and return. It didn’t quite work out that way though, as my legs and mind just didn’t initially seem wired for speed. I took a bit of time at the top of Old LaHonda, where I came across Hugh (the guy who’d just picked up a bike from us) and a number of others enjoying their bikes. Then down to LaHonda, loop through the back roads to Pescadero Road, up Haskins Grade and wondering when I was really going to get in the groove on this ride. I stopped in at the Pescadero Bakery for an Ollallieberry Scone and then headed across Stage Road. Curiously, I came across quite a few cyclists I know, all heading in the opposite direction (doing the loop counter-clockwise). Did they know something I didn’t? Struggling north against strong winds on Stage Road, the answer was yes! But headwinds have been less of an issue for me these past few years, whether because I have more patience now or see it as a challenge, not sure. Just know that I don’t mind putting my head down and driving into them, at least for a little bit.
It was on Tunitas that I started feeling really good. It took 3/4s of the ride to get that feeling, but there’s no better way to finish a ride than feeling good on a climb. Nothing earth-shattering; from the coast to the top took 51 minutes, 17 seconds (not that I keep track of such things!), but the warmer weather opened up my lungs and I could breathe! For once I wasn’t limited by my usual winter lungs so I was able to breathe easily and slowly, limited instead by whatever my legs could deliver. Of course, I’ll claim that I could have made it up significantly faster if I hadn’t been fighting the strong offshore flow at the bottom, and perhaps that’s even true. Whatever, it felt like I was putting in a good effort, and my bike was doing a fantastic job converting that effort into speed up the hill.
And Burt, yes, you should have ridden with me today. You would have liked it. –Mike–