Abrupt end

This past Sunday, I was playing tennis, like I always do on Sundays and I tore my Achilles tendon. I'm getting surgery done on Monday and it will take me a couple months to walk w/o a boot. So that cuts into my training for ALC. Very sad about it, but that's life sometimes. So there won't be an update for a while. At least not until I can ride a bike again. :(

Brrrr Ride

Saturday's ride turned out to be quite eventful. It was probably the coldest day I've ridden, so that already made for an unpleasant ride. And then early on in the ride, I fell. Since you're clipped on to your bike pedals, most people unclip one foot when stopping at a light or a stop sign. And every once in a while, you start tipping over, but since your other foot is clipped on, you sometimes don't unclip your second foot in time and fall over. Which is what happened to me. I didn't get a picture of my fall, so I decided to draw it. So here is my artist's rendition:

And then, near the end of the ride, I noticed that the road was feeling kinda rough. I made a comment to Darin but he didn't think it was too bad. I started listening to the noise that the bike was making as it hit the bumps in the road and I noticed that the bump noises were coming in regularly, like a metronome. So I got off my bike and noticed my that my back tire was flat. So we sat on the side of the road as we (meaning Darin) proceeded to change my tire. It was quite an ordeal and not very easy. After several attempts, we got it done and decided to cut 4 miles from our ride and proceeded back to the starting point. Again, I forgot to take pictures, so I had to draw it.

So that was the hassles of Saturday's ride. I did take a couple of pictures. One before we left, and another during our lunch break.

Notice the lovely helmet hair. Kinda funny looking, eh? But it's usually funky looking, but I usually run my fingers through it and make it look decent. This time, it was really funky looking and I wasn't able to fix it before Darin asked to take a picture. Now it's recorded in time.

And to end my post. My post ride meal. Pizza! With tri-tip, artichoke, feta cheese, olive, and sun dried tomatoes. Yummmmm!!!!!!

Brrrr Ride - The numbers

Here are the numbers and the route for Saturday's route:

Kinda low in terms of distance, but I did climb 3400 feet, which is the most climbing I've done so far. Darin and I had to cut out about 4 miles but I talked more about that in the next post. As for the route, it started out in Santa Monica, headed inland, and up and over several hills. It felt good in terms of climbing hills but it was a cold day, so it wasn't very fun.

Sick = No Ride

I'm sick. I'm feeling better but since i took Thursday off from work because I was sick, I spent my off-Friday doing work to catch up. And today, Saturday, it's raining, so no riding today either. It will have to be another week until I shoot for 65 miles. Sad face.

March Madness Ride - The Numbers

Rode yesterday, Mar 12, from Simi Valley to Fillmore, mostly along Highway 23. I think from now on, I'll be using my app, B.iCycle, to keep track of my rides. I'm doing this because I've come to realize that my bike odometer is a bit off. So I don't think I rode 60 miles last week. But it was still my longest ride yet and it was a great challenge getting there. Below are the number from yesterday's ride:

A little shorter than last week. About 10 miles shorter last week and 500 miles less climbing. I felt like I was going slower too this week, but for some reason, my average speed yesterday was higher than my previous speed. And I think that climbed altitude reading means overall climbing, not cumulative or greatest climb difference.

March Madness Ride

So Darin and I wanted to go on another ALC10 training ride, but the closest one was in Ventura. And we didn't want to drive an hour just to go on a ride. So we decided to go and ride w/ Stan between Simi Valley and Fillmore, which is part of the ALC training ride from Ventura, just going the opposite way. So it shouldn't have been a surprise that we ended up bumping into a couple of them at the top of the hill. So while Darin and I were taking a little break, we chatted w/ them for a little bit. Nice group of people. It would have been nice to ride with them. Maybe next time.

The ride itself didn't seem too difficult and not very exciting. We just went over the hill and back. I'm proud to say that I felt pretty good throughout the ride and could have probably ridden another 15 miles or so. I guess after riding 60 miles last week in warmer weather, this 46 mile ride wasn't too bad. And the hill yesterday felt pretty comfortable. And I almost did as much climbing yesterday as the previous week.

While on top of the hill, Darin and I decided to take a couple of pictures. Because Darin's previous ALC profile picture wasn't very good. Here are our two best pictures.

Sexy, huh? I guess since I had very little pictures last week, I tried to make up for it this week. After climbing the hill, we dropped into the city of Fillmore and had ourselves a little snack. Below is Darin putting his fingers all over our sandwich that we bought at Starbucks. And Stan drinking coffee. Coffee...in the middle of the ride. Wow. I'm so afraid of getting dehydrated that I would avoid coffee (even though I had a little before we went on our ride). But everyone is different and everyone can handle things differently.

After lunch, we turned around and headed back up the hill. And while on top, we got to take a couple more pics. Here is part of the road we took. Looks pretty neat, huh?

And here are some carvings on the side of the mountain. The wall was kinda soft like packed sand, so it probably only needed a knife or something to create the carvings. There were several of these carvings, but I thought this hourglass was really neat. And I didn't notice this until much later, but there's a hand just right above the hourglass. Pretty neat.

Last picture is of Stan riding up the hill. You can see what a beautiful day it was for a ride.

Next week, I'm going to do another ride to UCLA and shoot for 65 miles or more. Wish me luck.

Friday Ride to UCLA

Oopsie. It was a busy weekend, so this post is a little late. And then it was a lazy Monday, so it was even later than expected. So this will combine 3 post in one: the numbers, the ride description, and Tuesday ouchies.

The numbers:
Total miles: 60.9 miles
Ride time: 4h 3m 21s
Avg speed: 14.2 mph
Max speed: ???


The details:

Every other Friday, I am off work. So this week, instead of going snowboarding like I wanted to, I decided to get my butt back on a bike and go for a ride. And since my weekend was going to be busy, my only option was to do it on this Friday.

Darin's mom, Robin, came to town and along w/ her, she brought down one of her old ALC jersey. She said that I can have it if I wanted it, otherwise, we can just donate it to goodwill or something. Well, I tried on one of the jerseys and I absolutely love it. It's very cute, no?

Sadly, that's the only picture that I took during my whole ride since it wasn't a very exciting ride. No great views and no long breaks except for lunch. My original plan was to just ride from Northridge to UCLA via a 30 mile detour through Hollywood. Then have lunch with Darin and then take the most direct route back to Northridge. My ride should have looked like this, which I planned before leaving:

But around the 45 mile mark, I decided to shoot for my personal max and ride to 60 miles. It might not have been the smartest idea, since I noticed that I only had half a bottle left of gatorade at the 45 mile mark, leaving me nearly liquid-less for 15 miles. Not to mention, I did start feeling cramps at the 37 mile mark, though that was while I was going up a long hill. Anyway, since I haven't really increased my max mileage in well over a month, I thought it was time to just push myself through the last 10 miles. And it was definitely a mental struggle. Plenty of mental debates and math calculations to see if turning around here would get me close to 60. Each street I reached was just not going to cut it. So I plodded along, watching my odometer until it hit 56 miles. At that point, I knew that I can start pointing my bike towards home. Good thing too, since I just barely broke the 60 mile mark in the end. So proud of myself.

On another note, I downloaded an app on my iPhone called B.iCycle and this was the first ride that I got to use it. It was $2.99, I think and I do believe I got my money's worth. Here are some screen shots.

Notice that it gave me a map of my ride (and notice how it is slightly different from my original plan w/ the extra "panhandle" at the top). Unfortunately, I think it was a little off on my max speed and my climb altitude. While I did climb up a couple of hills, I really doubt that I climbed nearly 3000 feet. And while I am a speed demon, 108.8 mph? Not even in my car do I go that fast. BTW, the trip mileage says 57.7 miles. I'm not sure if my bike odometer is off, the app is off, or if I started my app almost 3 miles after lunch. I think it's a combination of all 3, but since I've been using my odometer to track my previous rides, I'm going to use that for now.

And no post-ride feast. I had a pretty decent size lunch w/ Darin so I wasn't too hungry when I got home. Just a lot of water, a little hummus, and a couple hours of sleep.

Monday/Tuesday ouchies:

During the ride, I cramped up a few times: right before lunch breaking really fast, right before lunch on a short medium hill, right after lunch during a long med/steep hill, and once at the 46 mile mark going up a short steep hill. So I thought that I will really feel it in my legs the next couple of days. To be honest, after my nap on Friday, my legs were feeling fine. I was a little tired, so I opted to stay in and rest some more. And here we are on Tuesday and my legs are only a little sore. But it's probably because I played tennis on Sunday afternoon.

Not sure what I want to do this upcoming Saturday. Maybe another 60 miler. Maybe a 50 miler. Maybe 70 miles? I'll figure that out later.

Lazy rider

I've been bad. I didn't ride last week because it was suppose to rain. It didn't rain, but I was mentally prepared not to ride, so I ended up not riding. This weekend was the same story. I had intentions to ride on Sunday morning for at least a couple of hours, but alas, no ride. I need to get back on the bike because June is fast approaching.

I am planning on sending out massive amounts of e-mails requesting donations, so hopefully I can get closer to my target goal of $3000.

If you haven't donated yet, www.tofighthiv.org/goto/agalvan

Monday Ouchies

I had minor little pains throughout the ride but nothing to write home about. Later in the day, I felt my legs sore and I was really dehydrated. The following day, I can feel that my back was a little sore too. I guess all that "high altitude cross-training" really didn't work. Or it might be because this was probably the hardest ride I've done so far: the ride had two hills. And the dehydration was probably because I'm bad with hydration and it was sunny. I'll have to get better because it's only going to get warmer leading up to June.

My goal for this upcoming weekend will be to do a ride over 60 miles. I think I can repeat this past Saturday's ride and tack on another 10 or 15 miles. I might hurt a little more afterwards, but I felt like I was able to do it.

Valentine Ride to the Beach

You might have noticed that there was no post last Saturday. As I mentioned in my last post, I was in Canada "cross-training" in "high altitude". Ok, so I was snowboarding and the mountain wasn't really that high. But I'm sure all that snowboarding helped my bike riding a little bit, right? Right? Whatever.


Though I'm not that big of a fan of Valentine's Day, since Monday is the big V-day and since Darin and I were riding to the beach, I thought it was an appropriate title to describe today's ride. As you can see from the picture above, it was a really beautiful day. It must have been in the upper 70s and sunny. And we rode along Santa Monica Beach for a little bit, stopping only to take some pictures and then in Santa Monica to rest and eat a bagel (with tons of cream cheese).

See us pose? Darin is wearing his green outfit that matches his bike. I decided to mix and match so that it seems like I'm wearing another outfit. And just in case you were wondering, I'm pointing at a paddle boarder. Look how clear the sky is. Gotta love living in socal.

Since it has been pointed out to me that I've actually never taken a photo of myself riding my bike, I had Darin take the above photo. Kind of a weird photo, huh? It looks all warped and I can guarantee that the water was not that wavy.

So riding on a bike for 4 hours, my mind has a tendency to wander. Here's a little example of what goes through my mind:
"6 miles? I can handle this."
"Wow, I'll have to get to 80 miles a day. I can do it."
"I wonder what I should eat after my ride. Pho sounds good"
"Oooh, pretty"
"Woah, there are some crazy drivers out here"
"I wonder what I should blog about today"
"I should blog about some of my thoughts, like..."
"15 miles. Not too bad. Wait, I'm only like 1/3 of the way. Oh dear"
"$3,000. I hope I can raise that much."
"Pho might be too warm for today...Oooh, Chinese food. Yumm!!!"
"I'll be so lean by the time I ride in June. Yessss!!!"
"Oooh, pretty"

Darin still had my phone, so he took this picture of me from behind. I've never seen myself like this from behind. Kinda weird. I never noticed that little red dot on my bike pants before. And I look really different from Darin. But overall, not too shabby. :)

And to end today's post, my post ride meal. I went a little crazy when I ordered food. Delicious!!! And plenty of left overs. Yay!!!

(This picture was taken at dinner time, so I was already eating left overs. Yay!!!)

Valentine Ride to the Beach - The numbers

Total miles: 49.6 miles
Ride time: 3h 26m 57s
Average speed: 14.38 mph
Max speed: 39.53 mph

Monday Ouchies

So it's Monday night and I'm in Whistler, BC, Canada. I'm up here for a week of snowboarding. I rode 53 miles two nights ago and I had no problem on the mountain today. I did hurt a little more from this ride than last week's. During the ride, I started feeling pains in the back of both of my knees. Similar to what I felt two weeks ago behind my left knee. But after the ride this past Saturday, I didn't hurt too much. The only thing I felt was a little chafing (where one expect to feel chafing after riding 53 miles). But the next day, it didn't feel too bad at all. And now, on Monday, I feel completely recovered. I just have slight pains from the snowboarding. So, I guess that I'm kind of in a groove and so I'm not hurting too much from the training rides. It will be almost two weeks until my next ride, since this upcoming weekend, I will still be here in Canada. I'll either up my mileage or go for a more difficult ride. I'll figure that all out next week. In the mean time, I'm "cross training".

First non-family donor

WOOOHOOO!!!! I've gotten my first non-family donor, so I thought I'd blog about it. I'd like to thank my friend Brett, one of my good friends from Seattle, who I met from those crazy tennis tournaments that I used to be addicted to a couple years back. Brett's a planner like me, so I shouldn't be surprised that he's my first. Thanks, Brett!

So I'm getting closer to the $3,000 goal.

Have you donated yet? http://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/agalvan

First Team Cynergy Ride

So this ride that I finished yesterday is now my longest ride ever. 53 miles. It's really not a lot, but if you've never done it before, it seems like a lot. So I felt a little nervous about it before starting. And when I was told that halfway through the ride there is a stretch called "3-mile hill", I got even more nervous. But I was told that there are other routes if I wanted to take it easy. My nerves weren't helped any when I talked to one other "new" rider who's longest ride to date was 70-ish miles. I was thinking to myself, "Oh shit, I've only done 38 miles before this. I hope I'll be ok." Well after riding 20ish miles, I find out that this "new" rider, Marcus, has actually done half triathlons and has even ran a super marathon, running 60 miles. So he wasn't completely a "new" rider. Just new to ALC.

So here I am standing in front of Cynergy Cycles in Santa Monica. One of the official ALC training rides start from this location and they call themselves Team Cynergy. Though I am standing there without my bike, I really did ride. I figured that I've had plenty of pictures w/ the bike and it wasn't necessary for me to go grab it just for the picture. If one looks closely, they will notice that this outfit looks very similar to the "First Ride 2011" outfit but it looks slightly different. Well it's actually the same outfit, but since it was cold outside, Darin lent me his vest and these things that went over my arms. Not sure what they're called, but it's like leg warmers, but for your arms, and seemed to be made w/ the same stuff that they make the jerseys with. Darin was sick, so he wasn't able to join me for the ride. One should also look closely to see that I am now wearing the 3rd sock that my sister gave me. From this distance, it's hard to really tell, so just take my word for it.

The ride was actually really beautiful since most of it was along the coast going from Santa Monica, through Venice, Marina Del Rey, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, and up to Palos Verdes. And then we went kind of reversed our route and ended back up where we started from. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take too many pictures. Below is a shot of the some of the people on the ride in Marina Del Rey during one of our breaks.

I really enjoyed riding with a group of people riding the ALC. Everyone was friendly and had cute anecdotes about ALC ride and training for the ride. And having others to talk to helped make the training more manageable. Plus, riding along the beaches presented a lot of distractions in the eye-candy department. So I am probably going to join this group again. Not only because of the eye candy (ok, perhaps mostly because of the eye candy), but also because the other riders. And next time, I'll make sure Darin goes too.

And to end my post, I present to you the food that I ate to help replenish my body after the ride:

Oops! Looks like I was a bit too hungry and scarfed down my meal before taking a picture. Trust me, it was delicious and hit all the right spots.

First Team Cynergy Ride - the numbers

Total miles: 53.45

Ride time: 3h 51m 50s

Avg speed: 13.83 mph

Max speed: 41.66 mph

Monday Ouchies

Since I'll be doing my long rides during the weekend, I will most likely feel the pain on Mondays. So I thought I would start a regular post outlining the pain I'm experiencing. After last week's ride, the back of my left knee was hurting and some slight chaffing (where one would expect after riding 26 miles). But this time around, I don't feel too bad. No real soreness or weird pains. Not even some chaffing (where one would expect after riding 38 miles). I felt well enough that I even worked out at the gym and played tennis. And so my legs are actually sore from the work out.

Anyway, we'll see how next week goes. I've signed up to ride my first official ALC10 training ride. It's rated a level 2 difficulty (rolling hills) but will be for 53 miles. So about the same level as Saturday's ride, but 15 miles longer. Wish me luck!

Post Ride

Above is a picture of me before my ride today. Notice how well I match my bike. That was completely accidental. This is actually my first outfit and when I was looking for a jersey, I saw this and decided to buy it since I like baby blue. The pants were from Stan. He accidentally bought a pair of long shorts sized small. And if you recall, the bike is lent to me from Stan as well, so the handle bar grip was put on by Stan well before I rode the bike. So matching my bike was accidental. It was a couple of weeks after getting the outfit that I even realized that this outfit matched the bike, thanks to someone else pointing out to me. My only effort in trying to match was the socks since my sister gave me 3 pairs of riding socks, I got to choose the one that best matches.

About halfway through our ride, we decided to take a little break, so I thought I'd take a shot of Darin and my bike to properly chronicle my ride. We actually decided to ride 2 more miles where there was a Starbucks so we can use the restroom and eat our cliff bars.

And the picture above is my view through most of my rides. Actually, Darin is further ahead. This was shortly after our mini break, so he was still fairly close. I let Darin lead, so I can just put my head down and not worry about where I'm going. But then I also don't pay attention to the road and traffic as much. So when I'm riding by myself or when I'm leading, I am a little absent-minded. (Or more so than normal; or at least more so than I should be).

And since I showed my post ride feeding last week, I thought I'd share pictures again. I didn't eat all that, by the way. The double-double was mine and the cheeseburger was Darin's. We shared the beer, the chocolate shake, and the fries. Yummmm....In-n-out. :)

Ride 2 - the numbers

Length: 38.57 miles

Duration: 2h 42m 21s

Avg speed: 14.25 mph

Max speed: 38.61 mph

Level of difficulty: probably a 2 (rolling hills); perhaps a 3 (rolling hills with some steep climbs)

Before and after shots

That's me in my new Trek outfit. We have Robin, Darin's mom, to thank for this snazzy new outfit. Notice the pageantry pose where I'm twisted at the waist to make my torso seem lean and flaring out to accentuate the nice wide shoulders.

And special thanks to my sister, Armi, for the snazzy socks so that I was perfectly matched for this bike ride. Now I just need to figure out how to make my bike match.

Since I'm giving out thanks, I should also thank Stan, Darin's uncle, for lending me his bike to train and ride for ALC10. It has treated me well so far.

Here are the after pictures:

Though I did mention in my previous post that I felt pretty good after my ride, I felt that I needed a little congratulatory meal. Pizza and beer. I have to replenish those nutrients I just lost, right? Now I don't want anyone to say that beer has no nutrients. It's made of barley or wheat, or some thing like that. Though if I really had a choice, my congratulatory meal would have been ice cream. I'll have to remember t stock up on ice cream before I leave for a ride. :)

First ride of 2011

Since it's January and ALC10 is in June, I thought it would be good to start riding again and start my real training. So today, I went for a little bike rid.e It's been well over a month, so it felt like I was starting all over again. Though no one had to tell me how to shift gears and stuff like that; physically, I felt like a newbie when I started. Fortunately, I've been hitting the gym more regularly in the last month, so once i got in the groove, I felt fine.

So the numbers are as follows:

25.9 miles

2h 11m 48s

Average pace of 5m 5s/mile

Intro

Welcome Readers,

This is my first post on this new blog. The reason for this blog would be to chronicle my efforts in AIDS/LifeCycle 10. I'm hoping to share my experience in training and fundraising. The end goal would be to ride 545 miles over 7 days and raised $3000 (or more). And I'll have to do this by June, giving me 6 months to train. Currently, I have ridden 4 times as part of my training and have raised $770 (thanks mostly to my family).

Wish me luck!