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!