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.