(Monday, 7 July)
Rode out to GMR (frontside) up and over and back on 39. About 61 miles with a bit extra to the loo on the RT South of Encanto. I was riding really, really easy. My HR on the frontside was barely in the 150s. I tried to pick it up a bit on the way back (like 155s) but it was hard to pay attention to pushing it. I guess it's good to be able to go easy! I wasn't sure how tired I would be when it started to warm up on my way back so I'm glad I didn't tank or anything. Legs feeling good. Position on bike seems to be improving.
(Tuesday, 8 July)
Ran Lorain with Susan. Legs felt good today! I didn't let her push me the first few miles and that made it a lot easier at the end. Had a nice Corner Bakery breakfast with Rene and Ian, and then went to the farmer's market. It was nice! And way cheaper than I expected. Then, I played some BB with Rene, but man I got so, so tired. I got some bad news today too. Ugh. I'll elaborate when I can.
(Wednesday, 9 July)
Upper big T. I was not prepared for this! I didn't even get tired at the end, I got tired in the middle - I think it was abnormally warm up in the mountains, because at 10.30 when I stopped at the fire house in Hidden Springs it said it was over 90. By the way, the cafe is closed on Wednesdays, which I was very disappointed to find out. I was almost all out of water so I stopped at the fire station up the road and spied a drinking fountain. Pleased, I downed the rest of my water and went to fill up at the faucet... when I realized it was totally dry and the water wasn't even on! Panicked, I knocked on the door of the station and the firefighter on duty let me in and gave me some agua. She seemed pretty amused at me.
Anyways, midway through UBT I was counting down the miles, getting pretty tired and looking forward to Red Box. The stretch from 2 to RB seemed really long and involved me weaving around the road as I tried to eat the trail mix out of my pocket and managed to cover myself completely in chocolate! Blah. I felt better after I stopped and had a great descent, but the last few miles home were definitely a schlepp.
I slept 4 hours in the afternoon (!) and still managed to sleep another 8 at night so I feel much better now. However, in other news I have self diagnosed the problem I've been having in my left hand (middle finger) as "trigger finger" and my dad concurred. I am a little concerned about this and suspect it's from all the braking I've been doing? So, I'm going to try and ice and we'll see if it helps. Anyone else had this?
(Thursday, 10 July)
I think the natural progression of things is going to be me taking Thursdays off, because I was tired on Thursday just like last week. So I took it off.
(Friday, 11 July)
Ran Arroyo (full!) with Susan. My longest run in months. It was no big deal! I felt really good the whole way even though I was super sweaty, and my legs weren't even that tired afterwards. Although, it was pretty hard to eat breakfast right after. But still! It was totally sweet. I lifted and shot some hoops afterwards.
(Saturday, 12 July)
Another ego booster. I rode up to Red Box hoping to intersect Ben and Ian but I didn't. It was nice to sleep in (to 7.30!) and even nicer to not have Red Box be a big deal, at all. It felt short. I took some sections a little bit hard and that felt nice, too (HR 160+). I also rode on my new chain and cassette, but they need a little tuning up.
(Sunday, 13 July)
I changed my tires to the sweet looking yellow ones, and Ian fixed the shifting problems mostly so the ride was smoother today. For record, back side of GMR took about 35 minutes riding pretty easy, so I am not sure about the McKeen race thing. More on this later.
Anyways, was planning on doing GRR with Ian this morning, but we got to the top of the backside of GMR and decided to go back. I was pretty glad Ian wussed out on me, because I was getting tired by the time we got back. Although, I can blame it on the humidity (it was really weird) and the fact that coming down the front side of GMR I got stung by a bee RIGHT in my "area". That's right, folks - my crotchal area. Thank goodness for the protection I had with my chamois.
I drew a picture to demonstrate what happened.
Anyways it was extremely uncomfortable. I blame the yellow tires and orange wheels for working the bee into a frenzy.
The moral of this week is, I rode a lot of miles, and ran a respectable amount (236 miles ridden, 16 miles run) so I deserve a popsicle.
2 comments:
KB! The bestest ever biking place I've ever been to is Highway 4 between Yosemite and Tahoe. I'd highly highly recommend the area for your biking adventures!
It's got mountains, altitude (5 - 9,000 ft, not super high, but high enough to kick your butt, trust me!) good roads, no cars, AMAZING scenery, shade, and tons of peaks some with 25% grades. There are designated cabin/camping type areas, but mostly it kinda seems like you could trundle off the road and pitch a tent at any point you want.
A friend of a friend of a friend had a cabin at Bear Valley, CA... so I ambitiously planned the following route:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=Bear+Valley,+Uninc+Alpine+County,+CA&daddr=Dardanelle,+CA&sll=38.493095,-119.74424&sspn=0.439609,0.926971&ie=UTF8&z=10
Unfortunately, the altitude totally flattened me... so I did not make it to Sonora Pass as I had wanted, but instead headed back north to Markleeville and back. These wimps didn't make it all the way to Markleeville, but have a neat website of pictures of that area:
http://www.chainreactionbicycles.com/sonora_pass.htm
Both Highway 4 and 108 are superb biking spots. Sadly my connection to the cabin in Bear Valley was violently severed due to some drama about stolen girlfriends and broken hearts... so the conveniently located free lodging has gone away... but I would go back in a heartbeat if the opportunity arose.
You should check it out.
Also, a note of caution about altitude and altitude training... my experience is that it's not as cool as people seem to think it is. Basically, it's just like having your anaerobic threshold lowered to about jogging pace, and your recover time from lactic acid build up like twice as long as normal. It takes an average person about a week to acclimate (according to a nice local man who drafted me about 10 miles into Markleeville). Until you acclimate it just kinda sucks cuz you can't do as much or go as far as you're used to, and it's easy to overtrain. That said, most would say that the beneficial effects are well worth some chunk of time spent at altitude, but the key is the chunk of time... I honestly wouldn't recommend it for like a 1 or 2 day excursion. (Take this with a grain of salt... I've observed a range of reactions to altitude, Peter really thrives in it, Ryan got really sick the first time and I'm probably somewhere in between but closer to Ryan)
ggggrrr... arghhh... how do you post links into the comments????
"http://www.google.com"
Did that work?
The route I planned is: Bear Valley, CA to Dardanelle, CA. It comes up as a 101 mile route in google maps with "get directions".
The other website is the URL that I posted except the last .htm part got truncated... meh.
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