Seventy Five
Last weekend at Lake San Antonio was a great success. We had great weather and lots of fun with the Team conquering the Wildflower Long Course. I spent the whole day organizing and supporting. So this week, while the Team rested, I knew I had to get in some mileage. I'm not doing an Ironman, but Wildflower is only 6 weeks away.
Saturday morning I met up with "the girls" at Nargis' parents' house in Sunnyvale. Missy wanted 70 miles, and Nargis wanted hills. We decided to go for distance rather than hills and I suggested the Uvas ride.
The ride starts completely flat as we ride south and the house-prices go up... Sunnyvale... Cupertino... Saratoga... Los Gatos... A quick right turn ended the flat stage of the ride as we climbed up Shannon. The wildflowers are blooming and the deer are out all over, so there was plenty to look at. The ride through San Jose isn't too interesting, but soon enough we got to McKean road... and the wind.
From the moment we hit McKean there was a headwind. It was ridiculous. 14 miles of headwind with no letup. It's amazing to see the difference in terrain between the Calero area and the Uvas area. You come down the hill and the hills are covered with oak trees, green grass, and yellow and orange wildflowers.
At one point we talked about shortening the ride to 60, but we decided to ride to the lake... which was much further than I remembered. So once we got there, we just did the ride as planned. The lake was lower than I've ever seen it. About 15 feet lower than normal. The race there will be interesting.
When we swung around the south end of the lake the headwind became a tailwind. Around the Chesbro dam I remembered an old biker bar where I stopped once to get water on a hot day. There's not much left there... the place burned down and was nothing but charred wood and half a roof.
Back on McKean I was loving the tailwind. It's great to pull 31-32 mph on the flats, but the downside is that it ends quickly. Back through San Jose and over Shannon was getting a bit harder. Somewhere between Los Gatos and Saratoga, I cracked. My legs gave up. It didn't last too long, but for the last five miles, I was pretty spent. No surprise... my longest ride of the year so far was only 52 miles, so this was a big jump. 74.5 miles (we'll round to 75) with abou 3800 feet of climbing. Given the headwind, I feel like it was more like 6800... but GPS doesn't lie!
Earlier in the week I had a couple of good runs on the trail at work. Tuesday we headed out on a nice cool cloudy day. Down the trail a mile or so it started sprinkling. By the time we finished it was POURING down rain and we were soaking wet. Thursday's run was a bit longer, but hotter. I've joined the GPS gang and I find that running with a constant pace monitor seems to make me run faster. Whatever works!
Saturday morning I met up with "the girls" at Nargis' parents' house in Sunnyvale. Missy wanted 70 miles, and Nargis wanted hills. We decided to go for distance rather than hills and I suggested the Uvas ride.
The ride starts completely flat as we ride south and the house-prices go up... Sunnyvale... Cupertino... Saratoga... Los Gatos... A quick right turn ended the flat stage of the ride as we climbed up Shannon. The wildflowers are blooming and the deer are out all over, so there was plenty to look at. The ride through San Jose isn't too interesting, but soon enough we got to McKean road... and the wind.
From the moment we hit McKean there was a headwind. It was ridiculous. 14 miles of headwind with no letup. It's amazing to see the difference in terrain between the Calero area and the Uvas area. You come down the hill and the hills are covered with oak trees, green grass, and yellow and orange wildflowers.
At one point we talked about shortening the ride to 60, but we decided to ride to the lake... which was much further than I remembered. So once we got there, we just did the ride as planned. The lake was lower than I've ever seen it. About 15 feet lower than normal. The race there will be interesting.
When we swung around the south end of the lake the headwind became a tailwind. Around the Chesbro dam I remembered an old biker bar where I stopped once to get water on a hot day. There's not much left there... the place burned down and was nothing but charred wood and half a roof.
Back on McKean I was loving the tailwind. It's great to pull 31-32 mph on the flats, but the downside is that it ends quickly. Back through San Jose and over Shannon was getting a bit harder. Somewhere between Los Gatos and Saratoga, I cracked. My legs gave up. It didn't last too long, but for the last five miles, I was pretty spent. No surprise... my longest ride of the year so far was only 52 miles, so this was a big jump. 74.5 miles (we'll round to 75) with abou 3800 feet of climbing. Given the headwind, I feel like it was more like 6800... but GPS doesn't lie!
Earlier in the week I had a couple of good runs on the trail at work. Tuesday we headed out on a nice cool cloudy day. Down the trail a mile or so it started sprinkling. By the time we finished it was POURING down rain and we were soaking wet. Thursday's run was a bit longer, but hotter. I've joined the GPS gang and I find that running with a constant pace monitor seems to make me run faster. Whatever works!
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