9 posts tagged “cycling”
Riding has been sporadic these past weeks, due mostly to an overly ambitious travel schedule and massive, towering, spectacular work-related deadlines. Which is fine. Easing in and out of fitness has felt healthier than periods of obsessive training in the past. Or at least, that's how I'm justifying it to myself.
So out in Sausalito this weekend under clear blue skies, hitting the small hill before oldtown. There were hundreds out on their bikes, and I was passing a group of about a dozen when I heard this terrible noise behind me. It was unmistakably bad, a crack and scraping of metal and then screeching car tires. I looked back and saw a cyclist face down in the middle of the lane about 10 yards back, and a cars spun sideways just behind. Damn.
I raced back as people were getting out of their cars and other cyclist were stopping. It was a guy in his early twenties, no helmet, not moving at all, and bleeding a lot. Everyone cellphoned and we crouched around him not wanting to move him, until suddenly he jerked and moaned and tried to get up. We held him down and tried to reassure him until the sirens in the distance got louder and louder. Then there was a flurry of professional activity and interviews and then they were all gone.
Apparently the kid was out of the saddle working hard up the hill when his bars just slipped out of his hands and in an instant he was over them and in the street. He couldn't have been doing more than 12mph, but as I've often been told, it's usually not the speed but the height that causes head injuries.
I have a helmet split in two down the middle hanging above where I park my bike at home. It reminds me how confident I had been just before I went over the bars 5 years ago.
Wear your helmets, friends.
Went mountain biking with Julie this weekend in Epping Forest north of London. We rented bikes on the South Bank of the Thames and rode over London Bridge up to Liverpool Street Station. There we caught a train up to Chingford which sits right at the edge of the woods.
What a beautiful place to ride. Epping Forest was first set aside as royal hunting grounds in the 12th century and has been protected ever since. It was certainly weird to ride on horse trails first established 800 years ago, twisting and rolling through the medieval countryside. Winding single-track with fun little technical challenges virtually empty on a Monday afternoon.
Possibly even more exciting was the crazy ride through central London, negotiating dense traffic on an unfamiliar side of the street. Truly an adventure and highly recommended.
Also, I couldn't stop hearing the name of this place as a swear word. As in, "Ow! I stubbed my epping toe!" Still makes me laugh. I am 12.
The last 250 meters of the climb to Mount Diablo's summit are graded at over 18%. It's like a sick joke, really. After over 90 minutes of climbing in 100 degree heat, I was in no mood for that sort of humor.
But wow, what a climb. The views were amazing - from the Sierra to the Farallons. The mountain was swarming with cyclists; I think we saw maybe four cars the whole morning. It was deeply satisfying to turn the bike around and point downhill after such an effort.
Brett and I hopped an early BART train from the city on Saturday morning to the ironically named Pleasant Hill. From there, we rode up into the park through North Gate road and screamed down South Gate back to Walnut Creek for a total of about 45 miles. Short but intense. A pint of iced coffee couldn't keep me from nodding off on the train home.
Brett has a triple on his bike and I'll eat crow on this one: I was jealous.
Next up, Mount Hamilton. 5,000+ feet with a 100 mile loop.
So here's a quintessential first-world problem. Greg and I are out on a ride together, heading out from the Peet's in Russian Hill towards the Golden Gate. As we spin through the city streets, I keep hearing this disturbing *clunk* as I go over bumps. I was worried something was about to fall off, so we pulled over.
Turns out my seatbag had moved a bit, and my CO2 cartridge was hitting my carbon-fiber seat post. Now that's the soul of cycling, my friends. Keepin' it real.
Anyway, we got an early start and climbed the Headlands before work yesterday. It was hotter than it ever gets in the City - probably already 85 as we rolled out. Riding past the Marina Green we noticed the big flag hanging perfectly motionless. Climbing up Cozelman, took off my helmet and strapped it to the bars as sweat poured off me. We don't see conditions like that but maybe twice a year.
My stomach was acting weird on the climb back over the hill - maybe the heat, maybe the big plate of fried chicken the night before. We did an extra loop around the Presidio to Sea Cliff and as we turned back for home, I got my legs and felt like riding for the rest of the day. Instead, I sat in an office and omnigraffled.
Le Tour starts in a week. My money has Landis on the podium. Any takers?
I set a pretty simple goal for this summer: cycling to the top of the three infamous climbs in the Bay Area. Yesterday, we rode Mt. Tamalpais to the end of the road at the East Peak. That leaves Diablo and Hamilton for July and August.
Ryan and I left Golden Gate Park at about 9:30, and made it through just under 25 miles and 2500 feet vertical by 11:45. Not bad at all, considering it was the first true climbing I'd done in a while. It was cold and foggy as we crossed the Golden Gate, but we broke through into beautiful sunshine about half way up. Tam is a relatively gentle grade through about 10 miles of climbing. There are a few steep pitches, but lots of chance to recover as you traverse the southern slope of the mountain.
As we left Mill Valley and headed into the state park, we caught the wheel of an older guy (well, a little older than me, at least) sporting the full Euskatel kit - even a team-issue Obera bike. Must be a huge fan, because he didn't look Basque and certainly didn't climb like one. We hung with him for a couple of miles until Ryan got itchy and we pulled away, putting a couple minutes into him by the time we reached the summit.
From the top, everything was covered in low clouds, with hills barely poking out. It looked like the view from a window seat, peafully shrouding the city below. We turned our bikes and rocketted down at 30mph. What took us two hours to climb sped by in 25 minutes. My shoulders ached from crouching out of the wind for that long.
I was surprised how strong I felt, considering the how my work/play balance has been a little disorganized lately. I'm really looking forward to the other climbs this summer. I'm off to London tomorrow and not coming back until Sunday, so no riding for a good long stretch (beyond mindless spinning in a hotel gym).
I rode alone to work this morning - first time trusting myself to remember the route. There are something like 35 turns to remember, and I only consulted the routesheet twice. Not bad.
Oh but the wind. There is some weird humid tropical thing happening to the Bay Area weather today, so the wind was blowing straight up from the south. That is, blowing straight into my face the whole way without anyone to draft. I could tell things might be rough by SFO, already over an hour in and feeling my legs start to complain under me. Ended up pedaling for three hours and arriving, um, tired.
Still, that's three hours of riding before even thinking about work. I'll take it.
Riding music today:
I climbed the shoulder of Mt. Tam today in the rain, dropping down into the Muir Woods forrest on slick roads. I know that road so well - how to set my line in every corner, where to stay in the big ring over brief rises - I can really fly. I typically share the road with gawking tourists in rented cars creaping through the redwoods as I pass them on the turns.
Coming up from the coast on Highway 1, the clouds opened up. Big splattery drops as I worked back over the climb to Mill Valley. I've been working on my pedal stroke lately based on the Chris Carmichael technique that he worked out with Armstrong. The aim is increasing the length of the power stroke in each revolution, while eliminating as much dead spot as possible. So I've been concentrating on pushing with my toes at the 12 o'clock positon, and scraping my heel at 3 o'clock. It's a pretty remarkable feeling when the stroke evens out - like, really noticable. Right now, though, it's causing soreness in muscles I wasn't effectively using before - like hip flexors. That should work out soon enough.
After the climb, I found a tall guy on a good pace and sucked his wheel all the way to the short steep climb up the bridge. I jumped there and put some time in him, but he came back and we traded wheels across the Golden Gate.
In all, a good strong ride.
Riding music today:
I've been riding once a week down to Google with a group of coworkers (cycling is, after all, the new golf). The route we take stays flat and along the bay - about 40 miles of access roads and multi-use paths. We're doing it in about two and a half hours, which is just an amazing way to start a work day. Just amazing.
This week Thursday was Bike to Work day, the annual event designed to show people just how easy it can be to forgo the car and pedal to their jobs. We had a great showing - over 30 of us left the City at 6am in chatty peloton.
About an hour in, a few of us decided to split with the slow-moving group and sprint ahead. We formed a tight paceline and brought our speed up to 40kpm. Each of us were taking minute-long pulls and we work working as a team and it was so fast and fun. Nobody spoke and we raced down the peninsula.
As we roared past the Sun Microsystems campus, the path we were on split and the group cornered right. I didn't see this, saw the wheel in front of me cut my line, and I yanked the bars hard to keep from hitting it. In an instant I was in the air, prescient enough to tuck my arms under rather than try to brace, and skidded across the pavement. Ouch.
I popped up, checked the bike for damage (none), checked my bones for cracks (none), and we were back in the line and up to speed in no time. I was sporting a nice gash on my knee and some fine looking streaks of blood down my calf. Played up big later when the rest of the group rolled in. A little pity goes a long way.
This week, we may take the Skyline route. A few miles long and some great hills to climb. And people warned me about this whole commuting thing...
