Why can't 30 be enough?

The curse is broken.

I did an organized ride on Saturday and DID NOT SAG. Whoo hoo. I was 2 for 2 for 2012 (Cinderella and Tierra Bella respectively) on SAG rides so was unsure if this was the new norm.

The ride was the Folsom Powerhouse Century. I found it randomly online and did it with my friends whom I did the Seattle to Portland ride with. One of my friends lives in Sacramento so I decided to make it a weekend. It was nice to reunite the STP wolfpack.

We woke up at 4:45, ate some oatmeal and eggs and drove out to Folsom. Like most of the things I do--the ride didn't go totally as planned.

 It was a small event (I think they said 110 people were signed up for the 65 and 100 mile option, not sure how many did the 30 miler). The check-in was chill, which was a nice contrast to the crazy insanity of Cinderella. (Though I was lucky this was NOT a Sag ride because the cue sheets read, "call ted if you need SAG." As in: ONE. SAG. DRIVER. eek.) The route sheet was printed landscape format so I had to do a little origami to make it fit in my route sheet holder.

I have come to terms with something: my route sheet holder, crazy pink bike with silver handlebars, 3 water bottle cages, and bento box really make me a big old bike poser.

And I am totally cool with that.

So we head off and follow a woman starting the ride. We were on the American River Trail. We rode about a mile and thought it was strange there weren't arrows yet. We pulled over and checked the route sheet. yeah...we weren't supposed to get on the trail. Oopsie. We headed back. I tried to keep a positive attitude and thought, "yay! This means we are way more hardcore and are going to do 102 miles instead of  100!"

We finally got on the real route. I stayed with one of my friends (the other was fending off a cold and opted to do the 30) for about 7 miles and then we went our own pace (she is faster and when our wolf pack is in training mode we have a mutual agreement that it's ok to have different paces and we don't have to ride together the whole time.). At mile 12 there was a mini rest stop with water and a limited amount of refreshments. I filled up my water and ate one of the fig newtons I bought at the grocery store the night before. I bought the organic kind that are in bulk in bins, not really thinking that things go kinda stale in bins. I bit down on the newton and it was like eating wood. Eek! I grabbed an orange slice and brownie bite from the rest stop and headed out.

At this point I was riding for almost 90 mins (the getting lost part added to time on the bike). I looked down at the ground and saw written in chalk:

"30 mile turn around."

"Hmmmm," I thought to myself, "Why can't 30 be enough?"

I mean, seriously, a 30 mile bike ride is still a significant ride. Why couldn't that be enough for me, why do I sign up for these looooong events? I mean, I could have, like, a whole day to take care of stuff if I was cool with riding only  30 miles.

Hmmm...perhaps that is the reason why I do these long events so I don't have to the other things.Like clean my car out. Organize my kitchen drawers.

The next 20 miles were beautiful: rolling green hills, babbling brooks, empty roads. There was a slight climb for awhile (at this point I was by myself--the riders were very spread out). I made a left turn at a stop sign and I was flying! This side of the mountain was much steeper so it was a fast downhill. I hit the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. You could go right or left. However, something was missing.

Arrows.

Hmmm...well THAT could be a problem.

I studied the route sheet and wasn't quite sure where I missed the arrow. I turned around and started riding.

Oops. What goes down MUST come up. That fast hill I sped down meant it would be a grueling climb. I went a few hundred feet and noticed more riders flying down. Maybe I was originaly going the right way. When it was safe I headed back down and followed two other riders who made a right at the stop sign. I caught up to one of them and asked if they were doing the 100 mile or 65 mile option.

"Uh, we are just riding on our own. Is there a ride today?"

Um, eek?

One of the riders was wearing a Death ride jersey and was a local and was nice enough to tell me which way I need to go.

"Yeah," he said. "You have to turn left and go on Chili hill. Which means you'll have to go UP that hill."

"Hmmm," i said, "Well I am training for death ride, so it will probably be good for me."

"Yeah," he said, "You can't really skip the hill parts on the Death Ride."

So I headed back and saw a couple riders at the bottom of the hill scratching their heads (well, their helmets) examining their route sheet.

I asked if they were lost. They said yes. And then I said in a peppy cheerleader voice that was totally lacking sarcasm, "Follow me! We gotta go UP that hill. Whoo hoo!"

Maybe they slipped something in the water? No clue where that enthusiasm came from.

We chugged along up the hill. We found the place where we were supposed to turn and got back on the route. Then we climbed another hill. I ate some jelly bellies and drank some water and wondered what kind of delicious treats would be at the next rest stop.

I was about a couple miles from the rest stop and spotted my friend riding on the other side.

"Hey!" She said, "Turn around and ride with me."

"How was the food at the rest stop?" I asked.

"It didn't really have anything."

So I turned around and joined her. We shared our ride experience. She too had missed arrows. Thank goodness for route sheets. There were some riders stopped on the road confused by the route. Apparently the rode we were on was not on the route sheet but there were arrows on it. In a couple minutes suddenly there was a big group of us on the side of the rode trying to make heads or tails of this ride. We finally all agreed to just keep following the arrows and hoped they were for our ride.

At around mile 60 there was a water stop. Just water. No bathrooms. Actually only one of the "rest" stops had restrooms, which is a little unusual for a 100 mile ride. I tried to maintain my good attitude and thought to myself, "It's a small ride. It's for charity. It's hard work to organize events. I am not
 going to complain."

Then we hit a hill. A 3 mile hill. Whew! This is hard! I was definitely feeling all the training from the previous week and was getting a little tired. I wondered if anyone had ever fallen asleep on a bike before.

We FINALLY hit the downhill and followed the arrows (kinda dicey with sudden left turns with oncoming traffic. eek). We finally hit the rest stop and...well, it was a wee bit sad. I mean the trail mix was good, but where are the sandwiches? I think I was spoiled by the spread of some of the other events I have donw. And after 70 miles of riding, REAL food just tastes amazing.

We headed back out and stayed together for about 7 more miles and then the wind in my sails kinda died down and she got ahead of me. The last 10 miles were brutal. My body was hurting. I was getting hungry. At about mile 98 the route sheet said to go over a bridge and then turn left  (you go over a river). The road was very busy and I didn't see arrows nor the name of the street to turn on. I rode another two miles and didn't see ANY arrows.

That's when the grouchiness was finally released. I just wanted to be done and didn't know how to get to the finish. I pulled over and got directions off my phone, turned around and 15 minutes later I was finally at the finish. My friends and a few other people were there. I ate an incredibly delicious veggie cheese burger and felt relief. Relief to have real food, relief to finally do a 100 miler and relief to not SAG.

We headed back to my friends house and I had the best shower ever. It's funny how even the small things seem amazing when you beat your body up. We chilled out a little and a couple hours later headed out for sushi which was DELICIOUS. We were going to meet up with some of my friend's friends, but were ready to just chill in our jammies. We got dessert at the grocery store and netflixed Limitless. An hour into the movie I passed out. Not even Bradley Cooper's beautiful blue eyes could keep me awake. I slept hard that night.

I headed back home this morning and somehow convinced hubby to do a recovery ride with me. I was a little nervous about the pain of getting in the bike seat. About a mile in we hit a stop sign and I said, "BABE! My it doesn't hurt sitting."

"That's awesome," he said, "That means riding every day is working!"

So, even though it was a kind of loosey goosey event, it does feel nice to have the 100 miles under my belt and to not be in total pain the day after it.

The next challenge? Next weekend's Wine Country Century. Will be interesting to see what two 100 mile rides in a row feel like for me now.

In the meantime, I am gonna keep on keepin' on.

"Yeah! It is a hill!"

Bike! Bike! Bike!

I really feel like things are starting to come together. I know I have a challenging 2 1/2 months ahead of me, and Saturday my bike ride clicked. It felt like me and my bike weren't dating anymore.

We were now in a committed relationship.

The key to this breakthrough: Riding. Every. Day. The day after Tierra Bella I did a 30 minute recovery ride. Monday I did hill repeats---3 times up Mt. Eden. Tuesday I did brick workout with my mermaids. Wednesday 90 minute ride to mt Eden and back, and 1000 yard swim in the evening. Thursday morning was core torture and 30 minute easy ride. Friday was 35 minute easy ride.

And THEN Saturday.

For the first time ever, I climbed Montebello to the top. This is pretty challenging ride in that you climb 1900 feet in almost 4 miles. I went with my friend Lisa and we started at my place in Cupertino. We had a nice pace going and after about 35 minutes of riding we pulled over to eat and prep for the climb. I told Lisa that it's a pretty sharp right turn on Montebello road so make sure you are in a good gear to climb. I could see the turn coming and heard the Jaws theme in my head. I had no idea what this turn--heck WHAT THIS RIDE--would look like. I got in my granny gear and turned and BAM---I was going up the hill! There is a slight flat part after that first climb and then it's back to climbing. I was gaining on this woman riding up the hill.
"Hill." She said.
I smiled as I looked to the right, "Yeah! It is a hill!"

"No." She said desperately, "Is this Foothill?"

Uh oh. She is a wee bit lost.

"Uh, yeah. This is NOT foothill."

"Where is Foothill?"

Keep in mind that I am still climbing this long mother of a hill and she wants me to be all GPS?

My directions went like this (in a very out of breath voice).
"Turn...Around....stop sign. HUFF PUFF Go. Left. becomes...foot...hill."

And she was gone.

So we climbed. And climbed. And climbed. We stopped to drink. And climbed. There was a mean hill towards the end and then finally we saw the gate closing off the road. WE MADE IT!

And I felt good. Much better than last week's Tierra Bella climb.

We braced ourselves to go back down. I am not gonna lie, I was pretty nervous. I hadn't gone down this hill before and was not quite sure what to expect. I used my brakes a lot and made mental note to practice descents in the future. I saw Picchetti Winery and shouted, "Lisa we are almost there!" And sure enough, we hit the stop sign and continued on to climb Mt Eden. We turned around and rode back to Cupertino and had turkey sandwiches at Subway. Best. Sandwich. Ever.

I was on cloud nine the rest of the day. I climbed Montebello...a road that scared the you know what out of me. A road I never thought I would be strong enough to go up. And it was hard. I had that feeling of having nothing left in my muscles. There is something really scary to me about climbing a hill, giving it your all and not knowing if you can keep going. I was scared of the unknown, of what would happen if I pushed past that pain. And you know what happened?

I got to the top of the hill.

So, Sunday I woke up early, did a 1500 yard swim. Then headed to work to celebrate our amazing volunteers. I came back that afternoon for a 25 minute recovery spin. Hubby came home a day early today from his Grand Canyon motorcycle ride and I knew I needed to ride today AND spend time with him. So I hopped on the trainer and powered through a 40 minute interval ride. By the time I hit my third interval I was on fire. My husband looked over at me while I was pushing to a 93% heart rate. "Is that your interval face?" he asked.
"YESSS!" I growled.

I got off my bike and put on my running clothes. I told Hubby to meet me at our sushi place in 15 minutes. I decided to make it a brick day AND run to dinner date with hubby. My run felt AMAZING. I have no idea why, but I had energy and managed a fairly good pace.

Up next--more of the same and getting ready for a 100 miler in Folsom this Saturday. My weight loss is going slow---it's taking forever to get to the 20 pound mark. I haven't really focused on the Weight Watchers these past couple weeks. Now it's about the balance of ramping up my exercise and staying on plan. And I am trying to not focus too much on that dang number in the scale because I got myself up Montebello, and I am pretty proud of my body for doing that.

Tierra Bella Ride Report: the Good, the SAG, and the Ugly

Today was the Tierra Bella Bike Ride which starts in Gilroy. I had originally signed up for the 200k(!) and also gave myself the option of doing the 100 mile(!) route in case I wasn’t ready. My 2 weeks off from biking in March combined with the rain the last few weeks did not make me super duper ready for distance and hill climbing. I actually only did 50(!) miles, today and wound up taking SAG for the second time in 2 weeks. And I am way, way cool with it, because that 50 miles was a tough, tough ride. Well—the last 10 because there was 3,000 feet of climbing. So, I am not going to beat myself up about not finishing the distance because ironically I SAGGed twice this year, AND I still feel like my fitness is at a much better place than where it was 3 years ago. So, I present to you: Tierra Bella: the Good the SAG and the Ugly.

The Good: SUN! It was so nice that it didn’t rain today. And the rain from the past few weeks made the rolling South County hills an amazing shade of green. The first 20 miles felt really good. I even managed to ride 5 miles at the same pace as my super fast awesome friends Gina and Naama. I also saw my friend Molly out there (my super pink bike is tough to miss) and it is always great to run into people you know.

The SAG: So, at the rest stop at mile 50 I decided I was done and was going to take one of the SAG cars back (we will get to how I came to that decision soon). I have decided that SAG drivers are now my heroes! It is so awesome to have someone out on the road making sure that you are ok. And they are volunteers! Rock stars! There were 4 of us who needed to be taken back to the start. I sat in front between the driver and the person communicating on the radio with the other SAG drivers. It was…cuddly. I tried to engage my core and stay in place while we took sharp turns because I didn’t want to run into either of them. I have space issues. Well, it was a hilly, twisty, turny road and one of the passengers in the back was having motion sickness issues. Suddenly he said, “Um. Can you pull over when you can?” The driver said yes. And then in an urgent voice he said, “THE SOONER THE BETTER!”

But it was too late. The sound of muffled retching was coming from the backseat. I was thinking three things: “Oh my GAWD. This is HAPPENING!” and “Do not make eye contact.” And, “Oh my gosh, this is sooooo going in my blog.” The driver quickly pulled over and the poor guy got out to finish. Going forward, I think yacking in front of a bunch of strangers is now one of my biggest fears. We finally got back to the start, and the poor guy got sick AGAIN. Only this time he was in the parking lot on his hands and knees. Again, I just tried to not make eye contact.

THE UGLY: So, miles 40 – 50 of the ride are completely uphill. I had never ridden up this road before and didn’t know quite what to expect. It was continuous uphill, with a friendly flat section every once in awhile. I went to my easy gear and wound up dropped my chain. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to get it back on. I ate an energy bar, drank some Gatorade and continued on. I was a little flustered by the incident. And the hill kept going! At one point I looked around and the view was amazing, Lake Anderson was down below and the valley looked beautiful. And, I thought to myself, holy cow this is really high up!
It may have been the hardest bike ride I have ever done. I stopped about 5 times to collect myself, get my heart rate down and hydrate. I was grinding down on the pedals and I just felt like my tank was on empty. My legs were tired, and I tried to just concentrate on breathing. There may have been some swearing on my end. I had about ¼ mile until the rest stop and there was this sign that read “STEEP UPHILL.” I think I may have muttered “Uh, hell no!” I got off my bike and walked a couple hundred yards because, stick a fork in me, I was DONE! I hopped back on my bike and made it to the rest stop. Hurrah! The best part was I saw Gina and Naama (they got there way before me) and Gina looked at me and shouted “I am so proud you made it!” She said, “That was a hard climb!” I said, “I KNOW!” And then she gave me a hug and I started crying. I wasn’t sad or angry. It was just my body’s reaction to what I just put it through.

And so I decided making it all the way to Henry Coe park was a big enough deal for me to call it a day. My body was pretty fatigued and I did not think riding 10 miles downhill would be a very safe thing to do.

So, while I was fighting up that hill my mind did drift to Death Ride which is 3 months away. This ride was an eye opener in my training. It is definitely time for hill repeats and attacking local “big” hills in my area. And hopefully the whole me getting SAG is a short lived fad.

Big K Face

Never underestimate the power of endorphins.

Yesterday I was feeling kinda gloomy. The previous week I had an amazing training week. I did two interval bike trainer workouts (a necessary evil for my training), shaved over a minute off on my monthly 2 mile test with my workout group, did a 70 mile ride on Saturday followed by a recovery ride on Sunday. I rode Mt. Eden Sunday and timed myself as a benchmark for future rides. Then the gloomy weather returned and I had a rest day on Monday. I was pretty antsy on the rest day---I wanted to move! In theory, I could have exercised though I had my hair done that day and couldn't get it wet. (YES. SUCH. A. DIVA.)

I was also feeling anxious about this Saturday's ride, the Tierra Bella. I am trying to wrap my mind around riding 100 (and possible 130 miles) in a few days. Am I ready? Will I bonk? Are the hills crazy?

So, before my workout group met yesterday I decided to do a quick bike trainer ride. I opted to do an easy ride in case we had a crazy workout. I hopped on my bike and was in a silly mood and decided to take pictures of myself from my trainer. The picture above was sent to my coach and is what we nicknamed my Big K face since that was a look I had a few times when I really got into a workout while training for the Big Kahuna 1/2 Ironman. It's a look of fierceness and sometimes pain. It basically means "You are tearing this up! Grrrr!"

The only problem was I trainered at home and had to dig deep to get the motivation to leave hubby and my cute kitties to head to my workout which would be a 30 minute drive....and it was raining. I put my running clothes on and reluctantly headed out the door. Fortunately it was a mild drizzle and she had us do a 14 minute warmup. Then we did hill repeats 5 times. The first one was way hard and made my heart rate shoot straight up. Coach Heidi asked how I was doing (Big K face turned into" She May be in so much pain She is Giving Birth to Triplets" face) and I said it was hard. Then she said, "Maybe you should try breathing." Hmmmm....breathing...what a concept. So on the next sets I worked on breathing through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. It felt so unnatural.

We did some walking lunges and more running sets. It was strange though because I feel with each work out I am committing more and more to what I am doing. Yes, I am not the fastest, strongest, fill in the blank-est one there, but I WAS PRESENT. Staying present in as many workputs as I can is key in my training. We finished with crunches and I headed home. On the drive back it dawned on me: "I FEEL AMAAAAAAAZING!" The mix of working out and taking in the oxygen outside was an instant mood lifter.

Endorphins. Cheaper than therapy.