On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

Despite an early afternoon meeting for which I risked tardiness if anything went wrong, I felt a strong need to test my fitness on the Noon Ride, Wednesday edition, which climbs my favorite climb anywhere: Old La Honda Road. After the cheap LR44 batteries I'd last installed in my Powertap gave up the ghost a few weeks into my Basel Switzerland experience, I found some superior 357's (silver oxide) in a local combo department store / food store. This should have had me up and running but I didn't have the tool to remove the cover on the hub. I eventually brought it to a local shop, to see if the guy there could remove it with an open-end adjustable wrench, but it was too tight and the metal wrench risked damaging the flats on the hub cover. So I decided I didn't need power all that much in Europe and to wait until I got home. Indeed, the cover was on quite tight for some reason, and after applying some Tri-Flow to the interface between the cover and the hub, applyin...

The past weeks have been dominated by priorities other than cycling or running -- the occasional ride, including a few in the gorgeous Amalfi Coast of Italy, but a lot of moving to a new neighborhood in San Francisco, travel, recovering from jet lag, and solving problems at work. So after resolving to "make time" for yesterday's Noon Ride Old La Honda, my rational expectations, my self-assessment of fitness, were low. Indeed, after having missed the Red Kite Patterson Pass Time Trial the weekend prior, an event I normally would have been excited about especially since it had a 3-4 master's category in which I'd have the reasonable hope of getting a top 3, I wasn't too disappointed. I'd not even looked at the racing schedule. I don't believe in racing without proper preparation. Long rides? Nope. Interval sessions? Not unless you count one ride in Amalfi. Extended climbs? Virtually none. At least my weight was fairly good, within 1 kg of my ...

I did the Noon Ride again on Wednesday, up Old La Honda, and I had high hopes. I'd had a recent block of training since the last time I'd done it 6 weeks prior , including the 4-day Memorial Day Tour, always good for a fitness boost. But I'd been feeling fatigued in the 1.5 weeks since the tour. Wednesday, riding out to the Noon Ride start, was the first time I felt legitimately good. Not frisky, race-ready good, but "I can climb Old La Honda" good. At the start, Maciek from SF2G asked what my goal was. "I've got to do 18:30", I told him. I figured just lay it on the line there. 18:30 is a decent time on the Ritchey Breakaway, which I was riding. With Powertap wheel, no bottle, no GPS, no toolbag, but with pump and two cages it's 18.32 lb. That probably made it the heaviest bike on the ride by a decent margin, but still, not too bad. Hitting the base of the climb I was near the front, but got pushed toward the back when we had to wait fo...

On Wednesday I did my first Old La Honda since last November. This was a bit of an immersion lesson in cycling again. I'd been so focused on running in preparation for my trail race 10 days before, I'd only started doing any "training rides" the previous Friday. On that ride, doing my favorite combination of Montebello-Peacock Court, my legs felt like sludge and I pushed my old Trek 1500 to the top of the climb in over 7 minutes, an unimpressive time. I felt fat and slow. But things got a bit better from there. On Saturday I went to the Headlands for four Hawk Hill repeats. Sunday, mountain biking plans fell through and instead I did a solid 20 km training run. Monday was just basic commuting, but then Tuesday was my first SF2G in months, and my first Skyline route since last year. That went well, but instead of energizing me for the day, I felt depleted. But I felt well enough by Wednesday to indulge my urge to do the Noon Ride for the first time since 13 N...

This past Wednesday was my first Wednesday Noon Ride up Old La Honda. The previous week was going to be my first, but I had some mechanical issues which prevented me from doing the climb after arriving to the base with the group. This time, however, I had everything under control and I reached Old La Honda with the surprisingly small noon-ride group. On the approach I chatted with Chris Evans who declared he was going to begin the climb hard. He'd done a sub-17 the week before, he said, and since he was more tired today, was shooting for 17:30. That was the goal I had set for myself on Strava, so it seemed like he was a good pacing match for me. But It was just my first time doing Old La Honda this year, and I'd been riding a relatively lot due to trying to prepare for the upcoming Alta Alpina 8-Pass Challenge so was a bit tired. These factors meant a really fast start didn't seem wise. Instead I decided to let Chris have his fun early and just try to pace myself. ...

I had a good year at the Low-Key Hillclimbs this year. Often by the time October rolls around fatigue from the year is starting to kick it. Last year I came into the series fairly fresh and fit, but then started a new job and my fitness went straight downhill from week 3 (my first) onward. I finally started exercising at a reasonable rate again in April this year, a mixture of running and some cycling (mostly long commutes to work), and surprised myself with a sub-1:31 half marathon in August: I considered that good given my lack of formal running background. So I knew I had some fitness but wasn't sure about how I'd do on the bike. I did a few climbs of Diablo before the series, just to get some climbing legs, and was surprised my times weren't so bad. But for the Low-Keys, you've got to be better than "not so bad". Everyone seems to raise their game for the series. But despite my worries I did pretty well. So as the series wound down, Tim Clark a...

After working at my job for close to year, I decided it was finally time to indulge in the Wednesday Noon Ride this week. The weather was perfect: warm but not hot, a so-very-welcome liberation from the tights and long sleeves which have been part of virtually every ride I've done this year thanks to San Francisco's persistent "marine layer". And Matt has done a great job of championing the often-neglected Wednesday ride which has climbed Old La Honda since the Egyptians were first domesticating cats. I'd done two of the Friday rides so far and the experiment was generally a success: out the door by a drop-dead time of 11:30, back before the 1:30 pm time when the cafeteria shut down its main lunch service. Obviously it's not something to do every day but since my typical lunch break is a line-dependent 7-12 minutes it takes to go to the cafeteria, buy something, then get back to my terminal, it'd still be doable to go even once per week and still ave...

I started with the Nooner yesterday, then split off @ Golden Oak to do 30 second sprints. First I did four on various hills around there, then I headed up Alpine, planning on doing more on the climb towards the gate where I'd turn around. A small deviation on Alpine Trail led to some hiking around the numerous railroad ties, but soon I was back on Alpine, riding past Willowbrook. As I gently climbed I was intrigued by the open house sign at the entrance to a private road. Cool: a chance to check out what's hidden behind the tree cover. But the road, which I'd assumed was a short access route to a few oversized domiciles, instead went on and on and on. I climbed slowly, except every 6 minutes or so doing another 30 second sprint. On my third sprint, I finally reached the " open house ". I didn't see much of a house, only a driveway, but instead of investigating that further, I continued down the road. Then I came across the colossal compound which is the...

Friday's Noon Ride seemed fast to me. The nice thing about power data is they allow one to put a quantitative validation on such qualitative assessments. One of my favorite ways of looking at ride data are maximal power curves. These are the maximum average power recorded during the ride over intervals of various duration. Here I compare average powers over four rides: three noon rides and the Menlo Park Grand Prix criterium, for durations from 0.05 minutes (3 seconds) up to an hour: Maximal power curves for two Friday Noon Rides, a Thursday Noon Ride, and the Menlo Park Grand Prix. FTP estimated from the Menlo Park Grand Prix normalized power is also shown, along with a curve using the Critical Power model for AWC/CP = 40 seconds with this FTP value. On the plot, I point out a key feature of that Thursday ride: the hard effort of the Canadã College loop , which is a pair of climbs separated by the descent. Note the peak average power increases with increasing time for a bi...

Wed I blew it. But Thursday I was serious. Coach Dan again said Z3, so it'd be Z3. The goal: ride segments of Z3 approximately 10 to 20 minutes long. But first, I'd just "warm up" with the start of the Noon Ride. Nothing hard. Just "sit in". Nice and easy. Trust me. Really. Fortunately, I finished patching my GoldenCheetah command line utilities, so I'm awash in data once again: Ride data from Thursday, with power zones (estimated from Menlo Park normalized power) indicated on right Okay, so much for "nice and easy". I tried, really I did. When the group got strung out turning onto Albion due to a pesky car (who's the guy responsible for getting the road closure?), I cashed in what position chips I had to drift to the back of the pack, reducing the compression interval. A bit later, the crew turned off for some Z6 action on the Canada College loop. I split off, going out and back on Canada Road instead. Histogram of data, sh...