2009 Sierra Point CX (Cylcocross) Race from Travis Dubose on Vimeo.

Rachel and i went to a cyclocross race last night in Brisbane, CA (just south of Candlestick Park). We showed up bundled up with a camera, a cowbell, and an ice chest full of Belgian beer. I was planning on shooting some pictures, but the race being at night, and the floodlights the promoter used made every picture under exposed or completely washed out. For some reason, my camera was able to shoot video just fine, so i gave shooting and editing video a try using iMovie on the Mac. It was remarkably easy. I’m pretty happy with the results. You can see the video here.

Last weekend was pretty much awesome from beginning to end.

Things started off Friday after work going down to a Volkswagen dealership in San Jose to look at a car. We had our eyes on the new Golf TDI (diesel) but VW has been slow to make them and they are creeping into dealerships at a rate of 1-2 per month. This leaves no room for options, you have to buy whatever the dealers get, creates high demand, and limited supply, giving the buyers no leverage when the dealership decides to put a $5,000-7,000 mark up on the car over MSRP. We did some looking around and realized we could a year old car of the same model (then called the Rabbit instead of the Golf) with under 15,000 miles on it for about half what one dealership wanted for a new Golf TDI. Sounds like a no brainer to me. So we went down to San Jose, we both drove the car, liked it, liked the price, and 90 minutes later Rachel drove off the lot in a new (used) car! She now has a car that will reliably get her from point A to point B, has both AC and heat, and has a radio/CD player. We’re going to keep the Ghia, maybe only drive it on the weekends, and hopefully do some work on it and turn it in to a cool weekend car.

Rachel caught a rabbit!

We celebrated afterward by going out for mexican food and margaritas.

Rabbit in daylight ( that's the Ghia in the back)

Saturday morning i got to go for a 4 hour ride with my club, then rush home, jump in the shower, then Rachel and i jumped on our bikes and headed over to Stanford to watch the Stanford-Oregon football game. Oregon was heavily favored and at the time was one of the hottest teams in the country, but Stanford outplayed them all afternoon and ended up coming away with the win. The students rushed the field so we followed suit. I’ve always wanted to be at a football game where the students rushed the field (and my team wasn’t on the loosing end of it).

On the field

The atmosphere was just electric. It was a very cool thing to be a part of / witness.

Sunday i got Rachel to go on a bike ride with me down south to Steven’s Canyon. We ended up being gone for almost 4 hours. Considering she hadn’t been on a longish ride in a few months she did remarkably well.

This Saturday is a twilight cyclocross race between us and San Francisco at Sierra Point. I just got a cowbell and stopped by BevMo to stock up on some Belgian beer, so we’ll be doing some of this. It’s going to be really fun. This is supposedly the ‘cross race in the Bay Area that draws the largest crowds and has the rowdiest spectators, so i’m hoping it’s a blast. I’ll make sure and take the camera, maybe even get some video.  In the mean time, you can check out this awesome ‘cross video. We’re planning on grabbing dinner at one of three newer places in San Francisco (Flour+Water, Spork, or Starbelly) before hand. Not sure what the plan is for Sunday…maybe recovering from Saturday.

I’m way bogged down at work right now. We’ve got a big hardware deliverable for a contract due the week after Thanksgiving that we just got the specs for last week. That means we have 4.5 weeks to get this thing together. One week rapid fire design time + two weeks at the shop for the parts to get made + 1 week assembly/tuning/working out the kinks – (minus) 1 week for Thanksgiving, which is shot because no one is in the office at the same time and people are on vacation = oh crap. Add to that the handful of other projects i’ve been working on that have been stalled because i’m waiting on someone else for something, all of which the ball got bounced back in to my court in the few days surrounding the finalizing of the specs for the deliverable and suddenly the guy who was joyously crossing things off his to-do list that had been there for months because he didn’t have that much to work on is busy as hell again. Oh boy. Kind of a ‘when it rains it pours’ situation

I’m also trying to get back on the bike again and be a little more diligent about my winter training than i was last year. I hate riding the trainer and getting up before work to ride limits my time to an hour, and it can get cold enough that a warm bed and an extra hour of sleep occasionally wins against watching the sun come up as i ride in 40 degree weather. Damn you, convective heat transfer! This week i’ve been getting into the office between 5:30 and 6:00am so that i can leave around 2:30 and still get a decent ride in before the sun goes down. It’s been working pretty well, but i think i may limit that plan to 2 or 3 days a week so i don’t get totally burned out.

Anyway, i promised a blog entry about our weekend in Healdsburg, i just don’t have time right now to give the topic the attention it deserves. I’ve decided to let pictures tell the story. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then here are a few thousand words on Healdsburg:

Ridge Winery - Lytton Springs location

Processing shares a space with the tasting rooom at David Caffaro. Pretty cool, but the wines were so-so.

Food and wine pairings for a wine club harvest festival at Mounts Family Winery, which they let us jump in on. A mere $10 per person got us 6 wine tastings and 5 amuse bouche courses.

Cool old truck at Mounts Family.

Downtown Healdsburg

Bar at Ad Hoc

Main Course at Ad Hoc

Ad Hoc Sign

For those that don’t know, Ad Hoc is Thomas Keller’s (of French Laundry fame) family-style comfort food restaurant…and it’s awesome. If you don’t feel like plunking down $350-$400 per person for food and wine pairings at the French Laundry, you can go to Ad Hoc and get some of Keller’s food in a much more laid back and casual (and less expensive) atmosphere. The food is simpler, but is still top notch.

Rachel's favorite road trip activity

I have a problem.

I’ve got bike lust and i’ve got it real bad. I need bike stuff like a crack head needs crack. And just like that crack head, i tell myself that i’ve got it all under control, i can stop whenever i want. I’ve convinced myself that if i could just spend $10,000-$15,000 on bikes and related gear (Ha! Only $10-15K!?!) and just get everything on the ’stuff to get’ list that i could sit back and not need anything for a while. ‘I don’t even want the most expensive stuff’ i tell myself. If i did i could easily blow that on one bike. Somehow, i’ve convinced myself that this is totally logical, and i’m sure all my friends that ride will read this and not even blink. Meanwhile, those readers that don’t ride will see that number for the lunacy that it actually is. And the thing is, deep down i know that even if i went on a shopping spree, maxed out the credit card, and bought all of the stuff on my list, in a few days i know i would discover something else that i need to have, and the list would start up again and the cycle would repeat itself.

So as far as bikes go, what do i feel is my winning combination?

1. ‘Race’ Road Bike – This is the bike where you pull out all of the stops. Carbon frame, your best components, best wheels, best everything. This is the bike you take to races and you ride when you want to put everything on the line. I’ve raced with guys that will put well over $10,000 into their race bike, but something like the Giant TCR Advanced SL 3, $4125 (vs $11,000 for Giant’s top of the line race bike), would be great.
2. ‘Beater’ Road bike – this is the bike that you equip with fenders and take out training in the winter. It’s usually an ‘old’ bike that’s been replaced but you can’t bear to part with it, so you keep it around and use it as a road bike for when you don’t want your race bike to get messed up. Hopefully my current bike (Specialized Allez Elite, in red, of course) will fill this void someday.
3. ‘Long Distance’ Road Bike – This is the bike you ride for long distance rides when you aren’t so worried about going fast as being comfortable and having fun. This is the bike you take on ‘epic’ 6-8 hour rides with your riding buddies for fun. It has a less aggressive riding position so you can ride longer, it has gentler gearing for pushing up climbs after 8 hours in a saddle at a slower pace than you would race, and the carbon everything of the race bike is switched out for steel and aluminum. The focus here is more on durability and comfort than speed. In a crunch your beater road bike can double as your epic bike, but in an ideal world you’ll have both. My ideal bike for this category would be an Independent Fabrication Steel Crown Jewel, ~$3,000.
4. Track Bike – Racing at the velodrome is fun. If nothing else it helps you improve your sprint and your pack riding skills for crits and road races. A Giant Omnium ($1625) or Felt TK2 ($1399) would be great.
5. Cyclocross Bike – Originally created by European road racers over 100 years ago as a way to stay fit in the off-season, cyclocross (think mountain bike racing on a road bike equipped with knobby tires, and hurdles that require riders to dismount and jump over) is taking off and is damn fun. No need for anything really nice here, it’s only going to get muddy and gunked up. A Giant TCX1 ($1675), Independent Fabrication Steel Planet Cross (~$3,000), Specialized Tri-Cross Comp ($1900), or Ridley X-Ride ($2,400) would all be great.
6. Mountain Bike – Just one all around mountain bike would be fine by me. Say the Giant Anthem X3 ($2,000), or Specialized FRS XC Comp ($1550) would be perfect. Just something to get out with the boys and ride some trails for fun.
7. Fixed Gear / Single Speed / Cruiser / Hybrid Bike – Just for cruising around town, this is the bike you can ride to the coffee shop and lock to a bike rack without feel paranoid the whole time, constantly looking over to make sure your baby is doing okay. My Bianchi fixed gear works perfectly for this.

So that’s the current list for me. There are a lot of Giant bikes listed because they sponsor my club, so we get a discount. For some reason they make a big deal about the club price being confidential, so i’ve shown the list price from their website. As a roadie, i have many more road bikes than mountain bikes. A mountain biker would likely have one road bike and then a slew of mountain bikes on their list (full suspension, all out race bike, hard tail, 29′er, etc). And like i said, for the most part these are all middle or bottom of the line bikes. While the prices may shock those who don’t ride, for most of these bikes you could easily spend double what i’ve listed by getting a top of the line frame, components, and wheels.

I don’t know how i got to the point that i feel i need all of this stuff, i run my bike racing operation on a shoe string budget. I ride an entry level aluminum bike, i have a single wheelset that i use to race, and most of my equipment (helmet, shoes, pedals) is a few generations old, and not even top of the line to begin with.  Aside from race entry fees, consumable things (tires, embrocation, chamois cream, tubes, etc) and the power meter that i just got, i really don’t spend all that much on cycling. Compare that the guys i race with (and against) who have top of the line carbon frames, top of the line components, new everything equipment, and a slew of race wheelsets to choose from based on the conditions (terrain, wind), not to mention all the bikes they have that they don’t race, and i guess i don’t have it that bad. Then again, most of these guys are older than me, so they have more ‘developed’ incomes and have had more time to acquire all this stuff, meanwhile, i’m just getting ramped up.

So that’s it, that’s the list…of bikes. I didn’t even get into the equipment that i’d like to get or update in the next year or two (helmet, sunglasses, compressible wind/rain jacket, rollers, a few tools…). So now that i’ve exposed myself as a materialistic and selfish bastard who needs a bunch of trivial crap to be happy while there are children in Africa who are starving and living on less than $1 a day, we can return to our regularly scheduled blog…

The weekend in Healdsburg was great. We didn’t get to that many wineries, but we had fun. Ad Hoc was everything i was hoping it would be and more. Hopefully i’ll get a blog entry up about that weekend this week. For the weekend that just came to an end Rachel and i went to the Bridge School Benefit put on by Neil Young. I went for a bike ride with the club Saturday morning and felt awful. I continued to feel bad all day and ended up making a few trips to the bathroom during the concert to puke my brains out. Good stuff. Rachel was feeling pretty crappy too, so we mostly sat around on Sunday feeling sorry for ourselves. Got out to see Where the Wild Things Are, which i enjoyed, but question the judgement of making such a dark movie out of a children’s book.  Anyway, that’s all for now. Toodles.

Stawberries we picked from Blue House Farm

After coming home from the high of ACL, last week was pretty much destined to suck, and suck it did. Not that I didn’t do my fair share to make things worse. I mismanaged my vacation time this year, meaning that if I used any vacation time for the Friday and Monday on either side of ACL, I wouldn’t have the vacation days I needed for planned trips for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Two weeks in a row of having to cram 40 hours worth of work into 4 days, waking up at 5:00am to do it, as well as being sick the whole time, and not getting any miles on the bike (or any exercise at all) made for a miserable week. Going from high to low like that was a definite shock to the system, so going into last weekend I was feeling sick, tired, and just generally bummed out about everything. However, somewhat unexpectedly, the last weekend turned out to be a really good one that lifted my spirits.

'Dood'

We started Saturday morning by getting breakfast at a place in Oakland called Aunt Mary’s that mixes bible belt southern cuisine, cajun, mexican, and Texan food. After that we drove up to a dog park in Davis for a little event put on by a breeder of goldendoodles (a mix of golden retrievers and poodles). We got to spend 2 hours playing with cute dogs and have a lot of questions answered. As soon as we find a place that will allow us to have a dog, you can rest assured we’ll be contacting Sierra Vista Doodles to get on a puppy list. The rest of the day we spent hanging out at home, cleaning up, watching college football.

Rachel's 10k at Stanford

Sunday morning Rachel ran a 10k in preparation for her half marathon coming up at the end of October. As payback for all of the mornings i forced her to get up at 4:30 in the morning and drive to nowherevill, CA for a bike race, i rode around the course on my bike taking pictures and offering words of encouragement.

Blue House Farm Fall Harvest Festival

After the 10k we hopped in the car and headed to the coastal town of Pescadero for a Fall Harvest Festival at Blue House Farm, the farm we get our CSA box from. They had a home made pizza oven cranking out some delicious pizza, pumpkin carving, tours of the farm, strawberry picking, fresh pies made from fresh picked produce, music, wreath making, and fresh coffee and tea. It was also really cool to see where the vast majority of the produce we eat comes from.

Blue House Farm Fall Harvest Festival

Sure, we were at a farm that does the local/sustainable/organic trifecta. Sure almost every car in the parking lot was a Prius or a Subaru. Sure, everyone seemed to be wearing some article of Patagonia clothing. Sure we were eating off of real dishes and drinking out of recycled mason jars because it was the ‘right thing to do’ for the environment. It was totally and completely an event that matched the stereotype of NorCal hippies. But at the same time it was an amazingly fun and satisfying experience. After such a crappy week, it was nice to get away from the rampant materialism and self centered-ness of Silicon Valley for a few hours.

After a week of feeling thoroughly bummed out, the weekend really lifted my spirits and made me feel a whole lot better, even though no single event was a ‘game changer’.

Last night (Tuesday) a bunch of my bike racing teammates got a prominent local bike racer who has been racing and training with a power meter for a few years to do a little casual seminar for us on training with power and allowed us to spend a few hours picking his brain. Wow, what an informative few hours. I feel like i picked up a ton of stuff that would have otherwise taken me months to figure out. Talk about a good use of time. Plus, the guys i race with are pretty fun to hang out with.

I was planning on waiting until the end of October to take some time off the bike, but getting a cold, plus a few rainy days we’ve had here have forced me to change my schedule and take 2 weeks off now instead of later. I’m already giddy about racing with these guys next year.

Somehow, three years ago today i used my persuasive powers to convince a cute girl to go on a date with me. It was the first date i had been on in over a year after a rough break up. Somehow, i used those same persuasive powers to convince said girl to move to California with me. Three years later we’re still going strong. Woo-hoo. To Celebrate the occasion, we’re going up to wine country (Healdsburg, not Napa or Sonoma) this weekend for a little relaxing, some wine tasting, and some eating. Some of my favorite things. We’ve got reservations Saturday night for Thomas Keller’s restaurant Ad Hoc. I’m pretty excited.

Oh, BTW, there’s a wine from Monterrey County, CA called Poppy Pinot Noir that we had last night. Not only is it damn tasty, but at only $14, it’s quite a bargain. Just thought you should know.

That’s about all for now. Hope everyone is doing well. Toodles.

Rachel and i spent last Thursday through Monday in Austin for the Austin City Limits music festival which took place Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It was even more fun than i was hoping it would be, and my expectations were sky high (every email i sent to my parents for the past 2 or 3 months has included a countdown of days/weeks/months until ACL). After getting back to our cold, messy, dark, and lonely apartment Monday night, we pretty much unpacked the necessities and went straight to bed. After having a few days to decompress and go through the 200 or so pictures we took, i realized that these three pictures perfectly capture the three very different days of ACL:

ACL Day 1

Day 1 might have been the best day of ACL i’ve ever experienced. The city spent more than $7 million to lay down this beautiful grass. Given the dust bowl feeling of previous years of ACL, this was nothing short of a miracle. It was really soft and lush, just the kind of grass that makes you want to take your shoes off. Combine the new grass with sun, temperatures that barely topped 80 degrees, and hours upon hours of hanging out with my family and friends, listening to great music, and we had already gotten our money’s worth. For three days of this i’d be willing to pay twice what we did to make this trip happen. I was on cloud nine all day long.

ACL Day 2

I knew it was too good to be true. Despite the bad weather forecast for Friday, we escaped without so much as a drop of rain. On Saturday our luck ran out. Our friend Katie bought a one day ticket (my friend Jim came in from Houston for all 3 days). We got to the festival grounds around 1:00 and it was already drizzling. Save for a few minutes around 2:15, it rained pretty much all day long. Several times throughout the day we were standing in a downpour listening to a band go through a set just laughing at how ridiculous the situation was.

ACL Day 3

When you combine rain all day with 70,000 people walking around in a park, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what’s going to happen the next day. My parents made the (wise) decision to skip the festival all together on Sunday. The rest of us, however, were not so smart. We showed up in the late afternoon to this scene after immediately walking through the park entrance. It was like walking around in ankle deep chocolate pudding. The cow manure in the dirt under the grass plus the hay they laid down to try and soak up all of the mud saturday night just made the whole park have this ranch/rodeo smell to it that was kind of gross to walk around in. We caught 2 sets, and then decided to skip Pearl Jam’s headlining set, instead going to clean up and then go to Chuy’s on Barton Springs before things got totally crazy after the festival wrapped up. Amazingly, we were able to find a parking spot and get in and out of Chuy’s without too much of a hassle.

Here’s a list of the artists we managed to see:

• Sara Watkins- John Paul Jones came on for a few songs. It was very cool.
• Avett Brothers- Blew me away, my surprise band of the festival. Picked up their album at Waterloo on Monday and have been listening to it ever since. Where in the world have these guys been!?!
• Todd Snider- Goofy and kind of snarky, but great while chowing down on food.
• Dr. Dog
• The Wood Brothers- Love these guys. They were on a small stage and we worked our way up to about 10-15ft from them. The amazing thing was looking around and seeing all the different types of people that were totally digging it: young, old, hipters, nerds, little kids…great stuff.
• Raphael Saadiq- Another huge surprise, he’s reinvented himself with this new Mo-Town sound. He and his whole band were decked out in black suits with black skinny ties.
• John Legend- Only caught about 1/2 of his set, sound wasn’t very good. Opening with ‘Redemption Song’ out in the middle of the crowd was really cool though.
• Kings of Leon- We were able to get about 50 ft from the stage, though we had to stand packed like sardines for almost 2 hours before they started to get there. They were damn good. Eddie Vedder came on for a guest spot. The funniest thing was how for every song off their latest record the crowd sang with every word, and every song from the albums before it, there were just a select few around us that knew the words. These guys are ridiculous popular right now.
• Mute Math- Another huge surprise of the weekend. I had never heard of them before sitting down for their set, but i dug it. Poppy, fun, high energy music from New Orleans.
• Grizzly Bear- The new kings of indie rock were kind of interesting, had some good moments, but overall didn’t do a whole lot for me. May have had something to do with the fact that it was pouring.
• Henry Butler- Awesome set from this blind pianist fro Nawlinz. Normally the covered stage doesn’t get much love, but it was packed for his set. Sure, it may have been because it was raining cats and dogs, but everyone seemed to really enjoy his set.
• Bon Iver- Pouring rain, never got close enough to see or hear very well. I was expecting one guy with an acoustic guitar, but he showed up with his whole band. They were okay, but i expected more.
• Mos Def- Started 20 minutes late and was a little eccentric (like doing the first 15 minutes behind a thrown together drum set), but eventually came out, had fun, and rocked the crowd. I expected some shenanigans (everything he;s done since 1999 has been kind of weird), but people who were expecting the Mos Def from Black on Both Sides seemed a little upset.
• The Scabs- Bob Schneider’s jazz/funk/blues band. I spent most of their set waiting in line for a porta-potty across from the stage they were playing, so i heard most of their set, but wasn’t very close to the stage.
• Dave Matthews Band- Couldn’t even see the stage from where we were standing, though they were pretty good. We had been standing for something like 6 straight hours at this point and were getting pretty warn down. Watching his set on the jumbo tron i felt like i’d be better off putting on one of his concert DVDs, going out in the back yard with a camp chair and sitting in the rain watching it through the window. We left with about 30 minutes left in his 2 hour set because we just couldn’t take it anymore.
• Ben Harper and the Relentless Seven- Ben Harper seemed a little uncomfortable at times, but played a strong set. His band was fantastic. I dug his shout-outs to Austin and Waterloo Records.
• Dan Aurbach- Part of the duo that is the Black Keys, we caught a handful of songs from his set and enjoyed it. I’ll have to check out his record.
• Girl Talk- I totally wrote this off as novelty trash, but we walked by on our way our saturday and everyone in our group just stopped at one point. While i’m not sure about it’s staying power, mashing 80’s metal, New Wave, hip hop, modern pop, and commercial rap music is a little intriguing. Add flashing lights and a stage full of sweaty, muddy concert goers dancing around the DJ and it was enough to make us stop, take a few pictures, and listen for a few minutes.
• Wish i had gotten to see:
  • The Crooked Vultures
  • Phoenix
  • State Radio
  • Dead Weather
  • Brett Dennen
  • Alberta Cross
  • Levon Helm Band
  • Decemberists
  • Black Joe Lewis and the Honey Bears
  • Clutch
  • Toadies
  • Arctic Monkeys
  • Preservation Hall Jazz Band
  • Pearl Jam

Since it was going to be cheaper to fly out Monday evening than Monday morning, Rachel and i took the opportunity to use Monday as a day to just hang out around Austin. Ryan flew out around lunch time on Monday so we got to see him for an extra half day too. We got to see some family that lives in Austin for breakfast, as well as make trips to Mellow Johnny’s (Lance Armstrong’s bike shop), and Waterloo Records (one of my favorite record stores on the plant), for some new music. After dropping Ryan off at the airport, we also got to grab lunch at Freebird’s (home of the big ass burrito), walking around on the drag, and do some hanging out at Barton Springs, one of those iconic ‘only in Austin’ places.

Though i could have done without the rain and mud, it was great weekend. We got to see family and friends. We ate spectacularly well. We got to hear some great music from some of our favorite artists, as well as discover a handful of new bands, and we got to hang out around Austin. One of the main things we took away from the weekend is that we are both madly in love with Austin, and it only reinforced the notion that Austin is where we will end up someday down the road.

You can check out the best of my pictures from the weekend here.

My allergies really started acting up on the flight home Monday and by the time we got back to our apartment i was totally clogged up and unable to breathe through my nose. Since then i’ve been feeling pretty crappy: sore throat, cough, exhaustion, congestion, muscle soreness, etc. For a while there was a bit of a swine flu scare (apparently a bunch of the people that went to the festival have been coming down with H1N1), but i called a nurse at Kaiser and was told that as long as i didn’t have a fever, it was just a cold. I mismanaged my vacation days, so i’ve been having to work overtime this week so that i don’t have to use any holidays on our trip to ACL (otherwise i’ll have nothing left for Thanksgiving and Christmas), so i’ve been waking up around 5:30am all week long to get into the office by 6:30am and work long hours. Combine being sick, working long hours, and not having been on the bike, or doing any sort of exercise, in over a week, and i’m about ready for the weekend to get here.

Start Line

It all started simply enough. My bike racing season was over and i wasn’t too happy with how it went. I knew that to improve next year i had to do two things: create a more structured training plan and stick to it (this time training with a power meter, so i’m not guessing), and lose a few pounds so that by next spring my race weight will be in the 150-155lb range instead of hovering around 165 like it did this season. To achieve those goals my off season has to include lots of high volume, low intensity exercise. This means using my weekends during the winter to get in long 50+ mile rids at low intensity (along with running when i can, riding outside when it’s light, and riding the trainer when its dark). But before starting that, i wanted to lose a few pounds, thinking that if i lose a few pounds now, losing the rest in December/January/February won’t seem like such a task. I saw a poster for the Tour for Woodside Century and thought it would be a good way to kick off the off-season. I signed up not knowing anyone else who was doing it and figured 100 miles by myself, as easy or hard as i wanted, working with people i met along the way sounded like a good time.

About a week before the ride the Alto Velo Elite 4 Team (the 15 or so guys that i race with) message boards started going off about how we should all do the ride together at a mellow pace to close out the season. With AV E4 team members along with friends and significant others, we ended up having about 15 people at the start.

I hadn’t done a century in a few years, and there was little doubt that this climbing intensive century would be the hardest i’d ever done, so i treated it like a race in my preparation. I took the two days leading up to the event completely off from any exercise. Because i wasn’t worried about a quick start, i obviously didn’t warm up or go on a pre-race ride the day before to ‘open up’ the legs. I also ate a ton of carbs (lots of rice rather than the usual pasta because i’m experimenting with the gluten allergy thing), and drank tons of water. I woke up that morning, ate a little breakfast, got dressed and rode over to Woodside High School (about 6 miles) for the planned 7:30 roll out.

The 15 of us headed out for for the first little section: an out and back on Canada Road with the Polhemus Loop on the end. It’s a nice easy, rolling first few miles that acted as a nice warm up. The group did it in a double paceline taking turns at the front with the occasional ‘that’s it!?!’ after a pair took what was deemed as too short a pull. The pace was nice and slow, lest we forget that we had to ride a full 100 miles that day.

Climbing King's Mountain

Once we did the out and back on Canada as a warm up we rolled over to the base of King’s Mountain for the real fun to begin. People started peeling off layers as they heated up climbing. The group splintered from an orderly double paceline to small groups of 1’s, 2’s, and 3’s all trying to find their own rhythm up the climb, trying to strike a balance between getting up the hill in decent time, and not using up too much energy that is best saved for later in the day. I immediately dropped off the lead group’s pace knowing that i wouldn’t be able to ride with them all the way up the climb and instead dropped back with some of the ‘older’ guys as we worked our way up the climb at a pleasant conversational pace.

Top of King's Mountain

We had a little regroup at the top and everyone took some time to eat something, have a drink, and hang out. Next we started our trip down Skyline, which was mostly downhill to the Four Corners (an intersection with a restaurant and a gas station popular with motorcyclists. The Harley guys pull into the restaurant parking lot, while the sport bikers pull into the gas station in a weird display of self segregation). We stopped at the gas station to top off bottles (they have a water spigot with potable water, and lets face it, cyclists match up with the more Euro-centric sport bikers than the Harley folks), then we started our flying descent down Hwy 84 toward the coast.

A single file paceline of about 20 riders flying down a wide open, not very technical descent at 45mph is just one of the coolest things, especially when they are the guys you race with and you know you can trust them with putting your front wheel inches from their back wheel at those speeds. At one point, Annie (a girl who started racing bikes recently and had an incredible year, starting as a Cat 4, the ‘lowest’ category for women, and ending the year as a Cat 2, who stands about 5′3″ and probably weighs just over 100lbs) jumps out of the group already going 45mph, rides up to the front and picks the pace up even further.

Turning toward Pescadero

Before reaching the coast, we were supposed to turn off at Pescadero Creek Rd, but a few of the people in the group went on a ride together the day before that ended up being close to 110miles, so they opted for the shorter route. About 8 of us took the turn to ride toward Pescadero.

Pescadero Road

Once again, the group split up on the climb up Pescadero through the gorgeous redwoods and through San Mateo County Memorial Park. The group stayed strung out, and i found myself riding solo between the lead group and the slower group for  most of this section of the ride.

Lots of agriculture in Pescadero

Once you get closer to downtown Pescadero, the terrain flattens out a bit and the dense redwood forests give way to beautiful open green fields. There’s a ton of agriculture around Pescadero (including the farm we get our CSA box from).

Downtown Pescadero

Pescadero Rest Stop

We pulled into downtown Pescadero and then into a rest stop being staffed by the high school students (whose high school the ride benefits) decked out in Middle Eastern attire that looked like they got their motivation through watching Aladin the night before. The rest stop was complete with slightly obnoxious middle eastern influenced electronica and hip hop blared from a stereo, as well as a table of food from bananas and oranges, to peanut butter sandwiches, and even crackers with goat cheese from a local goat farm (or is it ranch?) and olive tapenade.

Leaving Pescadero

At this point, a few more people decided to head home instead of completing the 25 mile loop around Pescadero. I was tempted to go with them, but got talked out of it by a few other people in the group. So we headed our back to Pescadero Rd, then following Cloverdale to Gazos Creek. The five of us remaining tried to stay together at first, but it was one person’s first century, so Matt, Barry, and i lifted the pace a little bit and took off on our own.

Roads south of Pescadero

Gazos creek dumped us out onto Highway 1 where we were blessed with incredible views and a tailwind going north. We jacked the pace up to around 25mph and pacelined sharing the work, though Matt was easily the strongest of the three of us.

Pigeon Point Light House

After a few miles we came upon Pigeon Point. I tried to get a few pictures, but rolling along at 25mph on Hwy 1, with  cars buzzing by at 55mph, and a narrow shoulder, this was the best i could do. I still just can’t get over how cool it is to ride along Hwy 1. The views are just spectacular and riding along the ocean gives you a euphoric buzz. Maybe people from around here get used to it, but every time i ride on Hwy 1 i am overcome with the feeling of ‘this is so freaking cool!’. Maybe it has something to do with the ocean of my upbringing (the Gulf of Mexico, usually at Galveston) being a muddy brown color because of sediment kicked up by the Mississippi River.

The weather was perfect. No fog, clear skies, and a nice cool breeze coming off the ocean. We were supposed to cut back into Pescadero on the way back to stop at that same rest stop, but we realized that we had enough food and water to skip the little detour and just stay on Hwy 1. I’m not sure how long we were on Hwy 1, but it was easily the longest i’ve ridden on that section of road. It was just awesome.

On the last 1/2 mile or so on Hwy 1 before turning on Tunitas Creek Rd (the final major climb of the day), i could feel myself starting to hit a wall. We were around mile 85 or so and for the first time of the day i was starting to feel tired. There’s really nothing worse than than pulling up to Tunitas (a 10 mile climb, though to be fair, only the middle 3-4 miles are really tough) with an empty tank. You end up sitting in your smallest gear, weaving from side to side, mashing out a slow cadence at an embarrassingly slow speed while you drool all over yourself wondering when the pain is going to end. The worst part is that there’s no other way home. From east to west the topography goes like this:

MS Paint Masterpiece

Bay – flat – home – hills (up) – Skyline Rd – hills (down) – coast

So when you are climbing but still on the ‘home’ side of Skyline and you feel crappy, you can just turn around and go home. But when you are on the ‘coast’ side of Skyline, the only way to get home is to climb back over the hills and descend back down toward the bay. So you either have to grind your way through the climb or call someone to come and pick you up (but there’s no cell phone reception).  I’ve been there before and it is totally and completely miserable. Stuck in the pain cave with no way out.

I had a feeling that this was where my day was headed. As we pulled up to the final rest stop at the base of Tunitas, i noticed there was a guy pulling shots of espresso. As Matt and i pulled up, Matt got really excited. On first thought i was kind of repulsed by the idea of drinking espresso in the middle of a ride.  I succumbed to the peer pressure and ordered a single, then allowed myself to get talked into a double. We parked the bikes, topped off bottles for the final push, talked to the people staffing the rest stop, just prolonging the inevitable pain of tackling Tunitas after 85 not-so-easy miles. Add to that that Matt was on the 108 mile death ride the day before, and it becomes obvious that we weren’t going to set any records today.

Espresso shots at the base of Tunitas: no better way to start a climb

We finally got started and it was like i had found my second wind. I don’t know if it was the espresso or what, but suddenly i felt good. Maybe pro cycling teams should experiment with having an espresso machine in the team car. The stuff is magic. I’ll have to remember that next time i’m out on a ride bonked to crap and riding by a Peet’s or Starbucks.

Matt and i climbed Tunitas at a pretty moderate pace for me. Easy enough that we could talk the whole time about anything other than the task at hand. Even after doing 108 miles the day before i’m sure Matt could have easily dropped me, but i’m glad he didn’t. It’s much easier to with someone than alone.

With about 1/2 mile left in the ‘hard’ part of the climb i hit another wall and my legs just didn’t want to go any more (note to self: perhaps a flask of espresso). Luckily, i just had to grind out a little bit more before the climb flattened out and we could get on top of a gear and really spin out the last 3 miles, where i felt much better again.

Following Tunitas we descended King’s Mountain and then dropped back into Woodside. Rachel came to meet us at the High School for a feast catered by a local high end grocery store, Draeger’s. Grilled chicken, salad, cookies, and cream soda never tasted so good.

Fin!

All in all a great time.

My power meter finally came in on Tuesday. It would have been cool to have it for the century, just to see the numbers, but it’s not like it would have made me go any faster or anything. I’m hoping to get one ride on it before we leave for Austin for the weekend. Then, next week, i can really start geeking out.

Speaking of Austin this weekend, we’re leaving Thursday and won’t be back until Monday night. Live music, great food, friends, and family? How could it not be totally awesome?

(“General Update” *military solute* – for those of you that watch ‘How I Met Your Mother’, you know what I’m talking about. For those of you that don’t, you should. It’s a great, funny, light hearted sitcom with great characters, that for my money is a much better use of my time than a bunch of the other crap that’s on tv. Monday nights, set the DVR, now you know.)

Okay, lots of little things today that all seem unrelated, so let’s just dive in, shall we?

Last night I had a bike fit session with Mark Rodamaker, a guy in my cycling club that has a few masters world championship titles (from the track) to his name. Really nice, humble guy. After picking his brain a little bit, he was telling me about how his last race of the season is going to be a track race in Sydney, Australia. Okay, cool. But after a few minutes I realized that he was talking about another world’s title. Pretty awesome. Anyway, we set the bike up on the trainer, he watched me pedal for a minute, then we started working our way around the contact points on the bike, taking measurements and dialing things in, starting with the cleat position on my shoes. Next we did seat height, then seat fore-aft, and finally ended up at the handlebars. Every single thing was a long way from where it should have been. There were several times where he had to double check measurements because he couldn’t believe the numbers he was getting. Several times he mentioned that he couldn’t believe I was even able to pedal my bike at race speed for very long with such a poor bike fit.

Well, considering that when I bought my bike, the salesman had me sit on it while he held up the bike, and only adjusted saddle height, I have to admit that I’m not really that surprised. At one point I remember asking ‘don’t you guys need to fit me to the bike’ to which the salesman responded, ‘yeah man, I just did’. I had a feeling that something wasn’t right, but figured that as I adjusted things that didn’t feel right over time, I had to be getting close, right? No. I should have had this done a long time ago, but c’est la vie. It’s done now. I’m excited to get out and try the new fit. I’m sure it will be weird at first, but hopefully over the course of an hour or so, it will start to feel better. Having this done a few days before riding a century probably wasn’t the best idea, but I’m glad I finally got it done.

The power meter I ordered last week should be coming in today or tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to getting it in, putting it on the bike, getting out and collecting data, and then using some analysis software to really geek out. I hope it will give me a much better idea of how my training is going and tracking my progress. Right now I feel like I’m just taking shots in the dark. I’m having it delivered to my office because I don’t want something like that sitting on our door step (and our delivery guy has proven himself to be pretty inept at doing his job), so every time I hear an engine that sounds like a big delivery truck, or the doorbell rings, I get all excited like a kid on Christmas eve. It’s pretty pathetic.

I’ll be picking up our 3^rd (or is it the  4^th?) CSA box today on my way home from work. I can’t believe we didn’t jump in on this sooner. We pay around $20 a week and pick up a huge box of fresh produce every week just a few blocks from our apartment. Not only are we helping to support local agriculture, and ensuring that we eat local/organic/seasonal produce, but we are cooking with ingredients and cooking dishes that we otherwise wouldn’t be cooking with. It takes us about 4 or 5 meals to really incorporate all the produce we get in one week’s box, so what we get really drives our weekly menu. I highly recommend getting involved in a CSA program if you like to cook and have one in your area.

Thankfully, we’ve got a pretty mellow upcoming weekend planned. There’s a French pastry called a macaron (different from a macaroon) that I tried at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery in the spring and really liked. There’s a place nearby called Pamplemousse that makes 35 flavors that they rotate in and out. So I think we may stop by, see how they are, and then Rachel is going to try her hand at making them using a recipe she found online. I’ve got a good feeling about this. Meanwhile, I think I’m going to try making some rice cakes that are made famous by the Garmin-Slipstream cycling team as on the bike food in place of power bars and clif bars. The base version has sushi rice, scrambled eggs, and chopped bacon, then you can go sweet (with peanut butter,  honey and even add some nutella if you really want to go for it) or savory (soy sauce or balsamic vinegar) with the ingredients. Anyway, they are supposed to be delicious, so I figure I may bake some up and then take them with me on the century on Sunday. After you’ve been on the bike for a few hours and you’re exhausted, sometimes energy bars are just disgusting, but these are supposed to be great. Maybe I’ll pack a few extra so that when everyone else is chowing down on their gross clif bars at a rest stop, I can bust out some delicious rice cakes. Our apartment is also in dire need of some cleaning, so that will likely be happening too.

It’s looking like Rachel and I will be going back to Texas around Christmas time. One of my roommates from college, Ben, is getting married in San Antonio a few days before Christmas, so we’ll be going for that, and then hanging out in Houston for a few days around Christmas time.

That’s about it for now. If it isn’t too cold Sunday morning, (and as long as the rice cakes aren’t so good that I decide to bring all of them) I should be able to sneak a camera in my jersey pocket for the century, so hopefully I’ll get some decent pictures to post. Have a good weekend, everyone.

I found this on the web today and thought it was worth posting. It hangs on the wall of a San Francisco restaurant called Oliveto. To give full credit, i should mention that I found it here. Enjoy.

Completely unrelated to my ‘epic ride + lose weight’ post from yesterday, i found a 5lb pork butt while grocery shopping at whole foods yesterday and couldn’t say no. I spent all afternoon cooking it. In the process i spilled boiling rendered pork fat all over a pair of shorts, and crushed a jar of salsa with my hands (trying to get the lid off), thus leading to a pretty dirty kitchen. We’re going to see what we can do with all of this pork and only 2 people. Carnitas last night, pulled pork sandwiches another night, add a little to a stir fry, maybe even a little pork curry. Add in a huge CSA box of fresh veggies, and we’ve got ourselves some food.  All that stuff facilitates weight loss, right? Right?

Stevens Creek Road

Yesterday (Saturday) i went on a pretty awesome solo ride. Since it’s the off-season, on the weekends i’ve been trying to go out on really long rides to help build my endurance and simultaneously lose a few pounds. On these rides i usually head out without my heart rate monitor, without a specific work out in mind, sometimes without even a specific route in mind. I normally don’t push the pace too hard, don’t try to go into the red too much. Mostly i focus on having fun, enjoying the scenery, and just generally enjoy spending a few hours out on the bike. Rather than having to stay focused on staying  at some speed or heart rate, you can just let your mind wonder. So there i was Saturday morning, psyched to go out on a long fun ride. I loaded up the iPod with Bob Schneider, Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, and Led Zeppelin, slathered some summer embrocation on my legs, grabbed the camera, and was on my way.

Stevens Creek Road

I started out going around Stanford and through Los Altos Hills. It never fails that when i ride through Los Altos alone, trying to retrace routes i’ve done with a group, i always get lost. I keep trying, mostly to prove that i’m not a complete idiot, but no matter what, i always get lost. Today was no exception. I rode by a baseball field where a little league game was going on, thrilled because i remembered riding passed the same field on a group ride through the area i did with some teammates last week. I took a few turns that looked familiar and felt right, then started seeing houses i hadn’t seen before. I came upon another baseball field and though to myself, “Man, they sure have a lot of baseball fields around here” only to realize after a few seconds that it was the same baseball field. Damn you suburbia and all your curvy streets! After a few more turns, i finally found a road that i recognized and was on my way again.

I followed Foothill Expressway (a very busy street as indicated by the whole ‘expressway’ thing) until it turned into Stevens Canyon Road, a less busy road popular with cyclists, and then continued as it turned into Stevens Creek road, a tiny little secluded road that follows a creek and most of the time is not separated into two lanes. I especially love this old wooden bridge that has been paved over and the way it rattles and creeks as you roll over it.

An old wodden bridge that someone tried to pave over. Love it.

After doing a little out and back on Stevens Creek (it dead ends, but is so fun that it’s worth doing the out and back to add a few miles to the ride), i headed up Mt. Eden, which overlooks parts of Saratoga. There are some ridiculously gaudy houses out there (lest we forget that this is Silicon Valley), but the view ain’t half bad.

Not a bad view

After a few miles of rollers i got to Highway 9, a road that climbs from Saratoga to Skyline (a beautiful mountain road along the tops of the Santa Cruz mountains that goes most of the length of the peninsula and offers incredible views of both the ocean and the bay) over the course of 7-8 miles. It’s a nice long climb with a steady gradient that never gets too steep, but the length can get you. If you don’t pace yourself the last mile or so can be pretty tough. You find yourself rounding every turn thinking “okay, the end has to be just around this bend”. Because of my escapades in Los Altos Hills, and the weather being warmer than the weatherman predicted (at some point i’m going to stop trusting that guy), i started the climb with about 2/3 of a bottle of water. About half way up i realized that i was going to run out of water and started slowing down on my consumption. Things were a little touch and go for a while, but i slowed my pace a little bit and hoped everything would be okay. I knew that there was a fire station on Skyline that had a water spigot that i had stopped at before to refill bottles. I knew if i could make it to the top of Hwy 9, i would be okay.

Highway 9

At the top of Hwy 9 is the Santa Cruz county line. If i had gone straight instead of turning right on Skyline, there’s a gorgeous road that drops down into Big Basin Redwoods State Park and then into Santa Cruz. I’ve driven the road and camped at Big Basin, but never ridden the road on a bike. It would be a hell of a lot of fun though. Hopefully i’ll get to it this off season.

Santa Cruz County Line

After about a half hour of wondering if i was going to have to call Rachel to come pick up her dehydrated idiot of a boyfriend, i finally made it to the fire station. The water from the spigot runs underground, so if you let it run for a little bit the water starts to get pretty cold. Splashing cold water on my face covered in a gross mixture of sweat and road grime was a much more satisfying sensation than usual.

Lifesaver

Refreshed and with topped off bottles i continued on Skyline for a few miles and then descended Page Mill back into Palo Alto, cut through Stanford and arrived home thoroughly exhausted four and a half hours and 65 miles after leaving. Since the UT-Texas Tech game was about start i hopped in the shower (there’s nothing quite like taking a cold shower after a long bike ride on a hot day, or vice versa), and we went out to grab a pizza, an order of wings, and some beer to bring back home for the game.

Sleeping in, breakfast at a German bakery, long bike ride, college football (a longhorn win, no less), beer, and pizza? Now that is a great day.

Since my last race i’ve been doing a hard training push to try and lose some weight before going off the bike for a 7-10 day ‘transition’ period to avoid burnout and let the body recover a bit. This way, instead of starting my base training and wanting to lose 15-20lbs, i can start wanting to lose a much more doable 5-10lbs. For the last two weeks i’ve been trying to do ‘two-a-days’ mixing up long, low intensity bike rides, going running, and weights at the Stanford gym. Most mornings i’ll wake up at 5:30 and try to get a run or a bike ride in before work, then do something else after work. I’ve also switched my lunch during the week from a turkey sandwich to a salad. The point of this switch is not only to lower my caloric intake, but also to do a little experimentation. A few weeks ago my Dad found out that he has a gluten allergy. That’s a hereditary condition, so there’s some likelihood that i also have a gluten allergy. So for a few weeks i’m going to try cutting down my gluten intake (mostly pasta, bread, and other baked goods) and see if i feel any better. During the season i usually eat a piece of toast with almond butter and nutella (i think i have a dependency on that stuff) before a workout, and then follow a workout with a protein rich recovery smoothie. During this period i’m cutting both of those things out to lower my caloric intake and also help my body learn how to burn fat by not eating carbs before a workout. This plan isn’t sustainable, but hopefully it will help me shed 5-10 pounds over the course of 4-6 weeks, or until my body starts to wear down, whichever comes first. Then i can slide back into off season mode, keep the food portions from getting out of control, let it go a little bit for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and hopefully keep my sweet tooth in check during all those holiday parties.

So far things have been going well. Getting up at 5:30 to go run or ride isn’t nearly as hard as i thought it would be, although it certainly helps that it’s only late summer/autumn and temperatures in the mornings are usually in the 50’s. When they dip into the lower 40’s and 30’s, it becomes a lot more difficult.

Last week i got Rachel to come out and do the Coastal Classic ride with me. It’s a 45 mile ride to the coast and back that’s one of my favorite rides in the area. Except for a flat tire i had going 40mph on the descent back into Palo Alto that was a little scary, the ride was a lot of fun. The weather was just about perfect. Rachel did really well considering she hadn’t been on the bike since we were in Cayucos about a month ago.

Next Sunday is the Tour for Woodside Century (100 mile ride) that covers many of the same roads as the Coast Classic ride we did last week. It will be only my 3rd century, and it’s looking like it will be far and away the hardest one i’ve done. After we finish there’s a huge meal at the high school that this ride acts as a fundraiser for. It should be a really fun day, i’m looking forward to it.

In other news, i finally bit the bullet and ordered a power meter for my bike last week. I think it’s really going to help me to create and follow a more structured training plan, which should help me improve on this season’s lackluster results in races. I’m still having a hell of a lot of fun racing. I’ve been getting to know the guys on the team better, and have done some training rides with them, which are always fun. It’s amazing how much easier it is to traing with a group than by yourself. Hopefully we’ll keep the training sessions going through the winter. I’ve got a good feeling about next year. Bring it on!

In two weeks Rachel and i will be back in Texas for the Austin City Limits music festival. We’ll be there for four days, get to see some old friends, my family, and get to spend some time in Austin, one of my favorite cities. Somewhere in there we’re going to Kreuz Market for some real BBQ.  I can’t wait. I’m giddy right now just thinking about it.