Pictures from a Ride

Last fall, as I got ready for an epic cycling adventure in Sonoma County, I paid a lot of attention to recording the visual grandeur of the ride. It was the most physically challenging course I had ever undertaken, but as it drew near I saw it would also showcase some of the most breathtaking landscape I had been through on two wheels.

This spring, as I work my body into shape for a ride a wee bit longer but with not quite so much climbing, I am focusing more on training the legs, lungs and heart how to get the job done, and less on visual documentation. The ride should look nice enough, but last fall’s scenery set a high bar.

Having said that, I do often have a camera along when I ride, and when the time and framing are right, I can stop and capture a moment. This weekend I rode a 30-mile hunk of the course I’m hoping to cover in late April—the hardest 30 miles—and as I whizzed through the new landscape I grabbed a few impressions.

The picture at the top, and this one, are from Pope Valley, at my turnaround point. My jaunt began in Sonoma Valley, went up over a ridge and down into Napa Valley, across Napa, then up over another ridge and down into Pope Valley. Then I turned around and rode the same course—up, down, across, up, down—back to the car. In April I’ll tackle these roads in only one direction, but a goal for the weekend was to get to know the course, so I rode both ways.

Pond near Conn Creek, from Howell Mountain Road, east of Napa Valley

Looking southwest across Napa Valley near St. Helena

Training for a Breakaway (With a Few Final Updates)

Here’s a sketch of my training schedule leading up to the April 25 Amgen Breakaway from Cancer ride, which follows the 2010 Tour of California Stage 2 route from Davis to Santa Rosa. Updates since the original post are in green and red and lilac and orange and brown:

Date	Miles	Climb (feet)	Ave mile	Ave mph	HR (ave/max)	Ave slope	Notes
Sat 2/20	33.23	2,185	4:28	13.4	140/174	1.25%	31:15 Old La Honda climb
Sun 2/28	45.6	2,946	4:22	13.64	151/174	1.22%	Palos Verdes
Sat 3/6	50	3,750	4:34	13.12	148/166	1.42%	32:xx 1st OLH climb, 35:xx 2nd
Sat 3/13	61.96	5,577	4:55	12.12	140/168 (est.)	1.70%	31:07 1st OLH climb, 34:xx 2nd (after Kings Mtn Road climb)
Sat 3/20	72.56	5,082	4:22	13.74	140/168 (est.)	1.33%	Palos Verdes. Kept a lot of the climbing but improved speed.
Sun 3/28	85.55	5,548	4:31	13.27	135/166 (est.)	1.23%	Palos Verdes. Still working on speed. An hour faster than same route 6 months ago (9/19/09, 5:20 mile, different bike). Had great speed on weekday rides, but this felt like an off day. Watching for burnout.
Sat 4/3	66.35	6,699	5:10	11.62	141/168	1.91%	Recon actual hills for 4/25 climbs. Focus on climbing. Descents getting better too. Only a couple of sections go past brutal into a special place. Most of the climbs are tough but doable. Nice little ride.
Fri 4/9	27.42	1,460	4:19	13.86	144/173	1.01%	Had a longer ride in mind, but when a 3-year-old nephew says doughnuts are on the line, you cut it short and get home early. Hit a good couple of climbs; strength good, speed fair.
4/17-18	rest week	-	-	-	-	-	Maybe a light spin somewhere, but mostly let legs save up for next week. Rode 14 mostly flat miles (except one sheer wall I had to try for fun), to the bike store and back. Held to a very easy pace, on purpose.
Sun 4/25	109	5,751	4:22	13.75	145/185	0.99%	Amgen Breakaway Ride 2010
Sat 5/1	62.5	3,881	4:04	14.66	151/179 (est.)	1.17%	Hated to waste all that training and let the legs atrophy, so I jumped in the car and headed for the Avenue of the Oaks Metric Century (100K) in Fallbrook, California. A lovely day in swooping hills under spring skies. And it turned out that yeah, those legs of mine were turning just fine.

So far I’m probably ahead of myself for the hill attack; yesterday I climbed nearly as much as I expect to in the final ride. Legs get tired, but when I hit the actual course, I will bring some confidence, knowing I’ve done as much in a single day and more.

I need to extend my endurance, which is mostly a matter of putting the miles (and hours) into my legs, and I hope to ramp up my speed. Right now, with a lot of uphill miles, my overall speeds on long rides have been fairly low. I’d like to go uphill faster, and I can beef up my speed on flat roads too. Part of this is boosting heart-rate endurance. Some of it is making sure I refuel right.

On the day of the ride, more than half the climbing—both major climbs, plus some smaller hills—will come more than 50 miles into the route. That means I’ll be hitting the first really steep slope after my legs have already had a good workout. My training so far has simulated the steep parts of the route, so I know I can make it up those hills . . . when I’m fresh. Now my job is to get used to getting tired first, then hitting the climbs.

I’ve been paying attention to heart rate, since that’s a major factor in how much energy I have and how fast I can go or how hard I can climb. It’s not so hard to get good burst energy in the first part of a long ride, but sustaining that energy over several hours is a different thing. Part of it is learning how much you need to refuel along the way. No matter how much you train, if you don’t add calories after burning through whatever you had for breakfast, you’re going to end up crawling along.

My overall average heart rate tells me how well I refueled along the way. My maximum heart rate is a yardstick for how fresh I was when I started the ride. Generally after a travel day, or after a lot of training, I’m not in peak form. In April, it’s a given that I’ll be traveling to the ride, staying in an unfamiliar place, then getting up too early to get to the start line. Knowing that, I’ll still do what I can to make sure I start with a full tank. The adrenaline of an event day makes up for some shortfall.

So with a fair amount of climbing in my legs from the past few weeks, I now look forward to spending the next couple of weeks holding onto my mad mountain-goat skillz but spending my energy and focus on pushing up heart rate and overall speed, especially on the flats. Having both of those in better shape will also help me drive up hills faster.

Then I expect to return to a major climbing workout one more time before ride day, when I’ll scout the two major hills on the actual route, riding them first from back to front, then front to back, showing my legs what’s in store, probably taking my time and stopping to take pictures.

The table above doesn’t show all the riding I do; it leaves out shorter sprint work during the week and indoor trainer cycling in the garage after dark. But it sets out the major steps along the way. Part of the challenge is making sure that I give myself enough time between the major attacks to rest and refresh myself, so I won’t still be working through fatigue when I start the next ride. Every week I stretch my capacity.

As the weather gets warmer and less drizzly, each successive training ride gets to be more of a pleasure. The closer I get to the end of April, the more this Breakaway Ride looks like a mountain of fun.

In the Snow, Man

I learned to drive in a 1962 Ford Falcon station wagon with a straight-six engine that got swapped for a rebuilt block a while after the car had passed 100,000 miles.


The Falcon, for those who don’t know the car, was a predecessor to the more famous Mustang. The Falcon was a great family car. We even had two seatbelts—one for the driver, one for the shotgun seat.

The Falcon I grew up in got a new home this weekend, hitching a ride north to my sister’s house.

Our particular Falcon got its start on the East Coast, as did I and two of my sisters. Dad was transferred to New York for four years mid-career, with the promise that he could return to the West Coast office when Mom had her fill of historical tours in New England. This is Gertie’s old parking sticker from Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, where we lived when Mom and Dad bought the car.

I was not the only one who learned to drive in this car.

It came with all the features. The radio had five presets for stations you really liked. Once it warmed up, it had excellent sound. Some stations had news. Others had music. Some had classical music. On the weekend you might pick up a ball game. All bases were covered.

Nowadays in cars that have fuel injection systems there’s no such thing as a choke. I learned to drive with a manual choke on an engine where fuel mixed with air in the carburetor before being delivered to the firing cylinders. And I learned that I could almost always set the choke better than any of the automatic chokes on later model cars. This was great in situations like starting the car at any great elevation, or in cold weather.

Note the defrost knob, next to the choke.

To get the defrost working—to keep condensation from fogging the inside of your windshield—you pull out the defrost knob, and you also pull out the knob marked “PULL FOR TEMP.” That brings in hot air from the engine block and routes it up to the vent below the windshield.

For heat for the passengers, you pull out the next knob over, and then you reach under the dash and open up the boxes that serve as vents into the cabin. If you turn this knob, a fan will go on to blow the hot air in a little faster. This was a warm car on a cold, rainy day. Five high-schoolers in wet clothes were enough to overpower the windshield defroster, but you could usually roll down a window and solve that problem.

Rounding out the instrument cluster were a cigarette lighter, designed to light cigarettes, and an add-on Dad installed: a genuine moo-cow horn. We always had a great time driving in farm country.

Factory air.

We put the car on a trailer headed north, and a day later my sister drove north to catch it at the other end.

Gertie in her new home.

Room With a View

Monday afternoon I was cooped up in a very small office (not even enough room to stand upright), but the view out the window made it livable.

There’s no cell reception here.

After dark, the stars are incredible.

So’s Your Grammar

Yup, grammar can be fun. Or it can kill you. The picture of a dead guy on the cover yells fun.

(signed in person!)

There’s a fine line between being able to draw simple, witty pictures that will appeal to children and not being able to draw at all.

Actually, I’m lying. It’s not a fine line at all. It’s a big, wide gulf.

Are so.

Bobble heads are cool.

Yeah, I’d totally rather look like one of the pencil necks. Except maybe the one on the left. He’s got kinda a ska sensibility to him.

Yeah. Just yeah.

(Cultural sensitivity teaching moment #1)

Did I mention yet the attention and detail that went into the illustrations here? When you consider the entire book, I bet the drawings took at least 15 minutes to complete.

Extra points for G’s goatee.

I get it that May is a little girl with a scary vacant eyes and a flaming red fright wig.

But is Can facing forward or backward?

In other words, I can see that Can is an ass. But are we looking at Can’s can?

You will probably get what you want more quickly if you are a cheerleader named Wanna, but I’m skipping back to an earlier lesson. Let’s keep moving forward.

(Cultural sensitivity teaching moment #2)

I am concerned that we are about to cross into a section of the book that may not be appropriate for children.

Oh. Never mind. I misunderstood.

Notice that phrase that gets used here? The phrase is “mixed up.” Remember that for a moment. We’ll use it further down.

I say I hope his singing is better than his drawing.

Or “Water got drunk.”

Who’s arithmetic?

There’s that “mixed up” phrase again. Keep watching.

Did I mention my concerns that some of this grammar could be too risqué for some younger minds?

Hey! What happened to “up” in the phrase “mixed up”? You mean that if the phrase comes at the end of the sentence, you can’t include that tiny little two-letter word? Just because it would be the last word in the sentence? Because, even though it’s not a preposition, it looks just like a word that is?

As Winston Churchill said, “This is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.”

Getting mixed is what happens to cake batter.

(Incidentally, nice mnemonic for helping us all remember the difference between “lie” and “lay.” To remember the difference, all you have to remember is: the difference.)

How about “I feel self-righteous”? Or “I feel sanctimonious”?

My mother never made any mistakes.