Up Hill Ride: a cyclists blog

Every cyclists will experience off days. Days where you get on the bike and from the start even the smallest grade feels like a death march. You struggle to move the pedals in anything resembling a roundish shape, your lucky if you can even pedal squares. Just the thought of continuing on another 100 yards feels like an impossible task.

Choose to keep pedaling, trying to make circles even if all you can manage are vaguely squarish geometric shapes. Finish the hundred yards in front of you and then the next hundred yards after that. When you need to, take it easy. At all times give it your best effort.

Living with depression feels just like one of those days on the bike. Its on a day like that where I learned the most about myself and my depression. I realized that as long as you keep pedaling, you will experience an amazing ride. Those are the days that cycling matters.

I placed 16th of 30. I finished 3:30 off the lead.

Although a bit disappointed that I wasn’t able to manage to maintain pace with the lead pack. I am extremely happy that I stuck it out and finished on the last lap without being pulled off the track.

The first 4 laps were perfect pace for me and I felt really strong but on that 5th lap there was an attack to catch two guys who had been off on their own from the second lap. About 15 people made that break and about 4 of us missed the jump. The rest of the 30 had already been weeded out.

I was attempting to catch up on the downhill. I was gaining ground, as I came around turn 11 I grabbed the wheel of a guy who had also dropped off. I called out that I was on his wheel, and said, “Keep pushing, don’t brake.” Sure enough he grabbed the brakes, I kept off the brakes but changed my line and ran wide into the run off astro turf. scrubbed off a lot of speed and lost the momentum I needed to catch the lead pack.

After seeing their pace, not sure if I would have held on if I had caught them, they were hauling ass. The winner completed the race in something like 48:45, while I ended at 52:18. To give you some perspective, last years cat5 winner finished in 52:38 or so.

Given that info I feel I am where I should be for starting cat5 racing. I need to be smarter about watching for kicks, and I need to be aware of where I am in the pace line. I also need to work on my short power climbing and recovery times.

Rest days over, Training starts up again and looking to do better on my next race!

And I got dropped. Which is to be expected for most every ones first experience at a training ride. The ride was Thursdays Los Altos Noon Ride, known to be one of the faster days. I am told tuesdays and thursdays are punchy. While I did get drop, I feel the speed itself wasn’t the problem as they were never to fast for me, it was the constant slowing and accelerating that really did me in.

I did a good job keeping up at first. I was staying in the back as I did not know the route and didn’t want to cause an issue in the pack. We got through most the twisty ups and downs and got to the main straight. I thought I was home free as the accelerations on each little kicker were starting to do some damage and a nice long straight would allow me to rest a bit while keeping a steady tempo.

Well we took a sharp right off the main road and took a bit of a detour. As we turned I took the wide line, which lead me into a patch of dirt and washed out my front wheel almost sending me to the ground, I kept it up right but scrubbed off some speed. I stood up and cranked in order to keep the tempo of the group, first mistake. As the climb progressed I just didn’t have the same power as the rest of the pack and slowly fell behind. I was fine with this because I figured I could catch them on the downhill.

Once that downhill came though, it was a game of where did they go. two stop signs where I had to stop and look left and right just to see them just rounding the corner, kept me from making up ground. On the last stop sign a car decided to not concede its right away to me and I ended up having to turn right to avoid it when everyone else went left. I U turned after the car passed but once I got to the flat 25-27mph was just not enough to make up any ground, and they were out of sight.

Not knowing the route I saw a guy with a vintage 90’s jersey that had also been dropped and followed him. We made a right off the flat and started up a bit of a climb. We got to the top and I asked him if he knew the route, he said no and that he thinks they had gone straight where we made the right.

Oops, followed the wrong guy!

It turned out okay though, as most cyclists he was a cool guy. Sponsored down hill cyclists with only two weeks of riding road.  We were fairly even in our speed so we were able to stick together comfortably as we kinda picked a route at random that would take us back to the group starting point.

We ran into a few guys from the group ride who had made it back before and explained our detour, chatted for a bit longer than we should have lol and then split. I saw my coach in menlo park and then headed home.

My ride had been just short of 40. My ride home should have been just another 25. But while riding along foot hill I started talking to a guy who was heading up Stevens Canyon over Eden and up Pierce to HWY9… and it sounded like a good idea so I tagged along. Ended up with 10 more miles than expected.

Overall A good day in the saddle. However while all this was happening, I forgot I had a 1 hour shift at work… Oops.