Back in the saddle again

Well, after a couple of weeks of coughing I decided enough was enough and it was time to get back on the bike even though the cough has gone . The weather was nice to me as I had a tailwind in much of the way. I only forgot my sunglasses and mirror which I went back for so I was still in good commuting form mostly. The weather is just about perfect for riding right now. I am glad I decided to get out and enjoy it. All in all I felt it a bit towards the end but I don't think I have lost too much fitness over the last few weeks. After all, everyone is supposed to take a few weeks off every year between seasons. Anyway, I can't afford the gas anymore so back on the bike I go!

Leaving the world for an hour or two.....

Well, the doctor has had me changing medicines lately and last week was the week the one medicine left my system I entered a pretty hefty depression. In fact, things were pretty bleak there for a bit and Friday showed a weekend packed with numerous activities that weighed in on me like a two ton heavy thing. Anyway, my wife was taking the kids to an egg coloring party Friday night and as the day progressed I decided a ride was in order (truthfully if I had been able to ride my bike more last week that probably would have helped a lot). So, when I finally got back home I decided to pull an old friend off the wall. This was the bike I rode my first Brevet on. I put a pair of lights on it, fitted the taillight and just about sundown I was off into the descending twilight. Evening just after sunset has to be my favorite time of the day to ride, there is a descending peace on the world at that time as the sky is no longer blue, yet it is not black and forms a beatiful transition from sky to horizon. As you climb the hill, your mind slowly begins to lose the things that have stuck there and worried you throughout the day and slowly it becomes you and the bike cutting through the night and the air as you climb further and further above the city. As you reach the top of the hill a dark detour begs your attention and you climb further on up in the shadows of the mountain and multimillion dollar spreads of people who paid through the teeth to get the view of the city lights you see as you turn around. It only cost you a little sweat and an hours time.
Now down into the night you speed, riding the brakes slightly because of gravel in the road and limited headlight range. Then it is around a corner and onto a wider road were the brakes are left to hang free and the bike accelerates into the darkness, the wind rushing past your ears and the vents in your helmet chilling the sweat on the top of your head. Cars are passing you but slowly now as you rocket through the night and down, down, down to the city where the moment begins to dwindle as you approach stoplights and traffic and eventually enter the familiar streets of your own neighborhood and find your way up the driveway tired, yet relaxed with a recharged state of mental energy ready to live come what may.

Helping and Hurting

Well, this isn't exactly ride related but it does have something to do with Randonneuring so I am writing about it.
Saturday I got to help out with the 600k Brevet by leading people out of the parking lot at the beautiful hour of 5 am. It is always cool to see that mass of headlights behind me looking like a willo the wisp in the night. Of course I am the one who is doing the leading so I suppose I was the Willo the wisp in the predawn hours. One thing of note is the main pack stayed together for a long time. It made me think how nice that would have been last week. Anyway, after waving everyone by at the interstate, I got ready to pass them again when a moron tried to pass the pack as a car came from the opposite way. I think he underestimated the size of the pack. Anyway, I guess the world is full of morons, what are you going to do?
By the time they reached the turn onto Milligan they had split into 2 packs with a few stragglers on either side of the two groups. I hurried down to Marana where I got breakfast and waited for the faster guys to come in. Around this time I realized my pen was dead so I had to sign everyone's card with a pencil . The food in the van went pretty quick as the two groups came through. It was a hungry group of people. I talked to a few people near the back and they were glad they didn't have to go home and build a retaining wall like I did. Bruce rolled in after awhile and looked like he was hurting a bit but was ready to go again after not too long. The other rider that came in with Bruce DNF's here.
Here is a place to put in a humorous note. I noticed this time through here (probably because this is the first time I have been at the Marana circle K without walking around in at state of excersize induced stonedness) that they have a full room devoted to Alcholic beverages. I find this kind of funny as it hints that there is not much to do in the area. Anyway, just thought it was funny.
Eventually I got back to the retaining wall and used my big bulky body which is a bit of a hindrence on hills when randonneuring but is quite useful for muscling 60 lbs block and 100 lbs bags of concrete around. Needless to say I earned my backache along with the other hardy randonneurs out there in the hot afternoon sun.

A first time for everything.

Well, it was an interesting ride all told. I managed to get 7 hours of sleep the night before which was really nice. I hurredly got breakfast and headed out of the house. Over the next hours drive I would slowly become cognizant of little things I had forgotten. The biggest of which was my floor pump. So 5 AM found me using my itsy bitsy little topeak mini pump which I had bought as it only weighed 50 grams thinking it would get me on the road again in a dire emergency. Well, I think it is going to go up on ebay next week to another rider who has the weight weeny fever, in the meantime I think I am going to return to the good old trusty Road Morph (funny how we have delusions of Grandeur and get sucked in to snazzy equipment that works in theory but not in real world applications). Anyway, I don't know if I got my tires up to 120 like I wanted but like it or not I was off into the night where I was perplexed by a flickering headlight. "Shazbot! What is up with my equipment today? It was working great before!" I thought. Anyway, after getting Mr. Scary looking guy at the circle k to sign my card I set about pondering why my light was acting up which upon close inspection of the circuit (down the road and in the dark of course as I waited until it went all the way out to try and trouble shoot it, luckily my headlamp was in fully functioning order). Turned out it was broken connection in a wire which I forgot to resolder, I twisted the wires together and was off with a nice bright headlight once again (mental note to self, fix that before you remove your generater or it will bite you again down the road in a few months). I was finally off and enjoying the nice warm morning, in fact, I was a little over dressed but it was still too cold to pull the jacket off. Eloy found predawn light appearing in the east. "Dang" I thought, "that daylight savings time switch is really goofing me up, ......wait a second Arizona doesn't have daylight savings time!" It was about here I realized that the early dawn was due to the 5 AM start time of the 600k this year as opposed to the 4 AM start. This led to a few interesting things, the dogs were awake as I passed Picacho. Heading down Milligan two come after me, one that could keep up and one that couldn't. The one that could was almost ready to cross the road at me when two cars came from the opposite way.
"Well Pooch, I know what your thinking, are those cars going 40 or are they going 50,.... well, in all the hubub I kind of lost track myself, so I guess you better ask yourself this question, Do I feel lucky? Well do ya mutt?"
The "mutt" stayed and didn't get turned to street sausage lucky for him. Down on the turn on Vail I saw two more dogs but these dogs were still yawning and didn't feel like chasing anything before breakfast so we were all good and I called them good dogs.
Somewhere around here I took a picture of Picacho peak in the mist. Yes, it was a rainy day ride. I had been lucky to miss a set of showers thus far and would continue down to Picacho peak.


Past Picacho Peak was another story. A large thunderstorm cell had just moved out and most of the streams that flow across the road, were flowing, and some had large deposites of sand left a long ways up the pavement, meaning if I had been an hour or two earlier I would have been facing hip deep fast moving water. As is I had to navigate beaches that were made of of 8-12 inch deep sand, mud and other refuse. Somewhere along this strange stretch we call the frontage road I found another amusing sign.

"Looks like Mr. Incredible has had to do some freelance to pay the bills."

After managing to get through the frontage road without a flat (miracle of miracles) I got my card signed at Marana and was off only to notice a disturbing construction sign on the side of Sanders that said Sandario road was closed and to take the detour. Well, I decided I would see for myself and luckily I was pleasantly surprised to find out they either had not closed it yet or they were closing it further down than Mile Wide road. Hope it is the latter for the people riding this weekend.

The stretch through the Tucson mountains was pretty as always and went fairly quickly. I took a brief stop at the Circle K on Mission road for a drink and to fill the bottles and was off up Helmet peak road heading into some showers. Before I got to the rain I was passed by two roadies in matching kit setup for time trialing. They were a lot faster than I was and decided to let them go as the two of us were on very different rides. Not too far after they came screaming back down the hill and I found out why in a few minutes, it was raining. I put on my jacket and continued on up the hill and finally got to the top and made sure to go straight. Surprisingly the hill on the way to Duval mine road seemed just as hard as last year despite my lighter rig. I think I was fatiguing a little faster than I would have liked to admit though I was keeping my heartrate in the lower end of zone 3. Anyway, I got to the Continental control and decided to buy a pizza to get the old furnace going again. It worked for a bit but I was getting some crazy headwinds here and kept noticing that to the north where I was headed there was a monster of a thunderstorm. I took a little comfort in noting that the last few days had the storms tracking north and in fact it had moved out just before I got to Sahuarita. Unfortunately it had left a wake of crap on the road. I was forced into the car lane many times due to things in the road and by the time I got to the roadrunner market my tire was squishy and I was freezing. That storm must have been a cold front as well as the temps since Helmet peak had been lower than they had been at the start line. Roadrunner market marked a time to reflect on my situation as I mulled over a cheeseburger and a bottle of fuse. I evaluated the following conditions-

• Light was jury rigged and undependable
• Temps were considerably lower and this was still 2000 feet below the elevations I would need to ride at most of the night.
• I was cold and wet and not too far off from being uncontrollably cold.
• Tire was flat and the roads ahead were likely even worse due to storms visible up in the higher country as I cruised down the Nogales Highway.
• I was really tired for some bizarre reason, my eyesight was getting a little funky.
• I was all alone out here and Elgin control was not an option for getting warmed up, Help would be a few hours away.
• 1 flat could be enough of a pause to start hypothermia and the chance of flatting was increased due to the recent storms.

Perhaps it was the warm store, but I rather think that with all the little things coming together I decided to do something I had never done before and that was to end a ride prematurely. I guess it happens to everyone sooner or later. Of course this decision would affect my goals for the rest of the year since this ride was my booster to a longer ride this summer but sometimes things are just not in the cards. Maybe next year. I called Susan to let her know and to get Bruce Chandler's cell phone number (Bruce had offered assistance when I did the 400 solo if I had problems and I hoped his offer held good for the 600). I happened to get ahold of Bruce just as he was walking out of the office and he was fine with picking me up (I have to tell you, even if you aren't riding with them it is good to have friends nearby when you are in a jam). Between my incoherent talk of Sahuarita road and Bruce's questions we managed to confirm my location at the RoadRunner market which Bruce knew and the rescue wagon was on its way (well actually it was the rescue sedan but I am not picky). It was nice to get into the car out of the wind. I was kind of bummed most of the night. It was a little difficult to deal with my first DNF. Not that I ever looked down on someone else who DNF'd but it was a new thing for me and it was sort of something I had to come to terms with. Sometimes there are things we haven't planned for, sometimes our bodies throw us a loop, sometimes the equipment (or the memory that was supposed to remind us to fix it) goes on the fritz, sometimes the weather is against us, and sometimes, on rare occasions, they all come together and stop us in our tracks. So, I will look on the bright side, the Long Distance riding season is over for me (yeah, just going to do those little century things now for a bit) and I can now catch up on all those things around the house that I have forsaken (like the retaining wall I need to build in the back yard, just what I need too, more upper body muscle mass, ugggh!). Oh well, it has been a good season, I think I have had enough of long rides alone for a bit. Maybe Bruce and Steve will let me tag along on a century one of these Saturdays, might even have to break out the upright bike again.

A short? training ride before work.....

Looking south towards Sacaton.

Well, since I haven't been riding much the last week (always seems like one thing or another has come up). I decided I should do my "long" commute before work as today is the last day for a good training ride since next week will be tapering. So with that in mind I was up at 4:10 ready to be on the road by 4:15. Except it didn't really work that way. For one thing, I had to get the water bottles ready. For another I couldn't find a thing to eat, until, having a sudden college dorm flashback brought on by desperation I put some Hersheys chocolate syrup on two pieces of bread and ate it. It actually wasn't half bad, not better than jam, but not fully bad either. After pumping up the tires and fetching the arm and leg warmers I was on the road at 4:35. I was fairly warm most of the way out of town until I started approaching Queen Creek. That is where there is a bit of a valley. The headwind wasn't helping either. I was keeping around 16 mph. I figured I would pick up speed when I turned toward Coolidge (which I did). Making my way past all the new little develo-burgs that are springing up down the hunt highway I was to Coolidge before the sunrise was over. Going from Coolidge to Chandler I was in the low 20s most of the way. It was a beautiful morning, no rain, no headwinds, just a nice pleasant morning and the legs were jazzed as I was working on drinking better. I managed to stay strong all the way in until I rolled into work a few minutes before nine. How is that for timing? 4 hours and 15 minutes of riding and 78.2 miles, not too bad for a morning commute into work.

Just before getting into work I got to ponder on the name of the team Liqui gas (cycling team in europe). Having just had some Liqui Gas of my own (glad it was toward the end of the ride) I determined it must be a non-profit comany figuring out ways to help cyclists who suffer from Liqui gas.

Well, thats it for the 600k training! We'll see how we do next Friday!

Three kids and a Dad at Le Grande Tour XX

Well, Saturday I took three of my kids down to Casa Grande to ride the 10 mile version of Le Grande Tour. The two 4 year olds would be riding and the 3 year old would be supervising from the trailer. Brutal headwinds would dog the first 4 miles and a few adults dropped out that I know of. But once we got around the corner the boys did great.

Pre-Race team strategy meeting.

Our future Heras warms up.

These guys don't look so tough.

Three to get ready and four to......

Well, they haven't quite grasped the Paceline idea yet but it will come.

To the victors go the spoils.

Ok, enough resting.

Well, the resting Heartrate has .been back in the upper 40's for the last two mornings, and the legs are feeling better so I thought today would be a good day to pick up the commute again. It was a cold morning with frost on the roof but warmed up quickly. I took it easy but managed to average 18 mph on the way in. It was nice to be on the bike again and the legs still had the faintest tinge of fatigue but not enough to worry about. Looking forward to riding the family ride portion of the Le Grande Tour Saturday with my two 4 year old sons (they have done 12 miles before so I figure they are up to it) and my 3 year old daughter (she is riding in a trailer as she is not quite big enough for the Trail-a-Bike yet). It should be fun. My wife thinks we are crazy driving an hour to participate in a 10 mile bike ride but I think the kids will be really excited when they see all the other cyclists.