Where is the good weather hidden? It is supposed to rain again, over the weekend, on my beloved Saturday. Does it mean I will have to wait longer?
I am so frustrated I got a pass to the gym. Spinning classes. At 5:40 AM. Have tried to get there in time every day, now, but I am not desperate enough yet.
Yes, it’s true. I have been working on an online training calendar while you were not watching and the weather was too dready to make sense of anything.
The Polar interface comes with a set of beatiful and handy tools that generate graphs. My task is to take those graphs and make them a nice and easy to use set of pages. And maybe I can come up with my own set of graphs – like how my biking affects my weight, etc… And of course it would be great to see if those hard-lost two pounds actually got me one second faster up Old La Honda!
With the growth of the enterprise team, we get a few people that are really into biking. I count six so far, and then there are more in the midst of other properties. Are we going to organize a team? Racing as we did in the old days around Woodside at the crack of dawn? Those were the days…
Weather is still bad, so the only newsworthy item is that the Polar interface really works well. Not getting into geek-talk, but I may come up with a better interface than what there is right now. And who knows, maybe I can integrate elevation data into klimb.
For a change, and not for long, sunday was actually a sunny day. It was still a little chilly, but I managed to do my ride in the early morning. Of course this means I had wonderful competition for Old La Honda, and there was even someone that passed me and zipped up, never to be seen again. Lucky I was eating a Starbucks scone, or it would have been the first time I actually got passed!
Continue readingThe weather still feels more like february than like april, and it shows. My bike is sluggish, average speed down to barely above 19.4, and I didn’t even add any mountain.
I rode from home to the end of Canada and back. I wanted to go up 92 and return on Skyline, but it looked as if it would be even colder up there, and I would be even lonelier. So I just turned around and traced my way back, thinking of nothing but the rain and the chill in the air.
I have been waiting three weeks, but now the weather is finally calming down and I get a chance to get rid of the excess fat that has been a real problem! I don’t fit anything any more – not even my biking gear!
Actually, frustrated by the protracted El Nino weather, I decided to join the local Y, whose spinning classes are famous. Of course it is a bit off season, now, since the nice and warm weather is about to start.
Continue readingIt has been an unseasonably wet april, the cruellest month for bikers. It’s been so bad that I gained 5 pounds of weight (3 of them PURE FAT!).
It was an odd day – cool and hazy, with a cover of high clouds that were thin enough to let the sun shimmer through, but not enough to burn off. Some smaller storm from the Aleutians, I would venture to guess.
I took Ti on a spin, heading first to Woodside. I wasn’t sure whether I was in the mood, but then I decided it was time to smell the forest and headed up Old La Honda. It went very well: after you know the road, it’s not difficult to pace yourself and make sure you have enough energy when you get to the top. For the first time, I used the stopwatch and clocked in at less than 23 minutes bottom to top. And since I felt like the king of the hill (and in dire need to lose some weight), I took the turn to the right and zapped first to La Honda, then again up to King’s Mountain Road. All in all about 3000 ft ascent – still only one third of what I’ll have to do to get to the top of Haleakala, but I am proud, nonetheless.
Continue readingThere has been a lot going on, in the last few monts… On the biking front, two main events:
1. Three major accidents. One was on my way home, on Foothill just past El Monte. A branch was sticking out into the bike lane, and I hit it while I was checking out my speed (28mph). The second one was a stupid slipping while riding in to work (and oddly enough, although I merely slipped on a railroad track, this one is the one that hurt the most). The third one was on Grant Road, while riding in to work. A nice nurse thought it would be wise to get a coffee before getting to work, and she cut right in front of me. As almost accidents go, this one was really ok. The lady came out of her slightly oversized Tahoe and was shaking all over. I ended up hugging her and telling her everything was alright.
Continue readingWell, it’s the rainy season, so I have been driving in to work lately. Not good for my body, of course, if one excepts the dangers of riding. Did I tell you about the one lady that thought is was a smart idea to wedge her car into a jammed intersection with an illegal right turn, and almost got me?
Besides the point. The main news is that my car’s power steering left me. So now I don’t have any choice but to ride in to work. Luckily the rain has subsided (will come back on Monday, they say), and it has been fun. I don’t know, this Christmas period with the short days and the cold never quite made me happy; having a reason to jump on the bike and don the spandex is really good, or otherwise I would just commiserate the love handles and myself, and gorge another pound of chocolate to make me forget. So what’s been going on? The weather turned mild (so much so that I felt comfortable going in to work in shorts instead of long bibs) – another sign of an El Nino year that is somehow working out just right. Today is such a beautiful day that I’m likely to hop and join the Saturday group of Alto Velo – for now just from afar, and I’ll just leave around 9:15 to make sure I get there in time to follow them. After all, it’s the social ride.
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