TEAM IN TRAINING BUDDY RIDE DANVILLE

We had a great buddy ride with Team in Training sat. starting in Danville. The route was 47.5 miles but I'm going to call it 50 miles because that sounds way better, and it's half of what we are going to ride in Solvang. Since it was a buddy ride we didn't have to ride in our normal ride groups. This was cool because Heather was able to tag along with the Wild Ones. I felt she was a great addition to our group. She had a nice strong ride. I really enjoy riding with Heather because I can see her improve every time we ride. After our rides we always talk about the ride, what went right and what went wrong. Heather always works on what went wrong and becomes a lil better cyclist every group ride.
The ride started out foggy, but that didn't slow us down, we had a nice pace going until I had a flat tire on a narrow road. We waited for a driveway to pull into so we could change the tire safely. As we were changing the tire we were passed by another group. That doesn't make us happy. The route was fun for me because it's the back roads I take to get to Vasco when 580 is backed up. So we passed the other group after we got rolling and made a bathroom stop. Got passed by the group again. Passed them on the road, made another bathroom stop, got passed by the other group, passed the other group, we got another flat tire, got passed by the other group, passed them again on a nice gradual incline. DO YOU SEE A PATTERN HERE. SO OUR NEW NAME IS TEAM STOP AND GO. WE NEED TO WORK ON THIS. I THINK WE WILL HAVE TO PUNISH THE OTHER TEAMS NEXT SATURDAY AND MAKE THEM EAT THEIR WORDS. I was telling the other teams we were doing interval training.

But the other teams were talking about how good we looked pacelining and I was happy how we rode as a team. By the time Solvang comes we will be really strong I'm sure.

I was happy about 3 things that happened today. 1) I was able to ride with Heather
2) Everybody I talked to after the ride said they could have gone farther.
3) We all had a really good time after the ride in the parking lot
Mustang Sally was doing this crazy dance, asking me how I like looking at the back of her the whole ride. If I didn't love Sally so much I would have grabbed her and put her into a choke hold until she tapped out or passed out. Here are some pictures of my favorite Sally in the world.


Oh I forgot, We had a huge group of racers pass us. It was awesome to see. That was the closest I've been to a peloton. I so wanted to jump on their wheel and see how long I could hang with them...I hope to be able to do that soon. Sorry no pictures of that. I wish I had my camera ready.
Ok that's it for this post, but enjoy these random pictures I was taking of the group today.

THURSDAY NIGHT TRACK WORKOUT

On Thursday nights Team in Training East Bay meets at Dvc college in Pleasant Hill.
This is a little hard for me because I work mornings and should be going to bed when the work out is just ending. The workouts are from 6:30 to 8 pm, and about a 40 minute drive. Coach Wayne makes it all worth it. I really enjoy listening to him explain how the body works and why we do the stretches and the strength moves we do.
Coach Wayne is an Iron man competitor. When he speaks you have no choice but to listen. He controls the room or football field, his voice bounces off all the walls. I hope I get a chance to ride with Coach Wayne before our adventure is over, I bet he can push the pace pretty good. I actually want to do a tri event because of Wayne. If he is the head coach next year we are going to do it.
Well, last night after a warm up, did some running, yes running..and I'm far from a runner. We did a 30 minute run. We did 7 intervals of 3 min. run then 1 minute walk. For any of you that do interval training you know that the 3 minutes feels like forever and the 1 minute walk feels like 10 seconds. At one point in our run, we must have been looking sorry or struggling because Coach Wayne came and ran with us and showed us some techniques to running. It made sense what he was saying, but it didn't feel like i could make my body do it, but my heart rate came down when I attempted to do it.
It's funny when Heather and I walk, I can't even come close to keeping up with her, that girl can walk. But on the run part of the intervals I feel I have a slight advantage over her. I had to throw that in because she makes me feel like a little kid when we walk together.
After our run it was time for the fun part of the night. Planks, squats, lunges, and stretching. My legs kill after Thursday nights. I guess that means I'm not doing my cross training consistent enough during the week. Dvc is a nice cork track, and I was nice and sweaty after the run. So when I was laying on the ground stretching and I got up there was a perfect sweat outline of me on the track. It was hilarious, and by the way my outline looked pretty darn good.
One of the things I remember about the night was Coach Wayne saying, I know I made you all drive here to just run for 30 minutes. It's not about the running it's about the team being together. He is so right, I love the friendships we are making with Team in Training. They said we would at the information meeting, and I was thinking yeah right just teach me how to do a century ride. But they are right we are making friendships that I hope will last for a long time.
Friday is a recovery day, a very needed one, my legs feel wasted. I rode 3 days in a row and then the track night. Saturday will be a buddy ride in Danville area. 45 miles, we are both looking forward to the ride and will update you on Sunday.

3 BEARS TEAM IN TRAINING LOOP

I have plenty to say about this Team in Training ride. The 3 bears loop is the most climbing we have done so far since our short cycling hobby started just a few months ago. The route was 40 miles with 3780 ft of climbing. The Solvang Century we are training for is 100 miles with 5000 ft of climbing.. So you can see this was a good training ride for us.

We both were ready and really looking forward to this ride for weeks. This is the first ride that we started in reverse order.. the slower groups first so we would all finish about the same time. The groups left in 30 minute increments. Heather's group left 30 minutes before we did ( the wild ones). The ride started in town and then led onto a bike/walking trail that was beautiful.

At the end of the trail was a much needed bathroom stop. Then on towards the fun stuff the 3 bears. Its named the 3 bears because there are 3 climbs. Baby bear, Mama bear, and Poppa bear. Team in Training placed the S.A.G (support and gear) stop right before the climbs so we could fuel our bodies. Well at the S.A.G I saw Heather's group. When they saw us coming they all scrambled to their bikes to hit the road. Their goal was to beat us back to the end of the ride. (yah right.. we are the wild ones). Not but 3 minutes after they left I get a phone call... Hey Hunny the love of my life.. do you have an extra chain.. I just broke mine. Heather is starting to put out so much power that she is busting chains climbing now. Well I couldn't help Heather, I felt terrible, so I sent the S.A.G to her. When our group rolled by Heather and poor broken blue she had a sad pouty face on sitting in the passenger seat.
At that point I figured Heather's day was over and I would see her back at the box waiting for me. But since Rich the S.A.G guy is so totally awesome he got Heather to a bike store and got a new chain put on blue and got her back to with in a couple of miles where she broke her chain in no time flat. Heather was the last rider on the loop at this point. So lil Lance or psycho Santos (sally's name for us) took off like a crazy women chasing down every rider she saw in front of her. I would have loved to seen Heather ride like that. I would have been a proud Hubby.
Well about me now... I felt great on the 3 bears... and even pig farm climb wasn't too bad (another climb after the 3 bears, feels like a wall.. crazy) even though pig farm had some riders walking up the hill... So When we coasted in (in first place by the way) I had no idea what Heather's status was. After a few phone calls by our teammates I found out Heather was on the road. Few minutes later I see this cute girl come flying in the parking lot hooting and hollering with one hand in the air and one foot. I was like who is this girl. Then I saw it was LiL Lance celebrating her victory pumping a fist in the air.

I was amazed at her performance, and very thankful to Richard for going above and beyond getting Heather back on the road.
While Heather and Blue were at the bike shop she found a Lance Armstrong lunch box..I so want it...it was for sale to the right person.. I guess that meant we couldn't afford it... lol
On Sunday we took a nice 10 mile recovery ride with the family. It was nice, my 13 year old is a strong rider and says he wants a road bike :)

Heather still looks great even though she wasn't on her beautiful carbon fiber Fuji

Lacey our future little female road racer is so much fun to ride with

The very best part of the day was... the hug given to me by Mustang Sally at the end of the ride... phewww that girl.... lol

10 WEEKS TO SOLVANG SUMMARY

Well 10 weeks to Solvang is in the history books...we are now on 9 weeks until the big ride. I calculated our miles and hours in the saddle from last week. It was a good week. We rode 117 miles 40 miles being our longest ride and we were in the saddle a total of 8 hours felt like a good week. The weather looks bad this week and we are just starting to feel good, like we have no bugs etc. so we might do our training inside on our rollers this week. Next post will be about our 3 bears ride this past weekend.. that was our 40 mile ride.

As of Monday 1-11-10 we have 61 days till Solvang... getting closer ..
and we have 45 days till our deadline (feb. 25th) to hit our goal of $2500 each
as of today it looks like this......
HEATHER has 61 out of 100 $25 blocks full go heather
x x x x x x x x x x
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x o o o o o o o o o
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Michael is a little behind Heather with 49 out of 100 $25 blocks full :(
x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x o
o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o

Watch for the updates on the Loard's Ice Cream / Mike and Heather's Team in Training Adventure Fundraiser. Tentative date is Feb 7 2010. It will be an ice cream social with a 50/50 raffle, prize raffle , prize wheel, jail and bail , and maybe a band and face painting. So if anyone has some prizes they would like to donate to the raffle feel free to call Heather at 510 299 5177.

26 MILE RIDE WITH HEATHER 683 ft climbing

Heather is really impressing me.. she pushed really hard on our ride today.... Her flat speed is coming up and she is climbing better ... we didn't climb anything steep today but she didn't get out of her big ring.. when she would drop to small ring before on this route to the dam. Heather surprised me a couple of times... I looked back for her expecting to have dropped her.. and nope she was right on my wheel...
It would have been easy to say forget the ride today... it was cold and foggy.. as you can see from the pictures... but Heather said.. nope we have to ride... I wanted to sit on the couch after working my shift.. but she wins as always.. and we rode...
I stayed on Heather's wheel most of the time going up Camino Diablo... that's our climb..and she jumped out of the saddle to stay on top of the gear instead of dropping to small ring... again I was impressed and It's all because of her watching Lance win a mountain stage on a dvd Brentwood Bike Co. let us borrow.

One of the common questions we get when we share our adventure with people..is aren't you scared of cars hitting you... we have it in our head that we have right to the road.. and we need to share... I read many stories of Lance getting blown off the road and fighting with the drivers.. we haven't had to do that yet but I don't worry about it much.. I always listen to hear cars coming and if I don't hear them hitting the buttons in the middle of the road .. I have to admit I get a little nervous.

Heather's new quote
Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.
~Lance Armstrong

SAUSALITO TEAM IN TRAINING RIDE

What a great ride... besides the great cause and the great people associated with Team in Training... the ride locations are great. We have never ridden at any of the places we have gone so far, so it's exciting for us. One of our friends said rule of thumb is that the ride has to be double the amount of time it took you to drive to the location. I get the idea but it doesn't matter to me how far I have to drive because it's worth it to me to see new places and build relationships with the Team in Training participants.
The ride started at Mike's bikes in Sausalito. (great store by the way) it was exciting before we even left the parking lot because today was an extra high tide so we had to be careful where we parked our cars were in the flood zone. The route was a 35 mile ride that took us to the Golden Gate Bridge , down a cool bike path, and a great road that I don't even know the name but it reminded me our Redwood Road in Castro Valley.(I think it was paradise road, it was a big loop) We had a few nice climbs that felt really good.( we had about 1500 feet of climbing total) Me and my old girl Sammy were one today, she did everything right, everything I asked her to do ... she did it no questions asked. I was happy that every time I saw Heather she had a beautiful smile on her face. Heather and Old Blue were also getting along great. Heather told me on the way home that when she was climbing she thought of Lance and a mountain stage he won on the tour. We had watched it on DVD a few days earlier. She loved his cadence up the hills and how he would jump out of the saddle and then sit back down. Heather said if Lance can do it .. I can do it.. and she did .. Heather is turning into a LIL Lance.
The only bad thing about the ride to day was flat tires. Our group alone had like 5 flats and a whole bunch of problems that went along with them. Stems that were too short, broken stems, flats while waiting for others to fix their flats, it was crazy. My Sammy even got a flat on the rack while we ate lunch at the cafe.
Looking forward to our next team ride this weekend with Team in Training. The rides are going to get longer and more climbs each week, since we are getting closer to our century date.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

LOL this is what Heather came home to New Year's Eve
one step into the door and she said what happened to Old Blue.
what happened was I wanted to fine tune our ride position a lil bit so I put her neck on my bike because it was 10 mm. shorter than mine... It's crazy how 10 mm makes a big difference in your ride position... I felt I was a lil bit too stretched out and Heather is also so My neck is going into the extra parts pile and she is getting a new 70 mm neck. I love how many adjustments there are on these rode bikes. It's important to be comfy because you spend so much time on these bikes, hours at a time.
The list looks something like this
seat: forward and back , up and down, tilted down or up
seat post: set back or zero set back.
cleat position: you can slide feat forward back and twist them in or out and adjust the tension for the release.
necks: shorter or longer up or down and flip the neck for more aggressive or less position.
handle bars: roll them up or down and you can change brake lever positions and different bars have different shapes.
gears: front sprockets compact and regular or triple. rear cassette 10 speed or 9 speed. and all diff. kinds of combinations I have 12/25 and Heather has a 12/27 so the 12 tooth gear is for going fast and the 25 or 27 tooth gear is for easy pedalling for hills etc.
I guess fine tuning comes from my racing cars and jet skis days.. we never left them alone we always felt there was more there to make it faster and better. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't but you never know if you don't try. At least my tries are done after some research, I don't just do changes cuz I'm bored lol. There are many theories out there about ride position, that's why I talk to lots of people and read lots of articles and look what other people are doing on their bikes, then if it sounds good I try it.