New Years Resolution

In the past I've always thought new years resolutions were stupid. I'd make them, then forget about them after February. The only one I've kept relatively well was to stop drinking soda, and that is iffy. However on the Highway 39 ride Joseph and I got to talking about New Years resolutions and he had a really good one. He resolved to put more miles on his bike than on his car. This would include mileage that he would accrue going to races, some of which can be hundreds of miles away. I thought this was a great resolution, so great in fact that I decided to copy it. Sorry Joseph, I'm taking your idea.

So for 2008 I resolve to put more miles on my bike than on my car. I'm even going to put a little window on the right to log the total number of miles that I've ridden vs. the miles I've driven. this is going to include all miles, even miles that I'm driving to get to events (including the Death Ride which is over 400 miles away).

I actually think this resolution will be easy for me to do. I found out today that my company is moving it's office to a location that is literally 3/4 of a mile from Griffith Park. This means I'll have a 4-5 mile commute to work, and I'll have ample time to do quick hill repeat rides in the park. I used to do lunch time rides in Azusa when I worked for that printing company, and that was great for my over all fitness. Even if I count my daily commute at 9 miles a day, and multiply that by the number of days worked in a year it's about 2,400 miles.

In fact, I'm actually ahead of the curve already. I did about 27.5 miles on Tuesday, and I rode to work from Corina's house today. So my totals look like this so far.

Bike mileage = 31.65
Car mileage = 0

Awesome. Read more!

Happy New Years!

Happy New Years everyone! There are a lot of different things going on right now, and for cyclists, there were a few different new years rides such as the PCH ride or the Mt. Wilson ride. True to form I did neither, as both would have been two difficult for me. Not difficult because they're hard, but seeing how my New Years eve diet typically consists of Doritos, "Pig in a Blankets" and Vodka, I just didn't feel like getting up at 6:00 a.m. to do a ride at 7:30.

Instead I opted to sleep in till 11:00, mosey around until my friend Corina made breakfast, play some video games, eat, and then go for a ride. Corina makes some great pancakes, and I was starving so they hit the spot. I kicked it around the house for another hour after we ate and played some Tony Hawk, then hit the road around 1:30 p.m. I just did a quick 30 miles around the park.

I took some pictures as usual, but nothing of real note to talk about on this ride. It was pretty standard Griffith Park fare today. One awesome thing of note: It was so clear, that you could see all the way to Long Beach. LONG BEACH!!!

I wish I could sleep in like that

The best pancakes ever.

This spot is pretty sweet. In Los Angeles, none the less.

No New Years day ride would be complete without a view like this.

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Highway 39, Attempt #2

Saturday was my second attempt at highway 39, and although we didn't make it all the way to Angeles Crest like we had intended I feel the ride was an overall success as we reached 6000 ft of climbing in 86 miles.

I met Joseph from Bicycle Johns at the Rose Bowl and we rolled out around 8:15. We got caught in with the slow Montrose ride as they were leaving the Trader Joe's in South Pasadena. We hung in with that group until we got to Duarte road in Arcadia, from there we rolled out on our own. we made it to Encanto park in about an hour, took a short break then rolled out to head up the canyon.

Highway 39 is a special route for me. Beautiful rolling roads for the first 12 miles and then up up up. It's the kind of ride that just keeps going up for what seems like forever. But the scenery is beautiful, the views are incredible and it's very lightly traveled. Actually, the last 15 to 20 miles were blocked to traffic. We hopped the gate, ignoring the obvious Road Closed sign. We ran into a Ranger and a Sheriff, but neither seemed to pay us any mind so we kept trudging upwards.
One of the really really cool geographic areas on highway 39 is a high altitude field. After you've climbed up and up, you come upon this open area, where there had been a fire a few years back. Now it's an open field of green grass, with charred trees sticking out like old worn fence posts.

Joseph spent most of the climb way out in front of me as I was stopping to take pictures and am slower than he is. The climb burned my legs, and I could feel the affect of the thin air as I got close to 5000 ft. We stopped at a vista point that was about 5500 ft up and about 43 miles into the ride. The view was incredible, through the clouds you could see the backside of Mt. Wilson from where we were standing. We, rather I, decided this was the turn around point. It wasn't too much farther to Angeles Crest, but I'd had enough climbing and I needed to get home at a reasonable time. Needless to say, the ride was pretty incredible. You can see pictures of the ride on the Gallery.

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I've never liked Judge Judy, But...

This video was on Bicycling Magazine's website. I then found it on Youtube and posted it here for your enjoyment! I've never been a fan of Judge Judy, or any of these court drama shows as I've always felt they make a mockery of the judicial system. Now that the judicial system makes a mockery of the judicial system they don't seem all that bad. But this video made me like Judge Judy a little more.

What was disturbing about this video was the defendants attitude towards the cyclist, and cycling in general. First, the husband makes the comment "well, he created the situation by riding his bike in the first place". Obviously ridiculous right? But a lot of people have the attitude that cyclists put themselves in harms way knowingly and therefore don't have the same rights as pedestrians or other vehicles. They look at bicycling as a frivolous past time that when practiced excludes the practitioner from their legal rights. What also bugged me was when the female defendant said "here he was riding his bike 40 miles away from his house, going 30-40 miles an hour" like bikes need to be kept in the driveway and should only go up to 10 mph.

Then the defendants tried to cop to only paying 500 for all the medical and damages because the plaintiffs wife has jumped the gun and said over the phone "yea, 500 should cover everything" which is just completely stupid.

Thankfully, Judge Judy saw through the crap and legal bias towards cyclists and awarded the guy $3,000. What is important to take away from this though is the attitudes of the defendants towards the cyclist, and cycling in general. This attitude isn't confined to these two morons, it's shared among millions of morons world wide.

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Stupid Government

Merry Chrismahaunakwanzaa everyone! I hope this post holiday dispatch finds you comfortably situated after your respective holiday celebrations. Remember, the new year is fast approaching which means a whole new year for our awesome government to say lots of things and do very little.

Those of you who know me best know that I can be a bit opinionated when it comes to my feelings on various American issues; and that I often feel a bit, how should we say... dissatisfied(?) with the performance of our elected leaders. A recent "adjustment" in the nations Energy bill shows just how committed our politicians are to the environment, energy independence and of course the paramount issue of this blog, cyclists rights.

--The Senate recently stripped the bicycle commuter tax benefit from the Energy bill, while reinstating the Hummer tax benefit, which the House had removed from the energy bill.-- Click here for details

I don't know about you, but giving a 100% tax break to Ad men, "consultants", lawyers and doctors for "work vehicles over 6,000 lbs" doesn't scream "We need to break our dependence on oil". One would think that if our elected officials were truly committed to the environment, sustainable technology and energy independence they would all be jumping to vote for ANYTHING that would get our lazy asses out of our cars and onto something that has zero carbon emissions and other beneficial side effects such as, I don't know, good health? Not so much it seems, I guess big oil does still make the world (or at least America) turn.

Quite frankly I'm disgusted. I would hope that anyone who is able to read at a 5th grade level would be disgusted too. If you're as disgusted as me, and you have a little time between games of free-cell then write your senator. Don't know who your senator is? That's ok, I've included a link that lists the Senators by State in Alphabetical order (starting with Arkansas). Click here to find Senators by State

I think what our senators are really trying to say here is "We don't really care about energy independence and the environment since we can afford gas, heat and AC in our own homes thanks the the billions in handouts we get from Exxon and Halliburton, but we'll continue to give it plenty of lip service until Hollywood and the media determine that it's not a hot issue any more". I don't even want to surmise what their feelings are about cyclists rights, although I'll hazard a guess that it's probably on the bottom rung of things to discuss, if its even made it onto the ladder. Read more!

12-22-2007 Secret Slopes Ride

The first rule of the SSR is you don't talk about the SSR. The second rule of the SSR is you don't talk about the SSR. The third rule of the SSR is if it's your first time at the SSR, you have to ride it. I've begun to take a very "Locals only" attitude towards some of the routes I know as I don't want these already rough roads being heavily treaded on by people who don't appreciate such natural beauty. One of those rides I'm very protective of is what I call the Secret Slopes ride. It's a ride that is easily accessible, yet very lightly traveled. I think that many people know it's there, but few ascend it's rocky, unmaintained roads. This is fine with me. The fewer people on my routes the better. I won't provide route maps of this route, as my attitude is now "I'll tell you about it if you already know about it". However, here are some pictures from Saturdays Secret Slopes Ride.

One of the many winding ascents... they become descents later!

The Bend of Destiny

Through the hills

It's a magical place, populated by many giant Bonzai Trees.

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Wow.

I moved away from Lawrence Ks when I was 21 years of age. A lot of my friends are still there. A lot of them are in this video, which is funny.

Now I remember why I left Lawrence.

Enjoy

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One Down 15 To Go

And boy was it a tough one. Not because 100 miles is something that's hard, or that 6,000 feet of climbing is hard either, but the two put together at an average speed of 18 miles an hour is. Add in not eating right the night before, or the morning of and you have a bonkalicious recipe for leg burnin' disaster. Yes, I was poorly prepared. But I finished in under 6hrs and 30 minutes total time on the road so I'm happy. Total ride time was 5hrs. 45 mins. as I took some pretty subtantial breaks here and there. If you had seen me going up Encinal you wouldn't have known me. I was like a ghost, a sissy ghost, a wiped out loser sissy ghost who was crying for his mama. It was pathetic. Here are some lessons I learned on Friday, some I already knew but ignored... A mistake I won't make again.

1) Don't spend the first 20 miles off the front pulling at 23-25 miles an hour through Agoura hills

2) After spending the first 20 miles off the front, don't continue to take 3-5 minute Pulls on the pace line through Camarillo.

3) Don't "Pick up the Slack" for the Jack holes taking 30 second pulls, saving themselves for the climb, because you feel obligated to since the guy who did RAAM is doing it.

4) Don't eat only Clif blocks and Rice Krispy treats.

5) Don't have 4 vodka cranberries the night before a ride.

6) Don't feel like you have to be in the lead group.

7) The noodle content in a bowl of Chicken Noodle Soup is not enough to constitute "Carbing up"

8) 7-11 muffin's are not a substantial breakfast

9) Do not drink a Monster energy drink 5 minutes before you roll out.

I will say this, John and Kevin were awesome. Kevin was on a 4 man RAAM team and is a freakin' monster. John stayed back and rode with me as I dragged my pathetic ass up and over Encinal and Mulholland. There were times on Encinal where I wanted to throw in the towel, thanks to John I didn't.

All in all it was an awesome ride! Thanks Planet Ultra.

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2008 + Route Profiles = Awesomeness!

Now that I've figured out how to add pictures the way I want (yea, I'm an idiot, I've been on blogger for how long now?) Here is a sampling of the routes for next year. This isn't all the rides, just some. The Planet Ultra Rides aren't up yet, I'll add those soon. And to start the season, I'll be getting ahead in 2007.

Planet Ultra Christmas Century, Dec. 15th 2007

Stage Coach Century, January 12th

Solvang, March 8th Breathless Agony, May 3rd 2008 Ojai Valley Century, May 31stThe Death Ride, July 12thLighthouse Century, August or September... Spooktacular Century, October something

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Pictures!

I've been wanting to put pictures on this thing for I don't know how long. So here are a couple. This is Griffith park, one is of the view, the other is of the fire damage from May.



These are from a ride I did on December first. They were taken by David Root, a Cat 1/2 racer from Portland who was in town visiting his sister. Thanks David!

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End of the Year is Drawing Near

2007 is drawing to a close. 2008 is rapidly approaching and things have begun to line out pretty nicely. Depsite not being anywhere near the fitness level I had planned to be I still feel pretty good about my plans for 08. I don't think the major events are out of reach as I still have 4-5 months worth of solid training time to prepare for the big climb rides. Now what I really need to do is focus through the holidays and make sure my peak fitness hits at the end of April/beginning of May. I'm feeling pretty good about how things have progressed in general, and despite there being a number of distractions over the past month (work is busy, trying to move the office, new technology...) I still am feeling extremely focused on my goals. I can't wait for the 12th. Despite the Stagecoach century being one of my easier centuries it really represents the starting line. All of 2008 feels like a race to me, with Stagecoach being the first stage. I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do to represent all of the events together. I thought about writing the name of all 15 events on each race bib, and then crossing them out as I go. I also thought about putting little "100" stickers on my bike. I don't know. I can't decide. All I know is I'm ready, and not ready. I'm ready to get this shit started. Lets go!

A couple of side notes:

I finally bought a Garmin, it's awesome. greatest thing ever. I've been logging miles in it, however I forgot to turn it on the last ride I did, and then the next day's ride was a bomb with 3 flats in 30 minutes. I threw in the towel.

The Jersey's have been ordered and the proof has been approved. The proof for the bib shorts was wrong but since I'm the only one ordering the bib shorts no one else should care.

Do not offer me a beer if you see me out. I'm trying to limit my consumption of alcohol to cut body fat in preparation for this effort, and being a good Buddhist I cannot say no to hospitality... so please, do not offer me beer. (you can however offer me Mexican food or Sushi).

Some of you have ordered Jerseys sight unseen. I cannot thank you enough.

so Thank you thank you lots.

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Purpose, Framework, Whatever You Want to Call It.

There is a lot going on right now. Things are really shaping up for next year quite nicely. I've registered for my first 3 rides (the only 3 with registration that's open at this point). I'm beginning to get really excited. After the rides with Jerry and during the week of the fire I decided to give myself a little couch time. It was great. I needed a little rest. I let my mind spread out a bit and let my legs soften up some. I made some decisions about my training and figured some new strategies out that I think will make a difference for the really tough rides. The biggest adjustment though is the framework for this grand effort next year. I made a decision to do this thing over the next year as proof to myself that I could. That was it. However after reading all the e-mails that have been going back and forth at PAA, and the articles in VeloNews about bike/car incidents I decided I needed to give this effort a greater direction. I decided that all of this, these 15 rides, would be a memorial to those who can't ride. This would be a dedication to those who are no longer with us, not because of disease but because of the carelessness of others on the road. When I was 18 I was hit by a car, hard. I was lucky. I lived. Not 2 years later a guy was riding down the street a couple blocks from my house when he was run down by a cement truck. He died. People are killed on their bikes all too often. It's time that we as riders come together as a community and stand up and say "Hey, we're here too. See us, respect us, give us the space we deserve." On each of these rides I'll be wearing the same jersey, I've included a picture of it below. If you see me, say hi. The jersey is my dedication to those who aren't with us anymore. And it's a reminder to all the drivers on the road, Please, share Read more!

That was fun.

Today's ride was another Jerry Sanders special. It was freakin' awesome. We started at the Vons parking lot off of Mulholland in Agoura Hills. We rode north to Burbank and then over to Topanga via some side streets. We hit our first climb, Santa Susana after setting a fair pace up Topanga. My legs felt great and was leading the group for the first half of the climb. At the halfway point though the group split, with Jerry, Terry, Chris and one other rider going off the front. It was fine, I was trying to pace myself early so I could compete on some of the later climbs. We made our way down Los Angeles Ave, and when we got out to some of the rollers we I decided to initiate a break. I set a goal, and got to it. I was able to stay away from the group for the first roller, and that's what I wanted to do. the climb on Moorpark was great too, I was able to stay on Terry's wheel, and then I was able to stay within a few seconds of him and Jerry on the Potrero Canyon climb as well. I wanted to stay with those two for at least a couple climbs and that's what I wanted. On the last climb I was left behind, and then on 7 minute I just took it easy. All and all the ride was fucking sweet. It kicked my ass, totally kicked my ass. I don't care though, I think I'll go do it again soon.

My training isn't going exactly as planned, but I'm not to worried, not yet at least. I'm getting in good mileage and I'm getting in good amounts of climbing as well. I'm also getting a good workout by riding with the guys from the club. Most of these guys are a lot faster than me, and it really forces me to push it up and put myself beyond my comfort level. This coming weekend I'm going to try to get my mileage back up above 90, while adding some serious elevation. I think I'll try that Angeles Crest/Little Tujunga/Sand Canyon route I made up a while back. That should be good about now. Read more!

(Poorly) Paved Metaphor

I rode some this weekend. It was fun. I rode with other people. That made it more fun. It's nice to be on a ride and not have to talk to yourself to have a conversation. Being on a ride with other people also tends to make the ride more enjoyable, especially if it's a group of people who do what you want them to do. In this case I wanted this group to ride faster and harder than I normally do, so I would be put out of my normal pace and forced to work. That's what they did. it was great. The route was pretty awesome too. Although I could have done without some of the long false flats on the route I understand what Jerry was trying to do with it. The climbs were pretty awesome as well. There was a nice climb up Davenport north of Santa Clarita, and then there was Sand Canyon and Little Tujunga. I've done both of those climbs before, but not in a long time. It was great to reacquaint myself with some old friends. The best thing about the ride was getting to see how I stood up against some of the other guys from the club, despite not finishing the ride (I assisted our SAG vehicle in finding Brad, who had a bit of a technical problem on Little T)I still felt great and felt even better after the ride. the coolest was that all of us were PAA riders and it was cool to see 8 guys out in the kit rolling down the road. I think I'm going to have to go do a modified version of Jerry's route soon, maybe this weekend.

Sunday was supposed to be a mid distance work out that turned into a recovery ride, that turned into a short climbing, mid intensity ride that turned into a bit of a "Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy" moment. I decided to do the secret ride as I had slept in, ate a big, fat, late breakfast, and had to go to a birthday party at 2p.m. I rolled out at noon and headed for Griffith Park. On the secret ride there is a spot where I like to stop and look down on Burbank. So I stopped. After watching a funeral for a minute I realized that this place in the road, and specifically in this ride, is a lot like my life. The first part is flat and easy, with a few rolling hills here and there. the second part is all up hill, with sections of varying difficulty, but nothing I couldn't overcome as I've made it to this point. Turning to look up the road you see that it bends around a sharp switchback, pitching up steeply, and then disappears behind the trees. It looks very difficult, but I've done it before, and I know with no doubt I could do it again. This place in the road became an incredibly powerful metaphor.

I've done this ride many times and have always cursed this last switchback. Yesterday, though, I smiled and laughed as I passed it on my way to the top the hill. Much like this ride I see the next switchback in the climb that is my life as the toughest. I've seen a lot, but nothing like what I have planned for the next decade. As I look ahead in my life, much as I looked ahead on this climb, I realize that the greatest difficulties are yet to come over the next 10 years, but with them will come the greatest rewards. The top of the hill isn't far, and anyone who has done this ride knows not only how great the view is at the top, but how awesome the descent can be! Read more!

Lazy September

Now that it's October I can start writing (and riding) again. for some reason, September turned into Lazy September; similar to Lazy Sunday, only for a whole month. I did go out and ride some, most notably on that day we got a bunch of rain. I did some other mid week training rides, but that's it. Total for the month was just barely over 200 miles. Below is the map of the rainy day ride. It was awesome. Awesome and wet. The only thing that sucked was my shoes turning into reservoirs. I love my shoes, but they have minimal ventilation. Because of that, they hold water like a cactus.


October started on the right foot though. I went out last night and did almost 30 miles and a little bit of climbing. Hill repeats in Griffith Park are always fun. I like it. It never ceases to amaze me how the entrance to the park above the freeway is always ten degrees cooler than the surrounding area. I don't know why, and I had never noticed it before until my friend Paul pointed it out to me. Last night it was a little chilly, and I got a bit of a bronchial cough towards the end but that's alright.
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