my legs are made of ice cream

.....and I'm melting!

I love the sun and heat, but this has been a bit oppressive. I'm sweating just sitting at my desk. I've actually had a hard time dealing with the heat since my thyroid levels are corrected. Longer summer races just destroy me, but that's neither here nor there.










Wednesday is my weekend (sort of). I try not to schedule any appointments or big projects and just answer email and run errands. And I usually do a long ride.

My Wednesday riding partner for the past few years is my best friend, Kim. She's a super-skinny climber-girl and she's been pushing me to keep up with her (not easy when I was almost 200 pounds). Most weeks, I try to get in a good solid 4-5 hour ride with lots of climbing. We don't usually ride super-fast, and sometimes we even stop for coffee (even in the summer, Hutch).

Two weeks ago we climbed Page Mill. I was killin' it for the first 3rd of the 9-mile climb, but then the heat and my dehydration sucked the life out of me. Last week we couldn't ride together. So this week, we decided to climb a less-exposed climb -- Old La Honda.

Everyone knows their PB up OLH. I've watched mine drop (early in my cycling career), then rise (while I got fatter and fatter), and it's again been dropping. I haven't ridden OLH since May, and my weight and power have both improved so I assumed I'd be on track for a good time.

I jammed up the early parts of the climb. Because I was trying for a PB, I didn't wait for Kim and just rode my own ride. A couple of times I glanced back and didn't see her, so I thought I was doing great. I kept calculating my time and thought this would be the day.

Alas, about half way up the climb, I started waning. I could feel my breakfast in my belly and my heart in my throat. And even in the shade of the big trees, I was sweating buckets. But I kept pushing on.

As I passed the second sign for Upenuf Road, I glanced back to see Kim around the switchback. That was motivation enough to push to the point of recycling breakfast to the top.

But dammit, my time was 2 minutes slower than in May! Overanalyzing the ride, I realized that first of all, it was about 300 degrees out and secondly, I'm back on my weight-loss plan, so I'm not fueled as well as I should be to ride with high intensity. Oh well!

On a positive note, I kicked butt on my descents (Skyline and 84). 84 has always been my nemesis descent. I love to descend but there are certain points on that road I always touch my brakes. I did pretty darn good yesterday.

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It was so hot yesterday that after climbing OLH and then climbing West OLH (because OLH just wasn't enough), Kim (the camel) actually needed to top off her bottles, so we stopped at the little store at the junction of 35/84 (across the street from Alice's). While there, we were approached by a man in his 30s or 40s who was very clearly drunk at 11:00 in the morning. I just hope he didn't drive there and then have to drive down the mountain, risking himself, other drivers, and cyclists alike. I mentioned him and the fact that I found him a threat to the store owners, but they didn't seem to care, even though they sold him a beer.

I'm not a climber. really, I'm not!

I used to be a pretty good climber. then I got sick, gained 50+ pounds and struggled with anything but the shallowest grades. I still loved to climb, but I was slower than slow. I converted from a race double to a compact and eventually added a 29t cog! and still, I couldn't keep my cadence snappy on the steeper climbs. many of you witnessed my pathetic fat ass slogging up various courses in northern california -- wente, sea otter, berkeley hills, kern, you name it! if it was hilly, I probably raced it (although "raced" is a bt of an interesting verb in my case).

as I've regained fitness (and lost 55 pounds) one of my goals was to improve my climbing. yeah, I'll never be a true climber. I'll never be able to keep up with the skinny little girls who weigh less than my bike. but I want to climb well enough that I'm not the first to pop in hilly road races.


so I've been climbing a lot in the last year or so. and slowly but surely, I've gotten faster than many of my friends who always dropped me. but that still isn't fast enough for road racing.

mountain bike racing seems to be another story. somehow, I'm gaining time on the climbs. it seems to be one of my strengths now.

anyways, I decided to join a group today to ride mt. hamilton. it was a co-ed group of friends of friends and I knew a handful of the folks. I thought it might be fun and who knows, maybe there would be some cute single guys in the group!

we met at the ride organizer's house in San Jose and warmed up with a five mile ride to the base of the climb. the group was well-behaved but my legs were feeling a bit heavy from yesterday's climb up mt. diablo and I was worried that I'd get dropped by everyone as soon as we started climbing. I got gapped by the first three riders on the little 5% grade leading up to the climb and got even more worried.


we stopped at the base of the climb and waited for the stragglers to re-group. Stacy (one of my coaching clients) decided to get a head start along with Jolie from Velo Bella. I had hoped to pace with Stacy since she's a great climber, but I was busy taking a photo of a couple of lizards as she rode away. me = dork. I quickly packed up the camera and chased. I caught and passed Jolie but Stacy remained just out of reach. three of the guys caught and passed me and then caught Stacy, so I had four rabbits to chase up the mountain.

so I chased and chased. I kept waiting for others from the group to catch me, but they never did. I lost visual contact with Stacy, but I could see one of the guys just ahead. I had thought we had another group of riders meeting us at Grant Ranch, but in the distance it looked like the group continued on without stopping so I did as well.

I felt pretty good. I pegged my watts at 200 and hoped to maintain that for the entire ride. I haven't done a power test this season so I thought I could get my FTP today (or a close estimation). unfortunately, I was sweating like crazy (as usual) and even though I drank two full bottles I got a bit dehydrated and my power dropped a bit for the second part of the ride.

there were a bunch of organized rides on mt. hamilton today (the challenge, the ascent, and the devil mountain double), along with various and sundry teams and groups out for a ride. I passed a bunch of riders and a handful of men from Monte Vista Velo and a hot guy on a cross bike passed me. but I kept pushing. I couldn't remember my stats from the other two times I'd climbed mt. hamilton, so I wasn't sure where I was pace-wise, but I knew I was fast!

running on empty (with two empty bottles), I reached the top and rode over to the post office (where all the MVV studs were gathered). I couldn't find any of my friends, so I emptied and filled and then rolled around. I found Stacy, only to learn that she had stopped at Grant Ranch so I wasn't really chasing her at all and apparently the guy I saw pass Grant Ranch wasn't with our group -- doh!

we waited at the top for the rest of the group to finish, then got to enjoy that sweet, sweet descent!

looking at my training files, I'm excited that I beat my last time up Mt. Hamilton (thanksgiving 2006) by 32 minutes! 32 fricking minutes! and my FTP is almost as high as last year (when I weighed 25 pounds more than I do now) which means my power-to-weight ratio is looking good! happy days are here again!

I got a garmin a few weeks ago. I decided if I was going to focus on climbing I wanted to know my elevations. but I haven't figured out how to use the motionbased web agent on my mac yet (so if there are any garmin mac-users out there with tips, ping me).

oh, no scenic photos today as I was racing myself up the mountain, but these are a few random shots of some of the group.

click for more pix!

the devil made me do it

In all the years I've been riding, I've only ridden Mt. Diablo once -- Thanksgiving Day 2005. That was the year I was recovering and returning to health and fitness. It was a very challenging ride for me.








Today I rode Mt. Diablo again, this time with one of my clients who is training for the Death Ride.









We had a fabulous ride!




The weather was perfect -- hot and sunny (but not too hot). The sky was very clear -- we could see San Francisco, the pacific ocean, my little condo in San Mateo (just kidding about that). We saw squirrels and bunnies and turkey vultures and a garter snake (the last photo's for you, Panda). You could hear the buzzing of the bees in the air (it reminded me of a really bad 70s movie I recall watching as a child). And we were swarmed by gnats for a few miles of our descent (they were crawling in my shimmel -- yuck).


As we neared the summit, I was really excited to climb the last digger. I had to walk the 19% grade last time. Today, I was out of the saddle, pumping, pushing, and not looking to the top. And I made it!






At the top, we met a bunch of tourists -- all who had driven up the mountain and were amazed that we could ride our bikes. We also met Karl, the Park Aide. He rides a motorcycle (he says it's like yoga) and gave me a snickers bar to celebrate my accomplishment (note to self: don't put half-eaten snickers bar in jersey pocket).




More photos here -- Lorri's Mt. D. Photos


Tomorrow I'm climbing Mt. Hamilton with a group of friends.

Life is good.

a perfect day!

I've been super-busy this month. In addition to all the normal beginning-of-the-year stuff, and launching an all-new team, and daydreaming, and having a friend visit for five days, my business has been booming. I'm not sure what happened, but I need to give my marketing person a raise. I've suddenly become the most popular bike fitter, coach, tester in norcal it seems. And suddenly, I've got clients able to meet with me during the day (where typically I only saw clients evenings and weekends).

This is all fine and good, and I should be happy, but it also means that I haven't been able to ride much during the day. I'm starting to feel like I've lost the big fitness I got during my Christmas week ride.

But today made up for all that. It was a fabulous, warm, sunny, no-wind day on the peninsula and I was drooling over the prospect of climbing. So I dragged Kim along for our first trip up Page Mill of 2007.

One of my goals this season is to become a climber (or at least a better climber). Last season I climbed a lot, but my excess weight and lack of fitness held me back. But I'm building on a HUGE base from May 2005 through December 2006 (about 10,000 miles and 900 hours -- in 19 months!) and I'm starting to see some results. And yeah, it sure helps to be back to my fighting weight.

Both Kim and I have been lifting weights, so we were a bit fatigued and had heavy legs, but the climb was awesome -- nine miles of power and feeling the lack of excess weight. Kim is tall and super-skinny and she usually leaves me behind on the climbs. Today I was able to keep up with her and was actually ahead of her for much of the climb.

And the descent on Skyline and 84 was simply incredible. The views of the bay were magically smoggy, but the views of the valley and ocean were breath-taking. I've also been working on my technical descending, and I think today was my best descent of 84 ever.

All in all, just a perfect day!