Eat, Drink, Sleep

My ride yesterday afternoon was good and bad. Good because I realized I've been training fairly smart recently (not counting this ride) and bad because I suffered for most of the ride.

What I've discovered about myself is that if I want to ride my bike a lot, I need to eat, drink and sleep a lot as well. It means eating continually throughout the day, making sure I'm always hydrated and trying to get at least 9 hours of sleep a night. If I'm doing those things I tend to have the energy to ride strong and I can push the pace when I go out.

If I miss those building blocks (food, water, sleep), then I pay the price.

I was out all day at a bachelor party on Saturday and when Sunday afternoon rolled around I found myself dreading a bike ride. A few years ago I forced myself to always ride no matter how bad I felt. This led to a bad attitude and a _lot_ of painful rides. Last year I decided to take more days off and allow myself the opportunity to rest and it paid huge dividends.

All that to say it might have been smart to rest yesterday instead of riding for 4 hours. I found myself wanting a teleporter so I could go from being on the trail to being at home resting. The heat and a general lack of energy made it quite difficult.

Despite the tough times though I still managed to beat a guy in Whiting. Haha. He passed me at the entrance to the park and for once I did not feel like chasing him down. I decided to stay within striking distance and just hang around in the hopes he would slow down on Mustard. He got tired of me shadowing him after a while and pulled over to stop so I could ride ahead. Sucker. Haha.

I should have been able to maintain a 10mph pace no problem, but I ended up around 9mph. I went through _THREE_ camelbacks worth of water and was overjoyed when the ride was finally over.

Now I'm trying to eat, drink and sleep my way back to a rested and ready state.

Early to Bed, Early to Ride

Woke up this morning at 6:15AM so I could ride over to meet Doug at the Dove Canyon waterfall. We were supposed to meet at 7AM and I ended up missing him by a few minutes so I spent the morning alone.

Towards the end of my ride on Tuesday morning I saw a crew working on one of the gates for Chiquita. There are three main gates that I normally ride through/around to get into the area and unfortunately this morning I discovered that all three are now closed and have new barbed wire fences around them.

No problem. Since going through Chiquita was the most direct route to meet with Doug and since I was running short on time I just hopped over the barbed wire fences and continued on.

Got a little lost in Chiquita due to a lot of fog. Fog on the ground and fog in my head from being up so early.

I tried to push hard to be on time to ride with Doug but when I rolled in to the waterfall at 7:09AM, he was gone. I tried to catch up to him thinking he might have taken West Ridge, but I never saw him.

After the second gate on West Ridge - right after the long, fast descent - I decided to try a new singletrack. It goes up and to the right at the turn right before the wooden shooting platform.

It was actually a lot longer than I thought it would be and turned out to be pretty fun. It dumped me off right behind some mansion in Coto. I managed to get back on to the horse trails in Coto easily and from there I was able to find my way to Riley Wilderness Park.

Once in Riley I realized I had a ton of time to kill. The ride started at 6:20AM and I didn't have to be back to my place until maybe around 8:30AM.

So I cruised around Riley several times exploring any and every trail I found. Managed to kill about 40 minutes and had a pretty good time doing it. Saw three deer hanging out, which was a bonus.

The only downside this morning (besides the barbed wire and missing Doug) was that my bike got super dirty. The fine sand combined with some morning dew in Chiquita got all over my clothes and my bike. Kind of a mess.

I'm thinking I want to start riding down near Riley and get to West Ridge as soon as possible in the mornings now. Then I can try my hand at East Ridge, Cougar and maybe even Oso. OSO!

Sun Baked

I joined a club team for racing this year to get money back for my race fees. That is the only reason I joined. Nothing else. As part of the membership however I have to do one day of volunteering. Not something I really want to do, but if it means getting a couple hundred dollars at the end of the year, I'm willing to suck it up.

Got up a little before 5AM this last Saturday to head down to Northwood High School in Irvine for a womens road race. I guess it was a national championship race or something ... the details are still not clear to me.

The day can be summed up in two words: hot, boring. I was given a walkie-talkie, an orange volunteer shirt and an intersection to police. I saw on the corner of the 261 on ramp and Portola for about 6 hours with a cop to keep me company. When the race would pass by it was my job to make sure pedestrians didn't mess up the race. I had to ask a few people to wait to cross the street or to stop riding their bikes, but other than that my cop buddy did the real work.

Glad to have that over with.

In other news my left knee is still hurting a week after falling on Holy Jim. It gets pretty stiff and sore and I guess I hit it a lot harder than I first thought. I feel ok when I ride, but it aches a lot when I'm just hanging out at home.

The final note is that I finally found the Ladera Lookout trail. Managed to middle ring the entire thing which made me feel good because a lot of people said the trail had steep climbs and that it rivaled the 3 B's in Santiago Oaks. I don't think it's anywhere near as tough as the Oaks, but that's just me.

I wanted to find a picture from the race Saturday but then remembered it was just a womens race, so who cares right?

Christmas in August

Hooray! HOORAY! All year my Garmin GPS has been slowly dying. I'd be out riding and it would randomly shut itself off during the ride. This was pretty frustrating because often times I rely on it to record a route so I can upload it to GeoLadders.

I sent the unit back to Garmin and after a few weeks a new one finally came. I was so happy last night to finally have an Edge 305 in my hands.

No longer do I have to be bound to the Coto Valley Loop. I can now explore the trails near my house to my hearts content and still be able to upload my rides to GeoLadders. JOY!

In other news my knee is still a bit tweaked from my crash on Holy Jim last week and I felt very sluggish yesterday morning on my ride before work. I've been riding without statistics for a while now and I'm not sure if I'm faster, slower or what. Hopefully the Garmin will help restore some order and give me some solid numbers to track my progress.