I had a friend in town this weekend who is a strong age group triathlete. We went for a ride on Saturday morning on the coast and despite a slow start, and all good intentions, we went a little faster then planned when we have a long training ride on Sunday-- but hey it was fun.
Sunday came and I had heard that this was a tough ride, but the last 2 or 3 rides had somehow given me a degree of confidence on the climbing that I had not had before. Climbs on my normal Saturday ride that would have seemed to be long and hard, now seemed to pale compared to Palomar and Kitchen creek with their 13 and 16 mile respective climbs. Now don't get me wrong, any hill on any ride can be the one that you blow up on if you haven't eaten enough, are properly hydrated or don't pay attention to the heart rate-- but going into this I felt good. The ride was planned at 71 miles and just over 4ooo feet of climbing-- which would make it my longest ride to date with that amount of climbing -- we had ridden longer but with less climb and steeper with less miles --
I awoke at 5 am and tried not to wake the rest of the house as I left-- After the usual Starbucks stops I arrived with enough time to put the sunblock on, get all figured out and join group 4. We had a few riders join us who had ridden with Gp 3 over the last couple of weeks, but there was enough of the core Gp 4 to recognize the faces.
We had a slow ride out and I was feeling good, there is an expression of "no chain" and it felt at least for the first part that I had no chain on!! The first climb of the day is always hard and it tends to string the group out -- but we were up it pretty quick. I am slow to wake up and like to be with my own thoughts for the first part of the ride until I feel like I am awake! After the 56 bike part bit we arrived at the base of Scripps Parkway. Quick question why is it that when cars speed up to run a red light they break as soon as they are through it?
After a quick bio break we began the Scripps Parkway bit. Some had been up this before in an earlier training ride - I missed it due to business travel, and the mood was relaxed and resigned as we began the climb. There was a lot of cloud cover which Brent and I were liking at least for the first part of the hill. Well the Parkway is a hill that keeps on giving and was about a 20 minute straight up grind but the SAG stop (food drinks) was at the end of it so that and talking to Annie from CAF made it go fast. She was telling me that a huge benefit of Operation Rebound - that helps returning troops - was not as much about the "parts" that CAF can give , but much more about them finding a common group of people that they can share experiences with that the rest of us can not relate to... we also talked about setting up a UK chapter for CAF -- something I would love to talk my friends who live there into doing -- stay tuned on that one!
After a much needed SAG stop, refill of the water bottles we followed the (busy) road into Ramona which was ok. We had had a couple of flat tires and were a little behind the pace, so the group leaders decided to cut short the 5M loop into Ramona and make the turn on Highland Valley. We saw gp 2 coming out of Ramona so we were doing pretty well pace wise...
Highland Valley was the site of another flat tire -- and after that we began the ride into the back country of San Diego. This is an amazing place with so much diversity in geography in the county and this could be best described as rolling country with ups and downs... these are fun but sap energy if not careful. We had an amazing 9 percent descent down with hairpins and I think I am going to get some private coaching on how to safely descend as that part is the part that challenges me the most.
After crossing the new bridge over the Lake Hodges area, we enjoyed another SAG stop and refueled thanks to Tina. About 17 miles left, the pace picked up a bit and the group started to string out a bit. We rode back through Fairbanks Ranch after another long climb up to Del Mar Heights area - which was steep but not bad, but tired legs didn't help.
On the fund raising side -- I had a good couple of weeks, bringing in nearly $1000 towards the overall goal of $5000 by month end and a total of $10, 000 by the week before the ride. Still a ways to go on that but I am viewing it like another hill... just keep going one turn at a time -- in case you need the link -- here it is :http://mdc2009.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=300012&lis=1&kntae300012=0192EC80E73541D2A81C231B4233DB65&login=t
All in all a good ride, and satisfying to feel that I am getting better - but it is ride by ride and the test will be the day to day, back to back riding down the coast-- stay tuned!!
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