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As we drove to Death Valley down the central valley an incoming email buzzed my iPhone. It was from AdventureCORPs. Prediction for the weekend was for near freezing conditions and possibly rain and snow. The email began with “I’m not trying to scare anyone…” But we were scared. We signed up for this ride as a way to motivate us to continue riding though the winter, but still we struggled with the weather. It remains somewhat a mystery how you ride and stay warm, dry and comfortable. But we had overcoming things which previously scared us though: we could now set out in the rain and not be totally in fear. While we’d come a ways, a bad weather century ride was something we weren’t fully prepared for, mentally or physically.

My fitness on the bike seemed to have come around so I was looking forward to a fast ride. We did a couple of 70+ mile rides and a collection of 50 mile rides. In our last ride we threw in a climb at the half way mark that set a new 30 min power record for me (one not on a trainer at least), and that was after hours of riding. That’s not to say I’ve suddenly become a great cyclist, but signs we there that we’d improved. I felt ready for anything. Well anything except bad weather.

Death Valley is one of our favorite places. It’s also the scene of most of our great outdoor disasters. The place has a way to take a toll on man and his equipment. There was the time when we ripped two 4WD tires apart up some jeep trail and ended up dragging the backend of the car miles, followed by hitchhiking through the night. I still think of that trip fondly, especially the part where it also started to snow. Another time a storm came though so hard it broke a pole on our 4 season tent and launched it way up a canyon, completely destroying it. That was fun too.

Thursday night we camped up Echo Canyon, the same place as the tent disaster. It’s a beautiful place when it’s not destroying things. Behind you is a slot canyon that you can drive up to reach a set of mine ruins to explore. In front of you the scene drops 1600ft to the Death Valley floor and then rises 11,000 ft up into the snow covered Panamint range.

Camping at Echo Canyon in Death Valley

Friday morning started still. The sun rise hit the mountains cycling them through a range of pinks and purples and oranges. Even Kelly enjoyed the view. Later in the morning, with Kelly’s Grandfather (Patty’s father) in tow, we headed up the canyon to check out the mines.

Inyo Mine

In the afternoon we drove the course to check out the climb and by evening the wind had really picked up, especially at Furnace Creek. By the time we headed over for the AdventureCORPs Yoga the wind was blowing so hard it was difficult to even walk in the RV park. All you could do was laugh it was blowing so hard. We knew they’d run the ride regardless, but we couldn’t imagine riding in that kind of wind. The Yoga turned out to be fun though as we huddled in the shelter behind the buildings there and the event organizer led us through a yoga routine yelling above the wind.

Corps Yoga the night before the ride (Photo: AdventureCORPs)

Instead of camping we cleared out the back of the car and slept in there parked in the same site as Patty’s parents. It wasn’t the best nights sleep listening to the wind and feeling the car being buffeted around. Hope for even going for a ride was fading but the morning brought workable weather, it seemed. It wasn’t too cold, it wasn’t raining or snowing and the wind was nothing like the night before. The ride was a go and optimism filled the air.

Furnace Creek to Badwater

Distance: 17.3 miles
Time: 1hrs 52min
Power: 156 avg, 169 NP (graph)

The second wave was ready to head off as we circled behind the group so we decided to head off with them. The pace was easy as we headed uphill from Furnace Creek towards the intersection with Badwater Rd. I was feeling the pace was a little too easy and went by a few people with Patty following behind me.

As we reached the top we turned towards Badwater, about 17 miles away. I instinctively changed up to my big ring and thought we’d be off but I then noticed a problem. We’d just turned into a stiff headwind. The usual still mornings in Death Valley were not working that way this morning. The wind was blowing strong from the South and the next 40 or so miles of the course were directly down the valley, south, with no shelter. Just one big wind tunnel. Of course it took a while to think in those terms, for the moment I changed back down gears and started to slog it out.

We were averaging about 10 miles per hour. Long gradual climbs became 6 mile/hr 200+ watts. It was equivalent in effort to real climbing but yet they looked almost flat. Wind is the unseen enemy. Finally a top would appear and I’d barely change out of my lowest gear as I pushed on down the hill at maybe 11 or 12 miles/hr.

At 1 hour in Patty and I stopped and ate a Gu each. Patty was having trouble drinking because she needed both hands on her handlebars in order to not be thrown off into the desert as the wind shifted around. She took in a little fluid and I was glad for my aero bottle although I was having trouble being on the aerobars in the wind as well. Here we ran into Patty’s father and Kelly for the first time. They asked if we were ok, beginning a trend of theirs of turning up while we were stopped somewhere. We handed off our warm gloves since the cold wasn’t going to be our problem today at least.

Occasionally we’d be overtaken by some riders from the third wave. One group went by in a pace line and while I couldn’t catch the back of them the trailing riders seemed to be getting a good break. I had nobody ahead of me to break the wind and it was brutal. One guy who went by chatted for a bit. We agreed how demoralizing making such slow progress was. Moving forward like that, with vast distances ahead in the wide open desert floor and making 10 miles/hr progress was hard to weigh against how far we had to ride. It seemed hard to imaging pushing into the wind for more than 40 miles, then doing the climb, and then riding back. Even the thought of the returning tailwind didn’t make it seem possible, we wouldn’t even make the cutoffs. How many hours till the turnaround? Five? Six? Instead of that I found comfort in my power meter. I settled on trying to ride around 150 watts, keeping under 200 for the tough bits, figuring I had a long way ahead of me. The most important thing was that I could see I was doing something as the miles came so slow.

I pulled into Badwater a few minutes ahead of Patty. Nobody there seemed to know what the deal was with the cutoffs. We were already an hour late and the day was young. We ate a little food but forgot to fill our water bottles. In my mind I’d not recalibrated the next aid station distance to take into account the slow speed we were moving at.

Badwater to Ashford Mills

Distance: 27.4 miles
Time: 3hrs 50min
Power: 136 avg, 148 NP (graph)

Back on the road and it was more of the same. I slowly pushed myself past a guy and said “are we having fun yet?” “Oh God Yes!” he replied. Patty told me she’d decided to make it a metric century and turn back at 30 miles, or the mile 29 mile marker along the road. I told her to sit behind me and I’d pull her, but it didn’t help, she fell off my back wheel and was gone again. The people on the course were now quite spread out, but usually I could see someone a ways ahead. The vastness was a little overwhelming, such a small bike in such a big place, in such awful conditions. I saw little choice but to keep pushing forward. The road through this section was more or less flat, but would wander out towards the center of the valley and back following the coast line of the ancient lake. The wind grew worse out the further towards the center of the valley you got, or was plagued with cross winds, and at times I was barely moving. For a moment I actually longed to be closer to the valley’s side walls for the ‘relief’ of a steady 20 miles/hr straight-into-the-face wind to deal with.

I stopped a couple of times to wait for Patty, once a little before the mile 29 marker and then again at the marker. Eventually she came into view and looked broken. She was ready to go back but I decided I would keep going at least until the Ashford Mills aid station. The assumption was, of course, that the ride back wouldn’t be so bad. I’d come a long way to ride and complete this century, and trained all winter. That’s a lot of traffic lights on the road out of Danville, freezing mornings where we hardly saw another cyclist all day, my awesome run of flat tires… We’d convinced Patty’s parents to drive down there and look after our daughter so we could do this. I wasn’t feeling like giving up even though I knew deep down all my energy was blowing away in the wind and I may not have it in me to get back. This was uncharted territory for my endurance.

Patty at Mile 30

We said good bye with a hug and we headed in different directions. Back to my 150-160 watts, back to very slow progress. I started to pass some people, clearly anyone around me was starting to fade. I ran out of water too as hours went by. And running out of liquid also meant I was not getting the calories I was counting on but I wasn’t thinking too clearly either because I could have compensated with the Gus I was carrying. My heart rate was also up though this section as the terrain became more hilly and my vision was vaguely blurry.

Eventually I rode into Ashford Mills, almost 4 hours after leaving Badwater, and was seriously close to being done.

Ashford Mills aid station (Photo: AdventureCORPs)

Expensive bikes and people lay on the ground not moving anywhere. Nobody’s race wheels were helping them too much today but there sure was some good looking bikes lying in the sand. Patty’s father and Kelly turned up just after I arrived. They said Patty had ‘flown’ back to Badwater on the tail wind. That sounded good, perhaps I could do this. My spirits lifted. Then again I was beat and still had a 1300ft climb to do before even the turnaround. Kelly said I should do it. After they left I decided to give it a try.

Climb to Jubilee Pass and back to Ashford Mills

Distance: 12.6 miles
Time: 1hr 15min
Power: 120 avg, 159 NP (the climb was 168 avg, 177 NP) (graph)

As I headed out the wind was actually still for the first time as the 6% climb ran perpendicular to the valley. It wasn’t as bad as I imagined it, averaging about 180 watts in my lowest gear. Unlike the wind I could see my goal and measure my energy against the visible obstacle. Interestingly, it really didn’t feel too much worse on my legs than the previous 5 hours and it was quite easy to settle in. I stopped a couple of times because I thought it seemed like a good idea to take it a little conservatively, but before long I reached the top. I felt a moment of victory. I’d been on the bike so long, but was only at the 52 mile turnaround. It was 1:30pm, over 6.5 hours after the start and over 5.5 hours of ride time.

Arriving at the turn around point (Photo: AdventureCORPs)

The organizer took my bib number and a photo of me. He thanked me for coming so far out on the course. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, probably that I should have given up long ago. I took a moment, clipped in, and headed back down the hill. There was a certain amount of head wind on the descent but I mostly coasted to save energy and regretted giving my Jacket to Patty’s parents. It was cold, but the scenery was was worth the climb as I looked down into the valley and the clouds and light moving in across the mountains. I still wasn’t sure I had another 50 miles in me, 40 by the time I got back down to Ashford Mills, but if the weather cooperated I might make it back before the 10 hour cutoff.

The turn around at the pass

Back at Ashford Mills I grabbed food, some water and used the port-a-potty, but didn’t stay long this time, I needed to get moving. As I clipped in the aid station people were talking over the radio, asking if it was raining at furnace creek. No, they said, it was dust, and the wind was coming from the north. THE NORTH??!! A grown went though the aid station. I was looking a 40 miles of riding north to get back to Furnace Creek. My response? Denial. I peddled off.

Ashford Mills to the end

Distance: 13.2 miles
Time: 1hr 03min
Power: 124 avg, 143 NP (graph)

For the next six miles I flew, carried along by a glorious tailwind. I sat at 20-24 miles/hr on the flats, 30+ mile/hr on the downhills without even pushing hard. I remembered for a moment that biking could be fun. I started to think I’d be back in a couple of hours at this rate and that my decision to continue to the turn around point was the right one. Life was good. But that was crazy thinking and altogether short lived. Up the valley the salt flats and sky ominously merged into a dark wall that looked a like a mix of rain and dust, maybe. Still, I hoped I could get somewhere near to Furnace Creek before I hit that or any wind change.

The Wall of Doom (Photo: AdventureCORPs)

It was not to be. Within a moment my tail wind turned to head wind. It was like hitting a wall. I was still 35 miles out and my speed was down to 6 miles/hr and power back over 160 watts. I was a little surprised that my trashed legs were still cooperating, but it didn’t make it any easier. All that energy going into the pedals and 6 miles/hr coming out. I had my head down watching the white line, I watched little pebbles come by so slowly, one painful pedal stroke after another. Then I’d look up at the vast expanse ahead and feel crushed. It was a mental game and in this section I was losing.

My carbopro mix was also a little messed up so I stopped for a moment and poured some of it out and mixed it down with water. It gave me a moment to stand there and contemplate what I was going to do. Make it to Badwater, then hope I could get a headlamp from someone? Hope Patty came looking for me? Sit down right here and cry? All valid options. Shortly after that a strong looking rider came by me, slowly. I said hi but he didn’t say anything back. I though he might be just unfriendly but I now think he was just too deep in his own misery. In my mind I imagined every one else doing so well, cutting though the wind with effortless ease, success being the only option. Most of them were already back at Furnace creek celebrating a fine day out.

When Badwater seemed too far away I refocused on getting to the 29 mile marker (30 miles from the finish) where Patty and I had said goodbye. Some part of me expected she’d still be there and the idea gave me a little comfort.

I neither made it to Badwater nor even the mile 29 marker. In the end some riders ahead of me waved down the Timing company’s pickup truck and started to load their bikes in the back. I rode towards them but didn’t hurry. I wasn’t sure what to do and was hoping it would drive away so I didn’t have to think about it. The strong looking guy also pulled over and started to load his bike on too. I guess a way home had just handed itself to me and it seemed the obvious thing to take the ride too. I was 71 miles into my ride and my day was done.

Montana Timing Saves the Day! (Photo: AdventureCORPs)

The scene back to Furnace Creek was devastation. The organizers were sending out SAG vehicles to collect people and random cars were also bringing riders back home. We were full but riders tried to wave us down. Those still moving were all over the road, not caring. People had stopped in the middle of nowhere and just sat down with their bikes unable to go on. Others were slumped over their handlebars. Many riders had already left the course. Many had called an end to it at Badwater, the scene there was littered with riders who couldn’t make it back the final 18 miles.

In the end the majority of the 400 who signed up DNFd (or DNS.) The results show about 100 finishers in all the distances out of the 400 entrants. What I didn’t know was that the organizers extended the cutoffs so people who finished into the night got an official time. My assumption was that I wouldn’t get a time and be recognized as a finisher even if I made it back and that certainly weighed into my decision to take a ride. If the original 5pm time had still applied only about 20 riders of the century would have finished.

Hats off to anyone who made it back though and the amazing ultra-century and double century riders who finished on such a rough day.

Patty and I eventually reunited after she failed to find me on the course. She had not made it back to the finish line either having hit the wind direction change earlier in the day just past Badwater. After struggling for a while her parents came by and she called it a day and took the ride back with them. She was 50 miles into her ride.

Overall stats

Distance: 71.14 miles
Time: 6hrs 59min (8hrs 13 min total)
Power: 136 watts avg, 354 watts max, 156 watts NP
Graph: HR, Power, Speed vs Time
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We didn’t hang out long, just enough time to get some pizza. The weather had become drizzly and night was coming. We left and drove out of the park and through to Ridgecrest for the night then home the next day. All in all it was sort of a disaster and an adventure at the same time. I’ve clearly arrived at a better level of endurance but still, after training all winter we were disappointed at how the day played out and that we couldn’t have made it through the whole course together.

Biking, Death Valley camping, century, cycling, Death Valley, Wind

Swimming at Lake Temescal

A slightly late recap of week 3 of my 4 week build phase. The total hours are a little down partly because of the missed pool swim and partly because I’ve changed accounting of my ride time. I now only count time moving, which on Saturday was actually 25 min or so less than time we were out on our bikes.

Swim: 1hr 56 min

Three swims this week. I think overall my mood was discouraged with swimming.

Monday and Wednesday I did my pool swims as scheduled. Monday’s main set was 4x200yds which I thought went well. Between 3:40 and 3:50 for each of the 200s. I was actually kind of excited about that pace. On Wednesday I came back down to earth with a 2700 yard session at the Oakland YMCA crammed in before I had to be at Kelly’s school for an event. This time my 200 meter swims were at more like 2:00/100 yards, though mixed into a lot more yards. My endurance felt better than the previous couple of week, but obviously it effects my pace quite a bit.

I felt by Friday like it was too late to get faster so I bailed on my so-called quality set. Instead I went open water swimming on the weekend for the first time this year. It felt suddenly great to be out swimming. No chlorine. No black line. No locker room full of fat ugly naked people. It’s like trail running after running on the treadmill all year. Plus, wetsuit buoyancy is always fun. I think this will be the pattern from now on, open water experience will be more useful to me than a third pool workout.

Bike: 6hrs 13min

Another two M2 sessions on Tuesday and Thursday. At Tuesday’s class there was hardly anyone there as the class was riding to Santa Cruz for the tour of California stage finish. On Thursday they all turned up smashed for racing 120 miles with 3 trips to skyline and back to coast, or something like that. It was all super grande burritos this and tacos that. Um, what? Anyway, it serves them right. Maybe next year!!

Our weekend didn’t lend itself very well to a biking. Three birthday parties to take our daughter to! However at 3pm on Saturday we dropped her off at a party and set out towards Davis hoping for a little central valley flat and fast. Patty was pleading for a break from the hills, and I was trying to get a little race specific. As we got out that way the sky filled with dark thunderstorms and the wind started to blow.

It could be like that in Boise. Maybe it would be good experience. Or maybe we’d be hit by lightning or blown off our bikes into the path of a truck. Or maybe we’d just be plowing into wind and rain for hours. We bailed on mental toughness and turned and headed back towards home. Our ride was around the Three Bears loop again. We made about 42 miles or so out of it, with lots of climbing.

This ride was a little discouraging. I felt slow over the hills, as usual, but quick on the flats and rolling terrain. On the hills I worked hard to get up each climb only to look back and see Patty 40 meters back. Three months of bike training over her and I’m just 40 meters ahead of her? On top of that my GPS data would suggest that on the flats I wasn’t exactly going too fast either. I should be able to sit in at 18+ miles/hr given the watts I do these days in class, but instead I average more like 15-16 miles/hr. Perhaps the fatigue runs deep and a taper and race excitement will do me some good.

I’m contemplating getting a Powertap. That would answer a lot of questions. And REI has 20% off right now. There’s only one reason not to get one: money.

Run: 1 hour 55 min

While I’m still not running that much we hit the trails twice this week and loved it. It was great to run in some beautiful places again. The first run was an evening one out in the water district near Moraga, slotted in before an LMJS Race Committee meeting. It was mostly just the horses, the wood peckers, the bunnies, the turkey vultures and us. Running over hills seemed hard but I also felt strangely strong. It was a good run.

On Sunday, again following the theme of squeezing in workouts where they will fit, we dropped Kelly at the third of her parties and went running in Tilden Regional Park until it was time to pick her up. I felt like I wanted to run for hours, but I also felt tired from the bike ride the day before. Not so much that it really got in the way of running, but still it took the edge off the fun. Patty declared that she hated to run after biking and that she wasn’t cut out to be a triathlete. She does seem to have taken a general liking to biking however and we’re hoping to do a century this summer.

Nutritional experiments

I’ve also been experimenting with what to drink/eat on the bike for the race. It’s still a work in progress but I tried just carbo-pro in water (3 scoops) and while it has a slight flour-like taste to it, it’s still easy to drink and I didn’t get sick of it like the Gatorade. This week I’m going to mix in some Nuun for flavor and electrolytes, and if that is vaguely successful then at this point I’ll go with that mixed with pieces of bonk breaker. Unfortunately that leaves me a little short of sodium especially if it’s hot and I have no heat training at all. I tried adding salt directly to the drink mix but the taste took a big dive in the direction of sea water, so I don’t think that’s a good option unless it can be covered up with more flavor.

For the run I’m going to do what I always do, do the Gu. I might up my planned intake to every 3 miles instead of every 45 min. Then I’ll take liquid at the aid stations. Actually I really haven’t decided that, I might run with a bottle.

Anyway, that’s it. In just over two weeks I’ll be loaded up and driving to Boise!

Biking, Running, Swimming, Triathlon

Riding in Sonoma

Another big training week, over 12 hours this week. I finally completed plan on the swimming and biking, plus my yoga session, but only ran twice. In theory we were going to run off the bike on Saturday, but our ride went so long we high tailed it back to Oakland to pick up our daughter. In general I’m feeling pretty strong right now and the cold I was sniffling with a week ago seems to have mostly gone away. One more big ride in a week and then I’ll begin to taper. Exciting!

Swim: 2hr 28min (6435 yards)

Three full sessions this week which really increased my distance. On wednesday I fitted the swim into my day by swimming at the Oakland YMCA downtown. They have a 25 meter pool rather than 25 yards so I did my workout in meters. Who knew a meter could be so much longer than a yard? Anyway, that resulted in my longest ever pool session: 2734 yards exactly. It was a messy mix of lane swimmers so I didn’t even bother to log my lap times, but the core of it was 500 meters of drills and 10x100m as fast as I could.

During most of these laps a man with a sleek swimmers body stood at one end of my lane watching us. He was waist deep in water and looking annoyed. Eventually I guess he decided we were not good enough to swim with and he left after doing two laps of butterfly in the next lane over. Sorry dude, we are not butterfly swimming freaks like you, but at least we were swimming laps, and I’m not swimming that slow when I’m swimming 100s. I could see why he might be generally annoyed though, in all the other lanes at least one swimmer was pushing the definition of swimming to include -floating with the current- or -jumping up and down shaking hands above the water-. Sigh, swimming sucks. And not because of the swimming part.

Bike: 7 hrs 8 mins

Another two sessions at M2 and I’m feeling like my biking is really coming around. I now classify hills as nothing but rollers that I can mostly cruise over without too much trouble. Tuesdays class I already blogged about. Thursday I was working at home, combined with trying to get a family of raccoons out of our attic so I had to take public transport (bus, bart train, bus) into San Francisco to take my class and then (bus and bus) all the way home again. The instructor was a fill-in so it was a different style. He had us do a spiral ladder 3min, 2 min, 1 min, 30sec, with power increasing up from 70% – 110%, then reverse the durations but keeping the power high (110% down to 95%). After that I think it was 3x5min at 100-110%. I say I think, because I think I blanked out somewhere in there. The session finished with some sprints. 100% is a 10min max power. By my counting I did close to 15 min (broken) at or above 100%, and a bunch more in the 90% range. Ouch. Still threshold workouts like that are what I need.

Saturday we drove up to Windsor, CA and rode a variation of the Vineman course. In total we rode 60 miles, thanks to getting lost a few times. It took us forever, but included stops at goats, horses, muffins at a cute general store, and a lot of stops to look at a slightly blurry printout of the full vineman course map. A beautiful bike route the whole way, the hills are still very green.

Anyway, I spent a good amount of that time on my aerobars and have gained a lot more confidence. I don’t think I’ll change them again, just go with it now I have something I consider slightly comfortable. While Patty and I generally don’t ride too fast together, I did a few sections at what I considered the effort I hope to use in the race. The result was a little over 18 miles/hr on average over rolling terrain. It would be nice to have a power meter in the race, but it isn’t going to happen for this one, so at this point I think I’ll go off my HR, which I think should be 140 or less. I may go into M2 and ride 70-75% on the power for 1/2 hour or so and see what my HR does to get a final plan.

On the down side I partially pulled out my rear shifter from the end of the aerobar and lost my lowest two gears during the steepest climb of the route, so I’ll have to fix that this week. I did still make it to the top though. That course is super-rough in places, I’m surprised anything is still attached to my bike anymore. Also, my hydration wasn’t too good either as again I got pretty tired of the gatorade. I took in about 50oz of fluid containing about 650 calories, plus 220 calories in bonk breakers and a 100 calorie Chocolate Gu. 1050 calories, or 215 calories and hour. Not enough! However, that didn’t count the muffin, and the muffin was good!

Run: 1 hr 46 min

Still not much running, but I did try. We set off to run 13 miles on Wednesday. Following the longest swim I’ve ever done that morning and a pretty tough bike session the night before, we made 3 miles and gave up. Both of us felt exhausted and hungry and decided instead to just go get hamburgers and extra-salty fries! The next morning I ran to Kelly’s school while she rode her bike for Bike to Work day, then ran home. At least that was a decent run so I can still do it. Otherwise it’s getting pushed out of the way to let my other key workouts happen without being compromised by exhaustion.

Biking, Running, Swimming exhausted, hamburgers, m2, muffins, salt, sonoma, vineman, ymca

I finally took a HR monitor to the bike class at M2 Revolution tonight. This is what my HR looks like during an bike class, apparently:

All in all pretty low compared to running intervals.

I think the workout was:
1) Ladder warm-up:
3 min, 2 min, 90 sec, 60 sec and a few 30 sec building up power as we go, alternating high and low cadence with some standing
2) threshold set
4 min @ 90% power followed by 4 min @ 100% power
2 min @ 90% power followed by 6 min @ 100% power
3) Strength set
(2 min climbing cadence 75rpm at 110-120% watts 40 sec aero, 40 sec hoods, 40 sec stand) X 2
(1 min 70rpm 120+% watts 20 sec aero, 20 sec hoods, 20 sec stand) X 2
4) Activation set:
4 x 20 sec high cadence, high power. 500+ watts.
5) Cooldown, easy spin

** 100% watts is max average watts over 10 min TT.

Biking

Mount Tam seen from China Camp

Wow, it’s May. That means I’m now into my more focused race specific training, the so called Build phase. Four weeks to get myself ready. Unfortunately the Base phase now ends a little unsteady, featuring a marathon, dubious swim training, and now two months of twice a week bike training at M2 and what I’ll call “time in the sandal weekend” riding for the past month.

Although last week was a recovery week I still logged over 10 hours.

Swim: 1hr 41 min (4200 yards)

Mondays swim was just an easy 1000 yards in the pool. Almost not worth getting wet for, just did laps and tried to not get run down by the master swimmers. Switching to Mon, Wed, Fri puts me there when the Masters swimming are churning up the middle lanes. This is going to be an ongoing problem. I noticed some of them wore fins. How is that allowed? Anyway, a good recovery swim.

Wednesday’s swim was a 500 yard warmup followed by some drills, followed by 1000 straight yards. The schedule called for 500 yds of the drills so I’ve been rotating between some bi-laterial practice, finger drag, fist swimming, catchup and some sighting practice. I could use more of all of those, especially the bi-laterial breathing, but at least I get some in. Interestingly I swim faster either with bi-laterial breathing, or 4 strokes per breath. However, I don’t last too long like that before I start gasping for air and inhaling water.

The sensation of drowning is never far away even though I’m still amused with actually being able to swim these days.

Fridays swim was a 500 yard warmup and then 8×100 and then a cool down. A pretty short effort, but it was supposed to be a fall back week. For the first time in who knows how long (perhaps ever) I swam three days in a week. Time to get to the pool has to happen at lunch time and it’s easy for it to get bumped for something else, usually work related. The 8x100s went well with all laps under 2:00/100yd pace. My first two were too fast, around 1:50 pace, but that’s too fast to do 8 of them, so they slowed to 1:55-1:58 for the rest of them.

Bike: 5hrs 19min

A fall back on the bike too this week, so other than another two sessions of power training fun, we treated ourselves to a mountain bike ride in Marin at China Camp State Park. This park is pretty cool (for mountain bikers) in that a) the single track is actually open to mountain bikers and b) hikers seem to have given up the trails to the bikers as a result. We can now rip it up as much as we want. Just Kidding.

The trails were really spectacular, and pretty hard in places. The initial climb was up 1000ft to an old Nike Missile Pad that overlooked the bay, Mt Tam and San Rafael. This is where the photo at the top of the page was taken.

Run: 1 hr 50 min (10.7 miles)

Another not great running week. It’s been a month now since my marathon, the arbitrary time I give myself before I do anything crazy in the running department. Unfortunately with all this other training going on I don’t really see much chance of doing anything interesting. The good news is I did run three times (sort of): a 5.5-ish mile run twice around the lake Wednesday evening, and a beautiful four mile run in the heart of the redwoods Friday evening. Also, just for fun, we ran a mile or so off the mountain bike yesterday. Mostly we ran out of trail so we headed back to the car and called it a day. Overall the running feels fine at this point, but I’m going to have to start upping the long run a little now and perhaps do one of my mid-week runs at tempo pace.

Oakland Museum

In other news, the Oakland Museum reopened this weekend with a 31 hour party. We decided to head down there at 7am and check it out. There was a lot of bubble blowing going on on top of the roof, free yoga in the main hall, and a pancake breakfast put on by the Oakland Fire Department. The changes to the museum are awesome, I can’t wait to go back and explore further. One of the best museums around, especially for Californian history.

Marin Farmers Market and Sports Basement

We headed over the the farmers market, which was only about 3 miles from where we biked the previous day. The report: a) strawberries not there yet, and what’s with nobody offering tastings anymore? I guess they know they are no good so far this year, b) Oakdale cheese is still yummy goodness and c) Kelly had her first pony ride there.

After picking up picnic supplies we headed down to San Francisco and ate in the Presidio. The after mouth of the Escape From Alcatraz was going on. Patty took her mountain bike into the nearby Sports Basement to get the gears worked on, which have never worked right, producing the quote of the week:

“Sorry, we’ve got 50 bikes to ship today and triathletes are very high maintenance.”

Biking, Kelly, Running, Triathlon

Another week of training. Seven weeks to go. This week was around 10 hours of volume, a bit less than last week because I missed two runs, a swim, and we’ll do our weekly yoga session tomorrow.I’m trying to relax about that, work and life are always going to get in the way.

Swim: 1hr 30 min

Two pretty good swims this week. I swam 2500yds for the first time on Wednesday, squeezed in before a day of torture in Agile Development training. By the end of that swim I was dragging and couldn’t really muster much more that a struggling survival cruise pace for the last of my 100s. Oh well, first volume then intensity. 2500yds took almost an hour including a set of drills, so that’s the longest swim workout I’ll do for this event. Now to make it stronger.

Bike: 6hrs 33 min

Patty and I headed off this morning for our ‘long’ bike ride, about 40 miles. We rode Pinehurst and Redwood Roads, past the back side of Lake Chabot to Castro Valley and then followed Crow Canyon across to San Ramon. I’m not sure we’d ride that last part again, people use it to get from 580 to 680 and the speed of cars and sketchy shoulder didn’t make for the funnest riding. Plus, we didn’t see a single other cyclist, a sure sign. Beyond that we stuck to the Ironhorse and St Marys Rd to get back to where we started.

We ride painfully slowly as we spin our way over hill after hill. And then once we were beyond the hills, riding on the recreational trails were congested today, lots of people with dogs and kids with training wheels etc. Oh well. Somehow I’m hoping the high intensity power training on Tuesday and Thursday will magically combine with my weekend time-in-the-saddle on race day.

Run: 1hr 41 min

Hopefully my running can still maintain itself while I get the biking and swimming in shape. This week I ran just once, Friday night. It was a beautiful evening run around Lake Chabot on the trails. It was the first time back there since the marathon. Lots of people. Felt strong even though my overall state is a little fatigued. Anyway, perfect way to end the week.

Garden

When you run for fours hours productivity for the weekend is shot. When you bike, other stuff can happen. Saturday we worked on the garden most of the day. The result was at least two green bins worth of weeds and other foliage. We also mulched the flower gardens, mowed and trimmed the lawns, and planted tomatoes and herbs.

Coffee

And of course there was coffee, to fuel it all…

Biking, Kelly, Running, Swimming, Triathlon

For Easter weekend we drove down to Death Valley for some camping, off-road driving and a little biking. Sunday morning I biked the 35 miles from the Hwy 190/Scotty’s Castle Rd junction to Badwater. Since Badwater is the lowest point in the US it was guaranteed to be a net downhill ride.

Setting out for my ride

Unfortunately it wasn’t all downhill. Turns out I also did 1200 ft of climbing. Anyway, I’m definitely feeling stronger on the bike. Two months until Boise.

More photos of our Death Valley trip are here.

Biking, California, Death Valley, Sport, Travel, Triathlon Biking, Death Valley

Biking, Injuries, Running