Techie Tuesday - The Hill & The Blow

As anyone whose ever aspired to being a pilot, and taken ground school knows, wind never helps you. It always hurts you. The same is true for gravity. This is why both wind and hills slow you down. Let's look at some examples.

Assume there is a route from point A to point B that takes an hour to ride in calm conditions. Now assume there is enough of a headwind that it takes 1 hr and 59 minutes to get from A to B. How fast would you have to return from B to A to match your total ride time in calm conditions?  Yeah, really, 1 minute! So what if the wind had been just a bit stronger? It would take you longer to get to B than the round trip in calm conditions.

How can this be? The wind is blowing exactly the same speed when helping you as when hurting you, so why does it slow you down so much? The answer is simple. The wind is hurting you for a lot longer than it's helping you, and the stronger it is, the more this is true.

Like wind, the force of gravity is also a constant force applied over time (you can't crank it up or down), but when climbing a hill the force of gravity is hurting you for much longer than it helps. On really steep climbs, 10X as much.

This is also why a steady diet of rollers is so exhausting. You're spending almost all of the ride time fighting against the added force of gravity. Look at a route full of rollers on a Garmin trace, and pick time as the X axis, instead of distance. It looks like a sail pattern, not a series of upside-down Vs.

NASA uses the force of gravity the same way to slingshot satellites around planets. The satellite approaches slowly, so the force of the planet's gravity has a lot of time to pull on it, but when it passes the planet, it is really moving, so it quickly escapes the pull of  gravity.

In all of these cases, it's the TIME the force is applied that is key. Just thought you'd like to know.

Fun in the Sun

 Foresthill Divide mtb ride on Saturday

Making the most of daylight savings time, I got in ~ 100 miles last week. First, the PB ride to Beal's Pt up at Folsom Lake, and what turned out to be ~ 38 miles (forgot to turn my Garmin on after a break, so estimating) on Tuesday with a couple of friends from HWs, and then another 28 on Friday with friends. I'm tempted to try Mt Hamilton next weekend, but not really in shape for that kind of effort yet.

I was hoping to ride to Rescue today, after taking a rest day yesterday, but I am stranded on planet Zyrtek. Not only am I still loopy 18 hrs later, but sleepy all day and it lowered my pulse rate down to 52 BPM. It didn't spike my BP, but looking at the other side-effects, I'll be sticking to Claritin from now on.

On the way home on Friday evening, after two rides where my calf was behaving, I stood and stomped the short, steep hill up onto Boyer Ave, and cranked out between 1,056 and 1,152 watts - for about 12-15 seconds. I wouldn't bet anyone's life on that data, but I use it as a way to estimate leg strength, so was quite pleased my calf withstood the strain. I immediately coughed up a lung and had to dig deep to keep pushing forward. Recovery time was decent though - about 60 seconds.

 20min and 1hr Durations

I have added some interesting power-duration curves so you can estimate your power at different intervals. I suspect my power-duration curve is a bit flatter than average, but time will tell. The benchmark power-duration curve for training purposes is 1hr/40km. As an example, a 20min time trial pace will typically be done at about 105% of 1hr/40km.

You can get the gist pretty quickly looking at this curve. Recent rides uploaded to the RideWithGPS.com website have me averaging ~ 250 watts on 2 hr rides like Beal's Pt, so this is very close to my actual power-duration curve. This is almost exactly the power I put out on 1hr rides, so I think taking a 15-20 min rest turns Beal's into 2 one hour rides. As you can see, taking lots of breaks on club rides ruins them for distance/endurance training.

I used these curves and the "Power from Speed" calculator linked top left above to argue that one of our 95lb club members wouldn't be able to meet her goal of going from 15mph to 18mph on club rides by getting more fit. Why? Because if you're only made of 95lbs of stuff you can't possibly make the 80% improvement in strength required to keep up with a 180-200lb rider on the flats.

Climbing hills is all about your power-to-weight ratio, but on the flats, weight is irrelevant to speed. Flat speed is just a function of power and aerodynamic drag. Pro riders who dope with EPO only get a 12-15% benefit, so talk of 80% improvement is absurd. There is one simple way for her to meet her goals, as the "Speed from Power" calculator clearly shows - use aerobars. See, everything IS connected! ;-)

I've been pleased with my progress on the flats, so looking forward now to doing some long rides again. I haven't found a riding partner for Rescue yet, but a couple of our club riders also like that ride, so likely I will have company soon. It's really gorgeous out there. Time to ride!

A Tale of Two Rides

I headed out the door Sunday just before noon for Bella Bru. Being the last day of February I wanted to get some more miles in for the month. I had posted the ride with short notice, so wasn't too surprised no one showed up to ride, but I met a large group of riders who turned out to be part of the Sacramento Bike Hikers. They gave me a schedule, which I somehow managed to stuff in my jersey, and pushed off.

The ride was not slow, and maybe not even sluggish, but I just couldn't seem to get out of my own way. I got passed and decided to try to pace myself off the faster rider, who promptly tried to drop me. I stayed with him for ~ 5 minutes but just didn't have the top end I usually do.

My initial destination was Beal's Pt, but I decided to stop in Folsom, eat part of a Powerbar and get some water. The Gatorade I made up was from some old powder, and it was making me nauseated. I took 15 minutes and still didn't feel any better. Worse, my calf tear was really bothering me and I can't afford another tear, so I decided against climbing Beals, and headed home. It turned out to be about the same distance because of the detour down to Bella Bru and William Pond Pk, but a lot flatter.

When I got home, disgusted, I uploaded the Garmin 305's telemetry to my computer and it pretty much said the same thing. Of particular concern is my HR only got up to 165 when I was red-lining hanging onto the rabbit. I had plenty of time, was  well recovered, and my calf was screaming. I scratched my head and stewed. WTF? Another bad ride?


On Monday, with rain forecast for the day after, I was reluctant to ride, but wanted to get March off to a good start, so found some clean riding clothes and got dressed. Steering clear of the bad Gatorade I instead mixed some PowerBar Electrolyte powder in my waterbottle and grabbed 3 Powerbars - resigned to eating solid ride fuels.

Almost as a fluke I decided to take a mega B vitamin, a multi vitamin, 500mg of C, and 1,000mg of calcium, magnesium and zink. I washed that down with a little OJ and headed out the door with just a bit of nausea.

I decided to just cruise and rest the calf while logging some miles. I started out slow, but stood and hammered a bit climbing a short hill at about the 3mi mark. I noticed my calf was behaving, and my breathing was relaxed and easy. Hummm.

I stopped to talk to a local news crew that was setting up to shoot a story for TV a couple of miles later at Sunrise, and again was surprised at how smooth and strong I was shifting through the gears. Determined to take it easy, I loafed along at 17-21 for the next 4 miles until some doofus refused to ride single-file when facing on-coming traffic.

For all of the complaints I hear about motorists being asses on the road, fellow bicyclists who won't read or follow the rules just really get my goad - especially since the #1 cause of accidents on the bike trail is head-ons caused by exactly that. Stupidly, he started talking trash and I gave him a good bracing up. Riders like that give us all a bad name, and tarnish our reputation as responsible users of this awesome resource. Having said my piece, I took off pretty agitated.

Nice thing about riding is you have a ready outlet for such angst, so I took full advantage when two riders I had passed earlier caught up and passed me - riding much faster than earlier. We played cat and mouse until the bridge at WBP where I red-lined it and passed both of them decisively.

When I got home and looked at the Garmin trace I again saw proof of my subjective impression, that I was riding much stronger. My HR had maxed out at 171, a full 6bpm faster than the day before. The whole ride had just been much easier - in spite of hammering it hard on the lap from CSUS back to WBP. Yea B vitamins!!!

Miracle on Lake Natoma

What's that calculation again? 220-age?

As indicated in my last post, I have been pushing my max HR, and monitoring fatigue, to see how far I can push for threshold power, where the aerobic and lactate thresholds edge into anaerobic lactic acid spikes and extreme muscle fatigue. As Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong's trainer noted, pushing into Z5 created so much fatigue for Lance when first recovering from cancer he was not able to ride again for days. I have noticed the same thing is true for me.

I have done 2 rides since the Mt Hamilton ride on June 13th, because after training from mid November 2008, more or less with no breaks, I needed to take some serious R&R time. Last Saturday, July 4th, I did a short 28 mile climbing route with a couple of guys I hadn't ridden with in a long time. They really pushed me, and actually handily dropped me on the short, but super-steep climb. When I got home and uploaded my Garmin 305 to Training Center I saw I had spent 24 minutes in Zone 5. The next 3 days I was pretty tired, so lots of fatigue.

Since high altitude climbing is so demanding on the cardio system, this is an important unknown I would like to nail down, not only for the Death Ride, but for cooler mid-summer rides in the mountains, and for sprinting and general threshold power. Pushing back and forth across your aerobic threshold is also how you increase your VO2 Max. For all of these reasons I am at a point where I really would like to know how hard I can push a bent ticker.

I got my answer, or at least a big part of it, much sooner than I anticipated. On a ride Sunday night with the Feisty Fun & Frisky Fitness Meetup.com group, I was doing a little racing along the west side of Lake Natoma, pulling at the front of a draft, when I had to fall back, jump on the back of the peleton and then sprint up a short 3-4% hill. At the beginning of the ride the very dry air dried all the moisture from under the HR strap, and I got a few false readings in the 170s, so I dismissed the audio alarm with an annoyed glance and pushed on in spite of a reading of 173. Only later did I realize the readings were correct, or at least I think they were. (I will definitely repeat the experiment, but didn't see the kind of flaky readings going from 175+ to 120 or so in 2 seconds)

As you can see, I spent almost double that, 44:44 in Zone 5 Sunday, and no ill effects. Aside from general rest there are two things I suspect are helping me - Acai berry and CoQ10. I had this same experience 3 years ago with CoQ10, but stopped taking it when my peak HR returned to it's expected peak at 220-age. Almost on a fluke I started taking it again about a week ago, and given my past experience, this seems the likely reason for my heart's rather miraculous performance. I had no chest pain during the ride, after, or since. I am a little freaked out, and pretty excited. Taking my HR up from 166 to 176 should give me a 6% increase in cardio capacity. WOW, I'll take it!

Can you spot the guy who showed up without a helmet?


Pre-miracle grinning!

Photo credits to my friend Jeffrey Thorne
.

1-Second Please

I set my Garmin 305 for 1-second record mode and did the Bread & Butter Beal's ride again last night. The recommended setting is "Smart Record", which I have concluded is only smart from the point of view of Garmin's marketing department.

The last time I did this ride I used smart record mode, and my device captured 1,513 ft of climb. When I got home I uploaded the ride to Garmin's MotionBased website and that immediately turned into 2,413 ft of climb. When I looked at the way-points that were recorded it was obvious why. There were large, sometimes 200 ft gaps in waypoints, and on windey, hilly terrain, that misses too much. Of course, if you want your real altitude you can always buy a subscription to MotionBased and get a lot of other perks too.

Last night I put the Edge 305 in 1-second mode and had 2,453 Up and 2,484 Down, and fell into a 31 ft hole at my front door. OK, no hole, but MotionBased had the same problem until, now, magically, my front door is right where it was when I left it, "2,413 ft" later. They must have some "smoothing" and reconcilliation program that wipes the egg off their faces.

There was one downside to 1-second recording. MotionBased refused to upload the ride, whining about too many way-points. So there's the trade-off. Either use "Smart Record" and be tied to MotionBased for anything close to accurate climbing stats, or use 1-Second Record, enjoy your independance, and get it done in less than 3:30. (A true smart recording process would scan the 1-second results after the ride and delete way-points with identical elevations)

Conclusion: If you are doing rides shorter than 3:30, use 1-second recording and get the accuracy the device affords you.

The Beauty of Standards

I did my standard training ride to Rescue yesterday, and as promised, with my Garmin Edge 305 set to 1-second record mode. It is such a core training ride for me that I wanted to get the best possible trace so I know how it compares to other organized rides or challenges I might want to train for. The great thing about standards, at least for training, is that you can compare your performance over time and tell where you are doing well and where you need work.

I had a little trouble with the Garmin in that it didn't quite work as expected. First and foremost, toggling the timer on and off manually, and even power-cycling the device, I was not able to force my trace into history and thereby get around the 3:30 minute recording time limit when recording in 1-second mode. This is just pissing me off. What an idiotic design limitation in an era when gigs of solid-state memory sell for a few bucks. I then had to listen to MotionBased bitch about having too much detail. Well, deal with it, because I want all the resolution I can get for my hard-earned money. Buy more disk space and a few more servers, and deal with it already!

I will likely delete the trace from yesterday, because the complimentary MotionBased subscription only allows you to save the last 10 rides. My trace this time ended up flawed as I forgot to restart the timer after power-cycling the device at the Rescue Fire station. I rode for about a mile and a third before I noticed I wasn't getting any grade info - one of the side-effects of having no GPS trace. When I look at the trace I get a straight line across the base of a pretty good sized hill, and am not sure what MotionBased did with this.

Did it understand that this was an O&B route and re-route around the error? I don't know. I do know that my device's 3,800 ft of climb became 6,200 ft on MotionBased. If MB is correct, I am a lot closer to my goal ride than I thought, and it explains why my Party Pardee ride was so fast - even on a day when Big-D was taking some snap out of my legs.

I also learned that you can sub-divide your rides into laps, which should really be thought of as segments, not laps, because they are really just sub-divisions of the ride, with one important exception. The exception is that when you hit the lap button on an O&B it will start a new lap for you at that exact point on the return leg. Since I didn't know this, I manually lapped only to have it auto-lap too, creating silly, annoying little laps of less than a minute in duration.

The Garmin also recorded some motionless time, as my auto-timer shutoff is still set for 2.2 mph, and when the GPS signal got weak it would "move" the bike around enough to fool itself into thinking I was actually riding. I have reset the wheel size from Auto - which I believe causes it to ignore the wheel sensor in favor of the GPS track - to manual, and entered the correct wheel size. I hope this fixes the ghost motion problem.

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I love the Garmin, and think it is very well done, easier to use than my "dumb" Sigma bike computer was, but being a software engineer, I can think of ways to improve it, and may well do so (at least the software) as a programming exercise.

My ride did unearthed a chink in my nutrition. One I have talked about here often enough, so really just a matter of preparation. Because of the heat I had to hydrate a lot more. Drinking that much was only possible by diluting my (Acai spiked) Gatorade to the point where I was not getting enough electrolytes. Unfortunately I didn't have either Hammer Endurolytes nor Power Electrolytes foil sticks along. What saved me was I had a 4X concentrate of spiked Gatorade in my back bottle and could simply make lots of weak Gatorade at watering holes.

It worked - barely - but it worked. I had put 2 foils of Electrolytes, which is 4 servings, in my concentrate, but at least one more would have been much better. I also have the Hammer Endurolytes, but just forgot to bring them along. The value of standards, in this case of having a standard nutrition protocol, is every ride is another opportunity to stress-test your protocol and find weaknesses and work-arounds that become critical on event rides.

So, my Rescue O&B, done in a slow 4 hours, with the modified return route using the new Johnny Cash bridge, appears to be about 62 miles and 6,200 ft of climb. A pretty sucky time, but my goal was to ride in the heat in preparation for the Mt Hamilton ride, which was blistering hot last year. Nutrition was 2 Power Smoothie Bars, ~64 oz of spiked Gatorade, and ~40 oz of water. I got home with lots of 4X concentrate left, but was planning on a longer ride, so as expected.

What a Diffference a (1/32nd of a) Day Makes

My "office" on Saturday, April 4th riding Party Pardee

After sleeping somewhat fitfully, I was awaken by the alarm clock. Ah, thank you God. So nice to be able to put the jitters aside and sleep soundly - finally. I got up, stumbled into the kitchen and started through the ritual of making coffee. An old Melita coffee cone, filters, grind beans to a cake, boil water in pan, beat coffee cake into filter, place on Pyrex measuring cup and pour boiling water into filter cone. When done pour into Starbucks stainless coffee mug, add 4 tablespoons of raw sugar, top up with whole milk and put lid on. Simple - except stuff kept crossing my mind I was afraid I'd forget if I didn't do it right then - so with a lot of multi-tasking mixed in, I had a few sips, and decided I was amped enough I didn't need to push myself into "hopelessly distracted" mode and jumped into the shower.

With the car finally packed and bike in the trunk with the rear seats folded down, I rolled out of the gate and headed for Ione. The last time I had been to Ione was on a ride from Folsom in early December. A very nice 61 mile ride done with my club. I was the first one back to the parking lot and had really dropped the rest of the group decisively in 8-10 miles of perfectly sized rollers starting at the 45 mile mark, so I was psyched to ride beyond Ione and explore the steep Sierra foothills heavily damned decades ago to provide for California's bulging population.

With the assistance of a very helpful parking lot attendant I finally got my VDO computer to stop sensing my heartrate monitor long enough to get it into record mode - just one of many, many problems with the VDO system. I also left the camera behind, because it's just too big and heavy to carry on a timed ride. OK, I rode this as a race, and was going to try to chase down my riding group that started 1:15 ahead of me - so no extra baggage allowed. As I rolled out of the parking lot at 8:45 the air was still cold, numbing my fingers and freezing my thighs where the leg warmers end and only the thin Spandex of my shorts was protecting me.

I was relieved I had thrown my PI wind vest into my duffel bag before leaving home, but was still getting cold riding so slow in heavy bike traffic which rode 4 & 5 abreast in complete defiance of the organizer's "share the road" policy. My legs weren't getting loose, they were just getting cold. I needed to make some power and warm up, so after leaving the city's stop signs behind I started passing traffic in the oncoming lane, and barking "LEFT" as I plowed through groups of 20-30 riders blocking the road - sometimes in both directions. This went on for about 5 miles until we hit a stretch where the road surface was good, the route was straight and we'd picked up a slight tail wind.

I decided to test my legs as I had a ton of nervous energy and just wanted to burn the really high octane stuff off the top so I could get warm and then settle into a nice fast ride pace. I settled into the aerobars and put my head down, winding up my cadence and shifting through the gears. At about mile 5 I finally got up to full restrictor-plate racing speed - dialed in at 25-28 mph and blasting right over the tops of small rollers one after another. The 46/38/24 and 12-27 gearing was working perfectly, giving me the granular gears I needed for small grade and wind changes. Not having a cadence sensor yet for the VDO I just made my legs happy, turning something like 90-105 rpms, and keeping the torque in check. Plenty of hills later to torque up if I wanted to.

We hit the first of the hills coming up to Comanche Lake and a familiar pattern emerged. Most of the riders I just passed and never saw again, but some of the stronger riders would pass me on the climbs and then I would pass them on the downhills. Even when trying hard to avoid drafting other riders I was having to ride my back brake to keep from overtaking them when clumped up. On the downhill side of the Comanche climb I passed a long line of 20-30 riders going downhill. My weight is very compact and now with the aerobars I overtake riders churning their 53-11s ferociously. I am learning to relax, arch my back, and open my diaphragm going downhills too, as I can recover very fast that way. It showed up perfectly on the heart rate log. At my age I don't have energy to waste like in my teens and 20s, so I pay attention to details and ride as smart and efficiently as I can.

This was the first ride where I had the VDO in record mode and had the heart rate monitor working right, and found I was riding this section between 145 and 155 with long stretches were the display never wavered from 150 - I actually thought the computer was malfunctioning for a few minutes.

I went through Rest Stop #1 in about 15 minutes, going through the bathroom line and then mixing up some more Acai Berry spiked Gatorade for my front bottle from the 3X concentrate in my back bottle. I left the picnic food for the recreational riders and started to push off when I saw Becky, one of the club riders just pulling up. I was hoping this meant that I had somehow managed to be ahead of the riders I was chasing down. No such luck, as Becky was on the 50k ride, but it was still nice to meet her in person, I think for the first time. We chatted a bit and I pushed off.

The ride from there to Rest Stop #2 was/is a blur. Except for one occasion where I dropped my chain past the granny up front and had to stop to get it back on, I was dialed between 145-150 bpm and passing perhaps a hundred or more riders. Again a pattern set up where I would pass people on the downhills and they me on the uphills. This usually terminated when we came to rollers and I just put my head down, hugged the aerobars and rolled over the hillcrest at 16-18 mph. I was feeling great! Everything was working well, my energy level was good, my nutrition was good and my legs were a bit sore, but doing everything I asked of them. Then the long super-steeps showed up, almost right out of the gate at Rest Stop #2.

The biggest climb of the ride comes at about the 40 mi mark, and you can see it coming for a mile ahead. I looked up as I came around a bend and saw a long line of brightly colored ants crawling up the side of the mountain - the left shoulder of the earthen dam that makes up New Hogan Reservoir. Not wanting to risk another chain drop I shifted my rear dérailleur down from the 27 to the 25 tooth gear and dropped the front chain. It hit perfectly, sparing my legs the strain of trying to pull a 38-25 gear on an 8-18% grade.

For some reason I felt more comfortable in the hoods, so tested my legs and found the 24-25 gear about right for a long, steep climb. I checked my heart rate and it was hovering around 145, so good to go. Close to the top of the climb my quads started to twitch a little so I took a little detour into a Scenic Overlook parking lot where I bummed some water off of a woman with a beautiful Cervelo. We and a very cute couple riding a tandem chatted for 5 minutes or so while I hydrated, mixed some more Gatorade from concentrate, and shook my legs out swimmer style. It was only a few more miles to the final rest stop, so I did the last of the climb a little conservatively and decided to make an extended stop to refuel, stretch and rest my legs.

The approach to Rest Stop #3 was a frustrating series of stops for heavy traffic at small town stop signs capped off by a steep approach to the rest site. There were hundreds of riders there, most looking pretty tired, some discussing getting SAGed in, but most doing what I was doing, steeling themselves for the 15 mile ride home. I needed electrolytes and was happy I had bought some powdered Power Electrolytes foil sticks along - or so I thought. As it turned out, I had left them in the car! OUCH! I tried eating some Sun Chips and immediately felt nauseated. I took the junk out of my jersey and laid down to rest my back and stretch my neck out. The sun was warm and wonderful, but burned the salt cake on my face. I got up after a few minutes to find the men's room and wash my face.

The stench was atrocious, there was no soap, but there was hot water. I washed my hands but gave up trying to get my gloves off, went outside again gasping for air, and tried a few baby red potatoes. They seemed OK, but didn't relieve the nausea. I made my way through the crowd to the hydration area and drank almost a full waterbottle full of spiked Gatorade. At least that tasted good, didn't make me any sicker to my stomach, and had the electrolytes I needed. At the last minute I saw an area to wash my hands and face, but looked at the line and decided to push off. It was starting to get "late", I had been resting quite awhile - at least by my standards.

Rolling down the approach I narrowly avoided getting hit by a rider just clipping in at the head of her group. I think my mountain bike balance skills saved me, because with a heavy truck coming up the hill towards up, I had to balance while stopping almost completely. As I relaxed my grip on my front brake I was happy to be leaving. If I ride this ride again I'm going to stop at the Scenic Overlook and skip the 3rd rest area entirely. The slow crawl through the town, up to the picnic area and then back through the town just kills your speed and is frustrating. I had eaten almost nothing. I couldn't even get down a Powerbar.

I felt sick to my stomach, weak, and decided to stay on the wheel of a kind woman who felt about as chatty as I did. She was riding with her cousin and going slow to let her catch up, so we nursed a 15-17mph pace and played for time. I started to feel chilled, and then my bladder started to complain. I needed a nature break so started watching for tree stands to take care of business as discretely as one can with 1,200+ riders on the same road. I found a nice little stand of trees just at the edge of a small turnout on the (very rough and broken) road, thanked my new friends for the pull, and hit the brakes. I was sorry I'd lost them. They were a big comfort and had done a nice job of pacing me, but mother nature was insistent, so I did what I had to.

Clipping in 2 minutes later I caught the tail end of another small group of 5 riders and soon we were headed downhill at a pretty good clip. We rounded a bend and there at the top of the dam road was a stop light. WTF? A stop light? Here? There's nothing here to stop for. There isn't even a crossing road! Oh, but wait, the dam road is ONE way. OK, cool. I had re-acquired my new found friends and we all had a chance to talk while my head started to clear. I could feel my strength coming back by the second - warming out of the wind on the sun-drenched hillside.



By the time the light changed we were all ready to ride and went charging across the bridge - thankful for tall concrete shoulders on each side as the flag on the control house was blowing straight out - 20 to 30 mph I thought. Of course, we were now going to have to climb up the other shoulder, paying the mountain back for the free ride of the downhill on the approach.

I started shifting gears early to get into granny and find the right gear in back. Early in the ride I would have stayed on the 38 middle gear and the 27 in back, but I didn't want to upset my stomach again or push my luck facing a stiff headwind all the way home, so I ended up turning the 24T in front and 21-25 in back and watched a long line of riders dismount and start walking up the hill. As we went around a bend to the right we were met with still more climbing. It must have been a very long walk for some of those riders. I felt for them.

Finally, we were done climbing, and I was grinning as I flew downhill in the aerobars, passing everything in sight. I took special delight in passing a 20-something rider who was wearing a CSUS race team jersey. He had kicked my butt at the start of the climb, but I had been closing the gap the whole way and was now blowing past him. I looked up - and did a double take - and then another - through sweat streaked glasses. There was a STOP sign 500 yards ahead and I was doing 41mph!

I started with both brakes, but the back wheel started locking up pretty quickly so I just pushed my weight back and clamped down hard on the front brake. The 120mm stem and long reach bars provided tremendous leverage to keep the front wheel pointed downhill, and the SRAM Force brakes and meticulous cable routing did their job. There was a CHP car at the end of the road where it T-ed into the one we made a hard right onto. I didn't stop completely. I didn't want to kill all of my speed or get run over by riders with questionable brakes. That was pretty much it for the steep hills. Thank God. I was ready to be back on the flats where compact power rules - no matter how much weight it comes with. :D

I had not been able to reset my computer before starting the race, so I had to subtract the length of my last ride to keep track of the miles. I was getting a little tired for mental math. A skill honed by years of day-trading, I was finding the effort increasingly irritating. I changed the display. A watched pot never boils - especially when tired.

The headwind was not as bad as the flag had indicated it might be, but people riding upright on tall stacks of stem spacers and on the hoods were taking a beating. I backed off a bit as I passed the first group of 5-7 and let a paceline form. Down in the aerobars I pulled them along at 17mph or so and could hear them shifting gears to stay tucked in tight. The rider from CSUS came roaring by and I decided I had done my good deed for the day, so went after his wheel. A series of fast riders came by, one by one or two up. If I could I would stay with them and pull when my turn, but a couple of them were just too fast. As part of this attack and rest strategy I pulled 3-4 pacelines. Thinking about it later I realized that ALL of the pacelines on that stretch had been pulled by riders in aerobars.

About 5 miles out our little road intersected with the major highway in the area, and I feared a slow and dangerous crossing in a pack of very tired riders. Then a minor miracle happened, the CHP officer stepped out into the road and waved us all through the intersection. I was through the intersection before I realized I hadn't even looked for cross traffic. The CHP were magnificent, and provided this service at several major crossings. I'm sure it saved at least one life as many of the riders were stopped along the road, trying to get a 2nd wind to make it home so they wouldn't have to get SAGed in.

Once across we started up a 2-3% grade with almost no shoulders and I couldn't pass anyone because of traffic crawling cautiously beside tired riders in both directions. We hit a short section of false flat and I managed to pass the back 5-6 riders in what passed for a sprint at that point in my ride, and caught up with a couple riding together at the front of that long string of riders. We ended up going through the front gate together 10 minutes later in a rather anti-climatic finish.

I got home and started looking at the VDO logs and was very disappointed. It looked like my time had been 4:12 - almost out of the top end of my goal window of 3:30 - 4:15. I was very disappointed. I couldn't imagine riding that hard to catch up with my group, having worked my legs almost to exhaustion, and finishing with such a weak time. That was almost exactly my time to Rescue with a similar climb profile and 60 miles length. What went wrong?

After hours of investigating the 10 second data points I realized the computer was counting all of the time my heart rate monitor was going, not the time I was actually rolling. Fortunately I had made a phone call to a friend about 10-15 minutes after I finished the ride, and having a firm start time I focused on estimating the time consumed by my 4 rest stops. I had a solid start time of 8:45, and a pretty solid end time of 1:15, so now it was down to estimating rest time. I can't imagine spending less than an hour resting, especially since the stop at Rest #3 was so extended. I'm comfortable with a 3:30 estimate, and I may well have done it in 3:20, but I doubt 3:15 and anything longer than 3:35. I'm especially happy I was able to recover and ride a strong finish.

I probably spent 4-5 hours piecing together data to come up with the 3:30 estimate, but two things I know for sure. One, I am very happy with my performance and conditioning level, and two, that VDO piece of junk is going back in favor of a Garmin Edge 305. So yeah, 45 minutes is only a 32nd of a day, but what a difference it made in how I felt about the ride. All smiles here now. Tired smiles, but happy, satisfied smiles. I still have a ton to learn, but my training is going really well, so tired and contented smiles! Did I pay the rent ........? ... life calls.

STATS:
Avg Speed ~ 18.57
Climb ~ 4,150ft officially (MotionBased GPS reports are 4,500+)
Time ~ 3:30
Ride Calories ~ 850 (2/3rds solid, 1/3rd liquid)
Ride Hydration ~ 110 oz
Rest Time ~ 60 minutes
Avg Riding HR ~ 145 (86% max)