Week 11

Date
March 14, 2015

Distance
101 miles

Strava Link
Week 11

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Report 

I had a 3-day weekend, so I couldn't resist going to Death Valley. My climbing needs some work, so I did some repeats on a nice quiet climb just outside the park. I ended up doing 7 hours worth of repeats, which was just short of 15,000 feet.

I took a long break (I actually fell asleep) and rode the extra miles to hit 100. I needed a ride like this because I'm definitely not in very good shape right now. I felt like I started the day at a conservative pace, but I seemed to hit a wall around the 4-hour mark. My legs were dead by the end of the day, but I went ahead and did 100 miles and 9,500 feet the next day, which ended up being at a snail's pace. But hey, 25,000 feet is a good weekend of training and there's never a bad time in Death Valley. It was the perfect time of year to be there- flowers were blooming and the temperatures were warm but not quite hot yet.

I'm off Thursday and Friday, so I'm going to do a 4-day block of Petoji training from Thursday-Sunday. I'm hoping to average 110/day for those 4 days.

Week 10

Date
March 7, 2015

Distance
102 miles

Strava Link
Week 10

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Report 

What a difference a week makes. The temperature jumped about 25 degrees and the weather was fantastic. I took advantage of the warm, sunny skies and did a little climbing. I did 2 laps of Six Mile Canyon plus the Virginia City Truck Route.

Unfortunately, NV 342 is closed until summer and all traffic is being diverted to NV 341 (the truck route). This is bad news because (a) 342 has a nice climb with a steep section that makes for a good test and (b) 341 used to be a super quiet road, but now it has more traffic. 341 is probably my favorite descent in the area, and the low traffic was one of the main reasons why.

Next week could be a big one. Stay tuned.

Week 9

Date
March 1, 2015

Distance
105 miles

Strava Link
Week 9

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Report 

Saturday was snowy, but the roads were fine by Sunday. I did a simple out-and-back on US 50 just to be sure that I'd have a clear road to ride on the whole way. By the end of the day the snow was only in the mountains.

Week 8

Date
February 21, 2015

Distance
101 miles

Strava Link
Week 8

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Report 

Pyramid Lake

Week 7

Date
February 15, 2015

Distance
101 miles

Strava Link
Part 1 and Part 2

Route Map/Profile

Part 1

Part 2

Weather

Ride Report 

I took advantage of the long President's Day weekend and headed out to the coast to visit Eureka, CA and Redwood National Park. Saturday was spent exploring the park and Sunday was spent riding. The route was pretty simple- starting at the Oregon border and heading south on 101 to Eureka. I took a few detours from 101 but these were all part of the Pacific Coast Bike Route, which has very good signage on this portion of the route.

The day started off on the wrong foot. My Garmin wasn't booting up and I couldn't get it to connect to my computer or anything. The screen was stuck on "loading profiles" and restarting it wasn't fixing the problem. I suppose there's never a convenient time for your Garmin to fail, but this seemed like particularly bad timing. I didn't have time to research the problem, I stupidly left my backup GPS at home, and there's no way my phone battery was going to last the entire ride. I got frustrated, decided to run the phone app for as long as I could and started riding.

As I was riding I started to realize the absurdity of the situation. Here I was in one of the most beautiful places in the country riding my bike in nearly perfect weather and I was upset about a stupid little bike computer. Why? What was I riding for, to have fun out there or to rack up my pathetic little numbers on Strava? Perhaps my Garmin was teaching me an important lesson.

After about an hour the Garmin decided to power up, though it took a lot longer than normal to find a satellite. Once it found a satellite everything seemed to be OK. It made it through the rest of the ride and the file uploaded to Strava correctly. I'm a little worried that this might be the start of other problems with the unit, but hopefully not.

Anyway, 101 is a beautiful place to ride. I got super lucky with the weather. There was hardly any fog at all and the wind was very light. This route had a little bit of everything. There were flat sections, a few shorter climbs, some scenic riding along the coast, and a short ride through a Redwood forest.

As always, the ride was even more beautiful than the photos suggest. There are also a lot of other great routes in the area. The Tour of the Unknown Coast is worth looking into, and 299 from Eureka to Redding looks like it would be a ton of fun to ride. I had a great weekend here but could easily spend a week or more in the area.

Week 6

Date
February 7, 2015

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 6

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Report 

What can I say? It was a miserable ride. January was warm and there wasn't much wind, so I guess I was due for a day like this.

It started out with 40 miles of headwinds. Around the time I made it to Genoa I noticed rain ahead but clear skies behind. I was planning on doing 50 miles and then turning around, but instead of dealing with the rain I decided to change plans, heading east and then back north on 88/395 towards sunny skies.

Rainbow

Things cleared up as I was heading east, so I changed plans again and headed back south. That turned out to be a bad decision. A new wave of dark clouds rolled in all of the sudden there was rain everywhere, even to the north. I got rained on for a good 3 hours. It wasn't one of those wimpy little sprinkling rains that we tend to get around here, either. It was a nice, solid rain.

I don't mind riding in the rain on a warm day, but it's just miserable on a cold and windy day like today. Eventually the water finds a way through your booties, gloves, and jacket and chills you down to the core.The rain stopped for the last 10 miles or so, but it was too late. My clothes were soaked and I just couldn't get warm again.

It's easy to complain about a day like today, but in the end days like these are a good thing. They make you appreciated the good days.

Week 5

Date
January 31, 2015

Distance
105 miles

Strava Link
Week 5

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Report 

My favorite junction

The weather was great today, so I did a little more climbing than I usually do this time of year- Geiger Grade plus two laps of 6 Mile Canyon. I definitely don't have my climbing legs yet, but it was still a fun ride.