I Like to Drink and Ride

So Tuesday was St. Patrick’s Day, and like any good old Irish boy (partially Irish anyway... everyone's Irish on St. Patty's Day!), I was set to wear green and show my pride. The only problem was that I was riding my bike into work (a different kind of green entirely), but during the day I wanted to wear my super-cool Ireland jacket, (I like to tell people I won it it in a drinking contest in the Boar’s Head Pub in Ireland, but actually my wife picked it up at Macy’s) but it wouldn’t fit into my backpack. I figured that the ride is a flat 12 miles, and I can do that without breaking a sweat so I decided to just wear the jacket as I rode. As long as I didn’t hammer the pedals and get my jacket all sweaty, I would be able to leave my coworkers in slack-jawed wonderment with my green-clad awesomeness.

Before I left, my lovely Irish wife took me to the Bean Street Coffee Shop. Ahh... Bean Street...

Bean Street Coffee Shop

Where they serve magnificent

Nectar of the Bean

(Haiku-five!)

Now, I learned once from a documentary I saw once that God had actually originally intended more than ten commandments. And I’m positive that commandment number twelve would be that Thou Shalt Not Waste Bean Street Coffee Ever, Ever, Ever... Never! Right after Thou Shalt Not Eat Chili’s Awesome Blossom When You Go On A Date and right before Thou Shalt Not Wear Skinny Jeans Unless You Are In Fact Skinny. Far be it from me to tick off the Almighty on St. Patty’s Day, so away I pedaled to work at a nice slow pace, sipping by fresh brew.

I have to say, this was a different experience for me. Rather than hammer the pedals and keep a close eye on my Garmin to see if I can make a personal best time, I was riding nice and slow and enjoying the scenery a bit more. On top of that, since I was wearing my jacket, I didn’t attract the kind of attention (and competitive riders) that I might attract in my spiffy Alto Velo lycra. This had a strange effect on me. I felt absolutely no obligation to demonstrate how fast I can go, and what’s more, I was having a really good time waving to other riders, even the ones that usually annoy me. It kinda made me think about how un-assuming the riders that I really respect are. Some of the first riders who introduced themselves to me are some of the best riders I’ve ever ridden with, real world-class riders. I think its because they don’t feel a need to prove themselves, they just enjoy riding. I would rather be like that then to be the guy who is always so focused on riding fast that he never enjoys his ride. I’m gonna have to stop at the coffee shop before my rides more often.

Sweet!

In the upper right corner of the blog, I've added a "Wordle" image which takes the text from this page and arranges it into a picture. More prominent words from the blog are mentioned closer to the center, or in larger text. It will also update as the text on the page changes! I'm totally geeking out!

Alright Already!

 OK, so it's been forever since my last post. Sorry. For those interested, on the left is my weight-loss progress. The blue line is a trend line that would get me down to 160 by next January and the gray line is where I'm at. Ahead of schedule! I think I'll celebrate with an apple fritter!

So I've had some pretty cool adventures on my bike, but I only had my GPS charged up for this one. Still, it was pretty eventful. I was late for meeting the B ride, so I decided to jump on with the Spectrum (find out about these rides here). So I jumped into the fray with the Spectrum guys right away at Page Mill Road, no warmup. Big mistake. I was already shelled off the back by the turn on to Arastradero! Yep, I think I got a full half a mile in with the group before I was riding solo. Fortunately, as I was grinding my way up Alpine, I was joined by another Alto Velo rider who also happens to work at Genentech. So we talked racing, Roche, and the cool new clubhouse complete with a gelatto bar on the south campus. We decided to keep going the route that the B ride was taking, so we hit Kings mountain. I got a flat right at the entrance to Huddart park, which you can actually see on the route if you zoom in close enough.

Anyway, at the top of Kings, we parted ways and I went down to Sky Londa. On the way there, I had to stop because the police had shut down the road for a few minutes. The officer was really rude to me, and I was pretty rude back. And we move on...

I joined up with the B ride at Sky Londa, but rather than go down 84 East with them, I decided to go west and really punish myself with a climb up West Alpine. This one's a climb that just NEVER ends. But it was warm, so I couldn't complain too much. On the way up, I met up with a small group that included some Alto Velo riders and Katheryn Curi Mattis, a national champ that rides for the Webcor Pro Team. Yes, she was taking it easy and no, I could not stick to her wheel. 

The Peninsula is really a great place to ride, if for no other reason than you are sure to see some great people on the road. And the terrain and scenery is hard to beat. You just have to know that nothing is for free, and enjoying all that beauty comes at the price of a lot of sweat. I pretty much resembled a giant salt lick in lycra as I humbly limped over the top of West Alpine and made my descent down Page Mill back to my car. 

I'll try to keep the posts a little more frequent. I have a genuinely useful one I'm working on for later this week!

It's Official

 The image on the left came from the excellent Weightbot application for the iPhone. Okay, so I added some commentary overlays, but you get the point. So I'll keep posting my progress with screenshots from the application, and you can feel free to poke fun at me in the comments section.

So this is kinda strange. I've always considered myself to be pretty healthy. Even though I know I'm not in the best shape of my life or anything, it's kinda strange to see myself above the "Overweight" line. This is a brand new "ouch world" for me! And of course, we all know the way out of this world, more ouch. Like the hour I spent flogging myself on the Expresso bike at the Genentech gym last night. That was fun, but is sure did hurt. It especially hurt because even though I was pushing relatively hard, I finished 21st out of 39 riders to attempt the course nation wide this year. I guess when you spend your time reading about other people who are fast, you kinda feel like it rubs off on you. As it turns out... it doesn't. So, I'm doing my Power 90x (I even took my "before" pictures, but there's no way I'm posting them until I have some decent "after" pictures to put up next to them!), riding my bike, and watching what I eat. Tomorrow is another day on the Expresso bike, and I'm gonna have to do something drastic to help out my ego a bit.

New Year, Same Suffering

A brand new year, so it's time to see what kind of shape I'm in (cough...), so I decided to take a trip up Old La Honda road. You can see my ride info here.

So I managed to claw my way up to the top in 26:58. Not great, but better than I was expecting. It's clear that five days in the mile-high altitude in Albuquerque didn't make me into a super-climber (Possibly because of the stuffed sopaipillas and burritos I gorged myself on...). It was a little embarrassing how many times I was passed by other riders... when did that start to happen? Halfway up I noticed a salamander that had been flattened on the road, and I instantly related. When I reached the top, my glasses were fogged over, so I couldn't really see my time, but I figured I could just check it on my Garmin when I got home. Time for one more climb up OLH, this time at an easy pace. It's hard to believe that there is only three minutes between this:

and this:

The good news is that I only have to take 35 seconds off each month to break 20 minutes.