A late beginning to the month. Sober October, or continuing what I began in September. The diet changes Octoberfest not withstanding. It turns out I can enjoy an Octoberfest party without beer. And I didn’t even eat too much. Only three months left to the year.
I’m back on the bike this first full week of the month. We have a very heavy marine layer along the coast this year keeping it cool and damp. A mile inland the temperature rises to mid 70’s and in ten miles is into the mid 80’s. Heat warnings are spread up the state and into the middle of the state. I’ll be starting off with a week of light riding to get back into the swing of riding. I hope to be back to group rides in a week or so, along with increasing my distance and effort.
First ride back, 1:57 with 73% in zone 2. Easy does it.
It was bound to happen. I can’t seem to wear tires out, instead I destroy them on road clutter. On my third ride of the month, I noticed the front tire had a big chunk missing. I had planned to add a third hour to the route, but seeing the damage I decided not to push my luck more and turned back for home.
The damaged tire, a Continental GP 5000 had less than a thousand miles old. Of course I had bought a pair of Pirelli P-Zero Race tires in 28mm width. The GP 5000 was 25mm.
Let ride of the week days for this first week, I got a wasp sting under my helmet. Hurt like crazy. I’d decided to not ride an extra hour because I was feeling under fueled and not quite up to it. Better to take it slow than force it and hurt myself. The bug hit my helmet, but I didn’t see or feel it through the helmet liner. By the time I made the 12 miles home, my head didn’t hurt that bad. But, an area about t eh size of my palm was swollen and red. No stinger, as this was a wasp and thought the liner makes that tough. Ice and rest. Some Tylenol since I can’t take anything else. I decided to make Friday a rest day with my head still swollen and painful to wear a helmet. Yes, I tried it in the morning and my head was not happy. The thing stung me exactly under one of the helmet supports of course. The swelling is down to my brow too so not great at all. I’m thinking a longer ride come Saturday on my own. I’ll skip the group ride on Sunday this week.
Now, the upside of that wasp-sting ride was riding the new Pirelli P-Zero Race tires. Mine are the 28mm version that measure 27mm and a bit once inflated to 85psi. They immediately felt wonderful down my semi-lumpy street. Our street surface is pretty. good, but only about a two year old seal job that, while very smooth by seal standards, is far from the velodrome-smooth pavement along the river road that is my local gold standard of smooth. The tires are an improvement over the GP5000’s I’d been running in 25mm at similar pressures. I used the same Vittoria latex tubes in both setups.
I may just give some of those fancy TPU tubes a try, go full weight weenie on this ride.
Mounting the tires was easy enough by hand. No tools required to mount. My tips for this are old school; tire talc, aka baby powder, not cornstarch to lube between the tire and tube, slight inflate for the tube to begin then start at the stem, keeping the beads in the center of the rim to keep from pinching the tube with the bead. The trick is to pinch the tire bead back to the center from the stem around the rim as you go to keep as much tension off the tire as possible where you are working it over the rim.
Total for the first week of the month were not spectacular, but I’ll take it. 241km across five rides. A total of 10 hours and 4 minutes.
Another week in the books. 259 km, spread across ten. hours and fifty minutes. We’ve got a warming trend in our weather, so cycling has moved into the epic zone. Cool crisp nights with just this side of chilly mornings to just this side of hot afternoon highs. Very nice. Tourists are mostly not around as they come for the heat and crowds of Disneyland and the more popular beach cities. The annual crush of snowbirds has yet to hit, so traffic on the roads and the ever increasing e-bike herds on trails has not got out of hand.
My weight is trending in the right direction. I am happy with that. I need to order one more set of kit and go find a new helmet, then begin the new shoe search.
After a second metric century in the same week, I know absolutely I’ll be buying new shoes. My toes are crushing themselves against the toes of the shoes. I’d gone a half size up from the last pair. I’d been wearing size 43 for ages in Sidi or any other shoe/boot/hockey boot. Weird my feet are somehow now larger. Anyway, Thursday was a life-induced rest day so I took the opportunity to clean up the drive train. Clean the chain and fresh wax.
About an hour in the ultrasonic cleaner all heated up nicely, a nice warm soak in Simple Green after a wipe down to remove the looser bits. The chain comes out wonderfully clean and very hot. I carefully carry it to the kitchen and rinse until nice and clear and clean. Then back down to the shop to blow off with t he pressure hose and a sun dry while I check the wax pot.
With the wax all warmed up I wad up the chain and careful not to splash the wax get the chain in the pot. A couple hours soak and stir extract with a light wiping with paper towel to remove the excess. The chain wear gage confirms the wax has indeed wicked between the pins and rollers.
As long as I have the bike cleaned up and the weather is nice, I set up for a glamour shot.
I’m feeling good enough, I might just do a third metric century tomorrow.
I ended the last full week of the month with 463km, across 19:35 and 3,495m of climbing. A big week. Then a plumbing issue in the kitchen took up Monday of this last week and left my old body sore from all the under the. sink, down and up the stairs and forth and back hardware store visits. A good group ride Sunday with some very fast folks. I burned my matches on the way out to Santa Margarita, then worked with Dan as sweep on the homeward leg back to the start point. After the meet up point I headed back home via the harbor loop, putting some efforts in. I am on course to finish the month with my greatest mileage accumulation for the year. Pretty cool feeling.
I ended the last week of the moth with a 100km ride on Halloween. Just a bit chilly of a ride. But, it made for my biggest distance month of the year so far. I’m down 2.5kg for the month. I’m hoping to keep this rolling through November then December is all holidays and family visits and such so cycling will take. a back seat.
Totals for the month:
Distance: 1,130km
Climbing: 7,375m
Time: 51 hours
Along The Way 