The month started out cold for me. I never saw anything warmer than 15°C the whole 100km. My base layer under summer kit with leg and arm warmers were just enough. Riding into the onshore breeze in the shade down El Toro was chilly, so I pushed hard to try and stay warm with work. I didn’t hydrate too much, only going through maybe a bottle of Nuun. I ate six dried apricots at two different stops.
By the time I got back to Dana Point for the above photo I was feeling hungry, but not that hungry. My legs were burning a bit, but not fatigued sore. I relaxed for a while along the coast highway trail, then as I chilled, put the hammer down, but could only manage about 145bpm in effort. I had toyed with riding a lap of the Olympic course, but the gathering clouds and chill made me skip it. I got home about a quarter after 4pm and about an hour later we had rain as I was making supper. I may try reversing this route to put that long steady climb up Aliso Creek trail at the start rather than it being a long shallow descent before the end.
First full week of the month is up next. I’ll see what I can do.
First ride of the new week I rode part of the Aliso Creek loop to the Olympic road racecourse and did a lap of that, then back down to the park at Antonio and back out to Dana Point and home. 109.8km. Slow with the steep climbs and headwind all the way to Rancho Santa Margarita, but a good hard effort. I was very sore and tired after.
Nearly five hours of riding.
The first full week of November I was able to manage 419km. Felt pretty good about that. I had some low heart rate alerts from my health app. I was 40 or below for ten minutes during my sleep on Sunday night. I had gone to bed to read before 9pm, but only managed to read about fifteen minutes. I put the book up, shut off the lights and woke just before 9am Monday morning.
I ended the week with a whimper. I was just too cold and tired to get up early for a group ride so, 270km for the week over three rides. My exploration got me a longish flat-ish route that starts up some good climbing and rollers after the long flat warmup to Dana Point Harbor. I need to find a stop point about midway between the first stop on the Alicia Creek trail and the a bit beyond midway park on Santa Margarita Parkway for warmer weather, but for now this is a pretty good metric century. I figure I’ll do some more exploring further north by continuing north on Golden Lantern/Moulton/Irvine Center/Edinger to about Jamboree and catching the Peters Canyon trail off to the northeast to Irvine, then back to Alton, along Irvine, then northeast along that to Portola that then becomes Santa Margarita Parkway. There are a few options along that part of the route for restrooms and water. I don’t think that gets me to 100 miles, but it is an easy enough expansion.
I ended the. last week before Thanksgiving with 321km, 2,309m of climbing across some 13 hours. I slept through my alarm for the Sunday group ride, missing that.
Two different nights this month my AppleWatch has caught my heart beating below 40 bpm, causing the health app to issue a low heart rate alert/warning. Both times this was for around ten minutes duration. I have a history of both an extremely low heart rate and blood pressure. I was nearly given a medical retirement from working as an aerospace machinist in my early twenties because my resting pulse was about 25 bpm and my blood pressure was viewed as far too low. My family physician intervened as he was the person who was also the overall company doctor to define my metrics as normal for me.
Today the 29th will end the month’s riding for me thanks to other commitments on Saturday. A couple of good rides this week to position cleats on the new Lake shoes. I’ll do a separate full writeup on the Lake shoes and my impressions. Short version is this is an improvement.
November has turned out to be the biggest mileage month for the year so far. I am definitely feeling stronger for the efforts. My weight is headed down and I’v managed to drop well below 25 BMI this month and headed further down. I recover quicker on a ride as well as between rides. All good. I’ve ended this month, even with our national overeating holiday, at 73kg, or about 161lbs. The result of a very light variation of diet, primarily deleting alcohol, but an increase in intensity of rides. Only riding half the days available for the month, I know I can do a bit better than that on average so there is more workouts available.
Now the goal is to top November’s totals in December.
Totals for the month:
Distance: 1,239km
Climbing: 9,697m
Time: 52hours
Along The Way 