April off to a start a day or two late. My first ride of the month was to check the new Cycliq camera/lights. There is still enough chill and allergy debris in the air so my nose runs a bit while riding. I’m not sure that will ever go away in a land where stuff grows seemingly without season. The camera/lights test was just OK. No near misses recorded, but between updating all the operating systems and getting the Cycliq Plus app to install correctly on the Mac, I managed to not get any exported video. Syncing the Strava data overlay with the video was down to a manual operation. I had forgotten to start the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt recording until I got to the first stop light just before the beach parking lot. That offset the sync of data by about 15 minutes or so. The export popup never updated, so I eventually deleted the edit and went about the rest of my day. I’ll add more about these lights as I work my way through living with them.
My first thoughts are the silicone cases are a pain for the rear Fly6, the case has to be peeled off to expose the door where the charge port lives. This ejects one or both of the lens protectors in the case. I don’t ride in that rough of conditions so I may end up ditching the case. The front Fly12 Sport is a bit easier with a cutout in the case for door access and no extra lens protectors. I’ll go through the whole process of setting up the lights/cameras, mounting then dealing with. the video once I’m successful with a video and am confident I’ve used the apps and hardware correctly.
This month I have a series of health review doctor visits as well as booster shots. Those appointments will shorten ride time availability, but I should still have plenty of opportunity to wear myself out. I received the new quick-release skewers for the old Roubaix and it is up on the block to be sold. I’m hoping that happens quickly. I have considered selling the Rocky Mountain too, but still hold on to it as a tow bike for the next step with grandson and bicycles, the tow-bicycle thing. I can rent one down at North Beach to try with him. First we will need to make a trip to REI for a new helmet for him. He has grown a good bit.
Second ride of the month was a windy, chilly ride of 2:45. Made some efforts, but not full throttle, just pushing to see how I was feeling. Felt good. I made an attempt to edit one chunk of video, but the export process failed. I’m hoping this is due to not saving the piece to the hard drive and working off the camera. I may be forced to find my chip adapter for this. The weekend has two group rides lined up. The first I have to drive to get there and leave quite early from home. The second is a donut ride from SJC, so a half hour spin to the start point.
Donut Ride Sunday, big fun. Started off chilly at about 7°C along the ocean in the shade, but got nicely warm by the end.
A good day of hard riding with wind and fast riders working hard. Made some PR’s thanks to the crew and motivation on a couple of little stinger climbs and fast fun curves and roads along the harbor.
After the ride we got donuts and instead of begging off and riding east in the wind and heat, I sat with a coffee and a fritter. I should have taken a photo. Banana foster fritter and a cappuccino hit the spot. Then I rode for home, but turned up the hill to Dana Point, via Salt Creek. Just a bit of climbing that got me down to the bottom gear on the F7. But, I got to stop by the elephant for a visit.
This ride ended the week with around 273km, 1,533m of climbing over 10:36. I’m spending more time in the big ring on the flats as I gain strength and figure out gearing. The Wahoo app shows my favorite this ride was 52/19. I spent the most time, 38% above 152W. A good week.
Got in my April gran fondo and just to make it sting a bit, climbed Pacific Island. That climb hits 12% and is about a mile or so long. The segment is called Tall Boy and is 4.86km in length and rises 222m at an average grade of 4.5%. I was not super fast, but didn’t expect to be given the climb happens about 80 km into a 100+ km ride. At the top there is a nice view of the ocean, though we have been having a marine layer blow in and out so I had clouds.
My gran fondo for the month got me 1,016m of climbing and just a tic over 100km. Slow pace, but I had ridden harder on the weekend and again on Monday, so I expected to be slow. I am sore following all that work so spent the morning fiddling with a noisy drivetrain. I found it to be the trim of the rear mech. The Shimano app for Di2 made it pretty simple to adjust. I’ll do a short couple hour spin test ride later to see how well I did.
I did a short two hour or so ride to check the drive adjustment and found it fine. Then the next day I headed out for what I figured to be a much longer ride. The ride ended up being quite a bit longer than I anticipated, but in a great way.
The day was the warmest of the week to that point and I managed to wake early and get things going so I was on the bike by about ten minutes to none. The warmer weather was keeping the marine layer off the coast, resulting in a good bit less chill along the water. I took the rover trail partly to check the route for a neighbor, but mostly to avoid the construction on the main road.
I could get used to this earlier morning riding. Quite a bit more relaxing here on the trail than on Del Obisbo. I may have to make this my new normal. I stopped at the park at Ortega for the usual restroom and short pause. Then the usual route out to Cow Camp. Our hills are very green.
When I got up to the park in the neighborhood, I skipped stopping for water, having decided to head up to Oso and over to the park on Antonio. By that point I’d also decided to head for Tustin. Once over the hill onto Irvine drive it was into the wind flat-ish ride in the big ring a lot of the time. My lunch stop would be the big park at the confluence of Peters Canyon creek and San Diego Creek. There I ate my half PB&J I’d packed a couple more dried apricots and a bottle of water.
After a rest and food, this is where I decided to ride down to Newport back bay. I’d originally figured to ride down to the restrooms there, make a natural break and turn back up the trail. But, the gates were all closed and I didn’t need the restroom, so continued around to PCH then north and up the hill to round the back bay on that side back to the trail. Then back to the big park to restrooms and refill and on down San Diego Creek to the next park off Lake Forest and Bake.
Here I was now officially out of solid food, consuming my last three dried apricots. I had plenty of Nuun tablets to get me home. And I knew I was going to hit a major milestone and complete a long standing personal goal. From her I headed to Aliso Creek and Woods Canyon visitor center for my last restroom and water break. I relaxed there for a while in the shade enjoying the ice cold water from the bottle refill station. Then I headed for PCH again, this time taking Crown Valley Parkway, ignoring the closed bike lane signs that turned out to be wrong. The lane was open the whole way with no signs of any construction other than new lines needing to be painted on the last hill. From the intersection at Monarch Bay I turned south and decided to go visit the elephant for a bit more ocean views and climbing.
I was a bit winded at this point, but still completely enjoying the day. No time constraint, no agenda, just ride in perfect weather on a great bicycle.
From the overlook I rode back to the lantern district then down to the harbor road for the final photo of the ride at the. breakwater, my usual stopping point.
Then the short 10km home to finish with 166.08km across 6:35 pedaling time. I had not ridden a century on my own since forever. Back in the racing days close to 35 years ago. It was not as hard as I’d figured it would be the last closest attempt was more of a fatigued death march and by the end I needed about a mile or so more, I was so depleted I rode up the hill home rather than adding the tiny bit more. I think that was 2007. I can put this down to better training, hydration and less climbing. Only 1,193m climbing and none of it too taxing.
This century was like the old days of taking off on my motorcycle for a days riding through the mountains when motorcycles were new to me. No real fatigue, or boredom, just enjoying the experience and watching the world as I roll by. My butt never got sore, no pressure points or hot spots other than one toe for a moment. Quite amazing on a Pinarello F7, not supposed to be an endurance touring or comfort biased bike. It certainly works. The bike is a time machine, transporting me back to my relative youth.
This will be my biggest weeks riding in a long time. I am really happy with this bike. I like looking at it and I really enjoy riding it.
The. weekends riding from Saturday was a lot of lone riding, chasing just two of us going pretty hard on the long route. 90km.
Managed some PR’s and enjoyed the day. The weather never threatening to be too hot until I finished.
Last ride of the week was the south county riders breakfast ride to the north gate of the marine base and back. Chilly all the way out and part of the. way back. Made some efforts to chase down leaders and caught, then dropped them not intentionally, then once I noticed I was on my own, put my head down and hammered. Rewarded with my best power over 20 minutes at 199 watts. After breakfast back at the cafe, I rode out to the park at Ortega to round the days distance to over 100km. I ended the week with 585.8km, 4,156m climbing across 23 hours 20 minutes. A big, big week for me. I learned some more route alternatives from Saturday’s ride to add to my database.
Last week also saw the. Pinarello F7 roll through 1,000 miles under me. My brief review is that I am completely happy. The only thing I would have done differently would have been ordering the 4iiii powermeter install with the bike through Velo Pasadena. Oh, and take enough time to carefully fit and adjust it to me.
As far as riding, I have to cut back on weekend rides to give me a Saturday to work our garden project.
A chilly ride today on the gran fondo loop.
The rest of the week looks to be similar weather, chilly to cold and overcast. I’m skipping any Saturday group rides to focus on the garden project.
I have a chance to pass through. the 4,000km mark for the year this week. At the halfway point of the month I was just a kilometer past 1,000 km. Friday. and. Saturday this week will be garden construction and bicycle maintenance days. Bike maintenance is primarily drivetrain maintenance and cleaning. Garden construction is at this point a lot of rock and block moving and once I have a clear enough field the pick and shovel, level and straight edge come out.
Fitness wise I am finding my balance and flexibility are much improved. I never had a problem with balance so much, but flexibility was becoming a concern. My shower stretching of my back using an impromptu toe touch or twist was not enough. I’ve found those old upper body twists and side bends and toe touches from our first exposure to gym class as youngsters are useful. No yoga mat, specialized outfits or instruction, just that elementary side to side, bend and stretch and reach exercises in a measured and controlled fashion actually works to improve my flexibility decades beyond the last time I suited up in gym shorts and shirt in school. I noticed this flexibility improvement when I put the receiver bike mount on the car last weekend. I have to get down on the ground to screw the retaining screw into place and lock it with the Master brand pin lock. The screw needs final tightening with a 3/4″ drive ratchet and nothing is easy to see as it is all buried in the bumper behind the plastic facia of the Tesla Model Y. The design of this system from Tesla is not good the electrical connector is too close to the pin to allow easy lock access. Clearly designed by people who have never used a receiver to tow anything and never asked anybody familiar with towing things if this was a good idea or design. As long as I’m on this tangent, the rear facing camera sees only the bike frame once the bike is on the mount and since the cars rearward vision is heavily biased to cameras over mirrors, only the side mirror is of any use. The rearview mirror in the car is useful for checking the sky to the rear or the facial expression of anyone who may happen to be sitting in the rear center seat. That is about the extent of the usefulness of that mirror.
OK, back to cycling. This week will likely not hit my 400km goal. That may end up being the case for some weeks until I finish the garden work, or running out of materials. One gear item, this Rapha rain/wind jacket breathes only slightly better than a drycleaning bag. The zipper is minuscule yet still manages to grab a bit of the flap material and jam, so is not something that is easy on or off. The material acts more like cling-film than nylon. A right pain to get off, but it does pack down to pocket size into its own pocket, if you’re careful. I bought a size large and it fits over my kit with my jersey pockets stuffed. The jacket flaps a bit in the wind, there is this odd bulge above the wrist. I get the feeling the assumption is the sleeves are pulled down over the heel of the gloved hand in the wet. The Voler vest/gilet I have on the other hand is a very loose fit with almost no stretch. I bought it when I weighed a lot more than I do now so now it hangs off me and flaps. I had a Castelli gilet that had zero stretch, was easy enough off and on with a large zipper, but as I got heavy I had to stop wearing it because it didn’t stretch so I couldn’t breathe well. Then for some reason the screen-printed logos melted onto the other parts of it while it was wadded in a pocket. No idea what led to that happening. That. had to be a size XL I think to fit. My Medium jerseys are becoming a little loose in Voler’s “Race Fit”. My bib shorts have bib’s that are too tall now. Finding cycling kit is/has become a problem. Nobody stocks much around here. I am going to take a serious look next time I’m up to Velo Pasadena. My usual online go to is Competitive Cyclist for parts. I’ve been wearing Voler for quite a while and have been. happy. with fit, but as I’ve become fitter, things are fitting differently enough to get me wandering off in search of fit. Of course I have four pairs of bibs and jerseys and base layers, so it will be a while before I begin replacing things, but I do plan on shopping and keeping an eye out to be prepared. Which reminds me, I need to go back and document the purchase dates of my current kit pieces so I can keep track better. Might involve some laundry markers on labels and of course a spreadsheet.
A day that began as chilly and overcast and became blue sky beautiful. Great day out on the Pinarello F7.
Another good ride in for the week. Not long or hard, but steady work. Even a few new PR’s without trying. Last weekday ride this week was almost wet. I managed to ride between the rain squalls and never got a drop of rain.
One of my favorite stops on my usual gran fondo loop is the Aliso and Woods Canyon center.
I ended last week with a group ride where we shortened and lessened the climbing aspect of the ride thanks to most having survived a couple of days of hard riding. We enjoyed the day out. Great weather and fun, low traffic cycling. Quite nice.
I did indeed manage to pile up 4,093 km, but missed my 400km per week goal by a few kilometers. Climbing was not a big number either. I’m about a week ahead of pace relative to my goal for the year of 12,000 kilometers. I suppose having managed to accomplish my century ride, I’ll have to repeat that monthly now. That will be a challenge I can enjoy. Then maybe extend that to once a week like back in the old racing team days. I won’t be racing as I’m never going to be fast enough again for that. I’m about ten pounds away from my racing weight, so dropping a few more pounds of belly fat is possible.
Started off the week with a short ride out Cow Camp area. And I decided to try the coffee shop out there.
It was good enough. The ride was nice and relaxing. I wasn’t pushing hard because I. planned to join our group rode for Earth Day with trains and bicycles to Santa Monica from Anaheim on Tuesday.
We had some adventures with a cut tire that took about an hour and a half out of the day, deleting any possibility at a meal stop. It also added a few kilometers to the total with us all riding over to a not that nearby bicycle shop that happened to have a tire that would work well enough, but looked for all the world like a hoarders closet. Amazing stack of used bikes of all description of rustable metal and rubber. I ended the day with 114km and four trains. Three were free thanks to Earth Day. It was about thirteen hours door to door. Only 4:42 riding the rest on trains or waiting for that tire and of course a few restroom stops. I hammered the hills pretty hard and had fun with that. Still worked out to a fairly gentle ride. I followed that day with another shorter day on the bike, but added climbing La Pata which is becoming an interesting route for me. The La Pata climb is about an average 6% roughly broken into two lumps of around a 12 minute total climb. The first time I rode that with the group on the weekend shortened ride, I did more standing. This time I did more seated riding but not trying to go hard. I figure to work out a nice route to use it more often. The route I used on Wednesday was pretty good, but needs me to hit the climbs harder to gain effort.
Thursday I did the usual Cow Camp route up to Oso then east to Coto de Casa and back down to the coast. On the climbs I hit them pretty hard. As hard as I could for some. I managed to push my HR to 162 bpm, so a good hard effort for me. On the hardest climb, I stopped at Cow Camp and rested for a bit before continuing on east.
I was messing around with the My Windsock reports and VeloViewer and noticed in about 10% of the distance I have recorded for the Roubaix, on the Pinarello F7, I’ve increased my average distance, time and elevation per ride. And I’ve increased my average speed. I’m very. happy with that. VeloViewer project my end of the year distance to be quite incredible, based on the current trend. I am certain I can’t continue the increasing distance trend each month, but I do feel confident I can continue with five days riding per week fairly easily. One of the metrics that is wild is that in 35 rides for the F7, I show 572 PR’s. Where for the Roubaix, in 380 rides I have 868 PR’s. Strava also places my fitness increase over the last month at 118%. I can feel that, and it feels great. Ended the last full week of April with 475km. The group ride saw no photos from me. Three of us older guys left the. group when we got to the hills. The other two guys were former racers so we fit together hand in glove. I think I have more time in the saddle of late and particularly beginning to focus on hills paid dividends. We were as a group all collected at the curb after turning off the creek trail to a street we needed to use to avoid an event further on the route. Everyone took off as I’d decided to remove my gilet, so I stood at the curb repacking my jersey pockets to fit the bulky old gilet. When I set off, the group were nearly to the first light. I caught up by the light which we made and I comfortable slid uphill to the front. Once on point, I set the pace to my comfort level on that slight pitch and moved ahead. I realized the group was split with two faster guys around my age up front and one of the usual faster younger fellows at the head with a good bit of break between. On the next descent I caught him and was at the front for the rest of the ride. Three of us 70-year old riders formed the front group. It was fun being pushed into my maximum output with these strong riders. I was partly in the lead because I knew the route. While the. route is available for download, it is not a single click task with Strava. At least not with the Wahoo Elemnt app. I don’t know how it works for Garmin. The OCW, (Orange County Wheelmen) use Ride with GPS which is about the same from my experience with Wahoo. I managed to pile up 1,732km for the month last week and with only two full days left for my month, I’m very happy with that. That amount of riding makes me think I might be able to hit 2,000km in a month if everything goes just right. I can see from my effort levels during group rides that I am not working as hard on my own. I put that down to motivation. So, there is an area I need to fix to continue my fitness and strength on the bike.
So, the last ride for the month was short and mellow. A lot of zone 1 & 2 riding after the previous days garden digging and wall building. Felt quite good to be out on the bicycle, even in the chilly wind.
The storms have thrown sand and rocks into the parking lot part of the coastal bike route, closing that lot to parking and making navigation with skinny tires a bit sketchy at times.
My biggest month of riding in many decades. Quite cool to get to this level of fitness. 23 days riding out of thirty. My weight is down to 67.9kg for a BMI of 22.8. I’m pretty sure happy with my progress both on the bike and weight. I can definitely feel the weight difference and fitness increase in my climbing. The plan is to continue building strength and endurance.
Totals for the month:
Distance: 1,933.9km
Climbing: 13,644m
Time: 78hours, 55minutes
Along The Way 