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Finally Blazin!

No, it’s not what you think.  I’m not smoking pot – get your mind out of the gutter!

This weekend I finally got in a training ride with a local group that I’ve chatted a lot with on Facebook – the South Bay Blaze.  It just seemed like things always conspired to keep me from riding with them.  Chris’ Distance Training rides are always a priority on the Saturdays that they occur, so anything that took me out of town had to happen on the off Saturdays.  One thing or another meant that it wasn’t until the end of the season that I got in a good ride with this very social and fun training group.
A lot of this ride covered the area from my Sunday ride last weekend.  We headed south along Blossom Hill until it turned into Santa Theresa – going in the opposite direction of the Slog.  Yay!  And we stayed on Santa Theresa until it turned into Hale and kept going until it dead ended on Main Street in Morgan Hill.  Morgan Hill, it so happens, is where the headquarters of Specialized is.  So my bike was “going home” so to speak.
We climbed up to Anderson Dam – a short but steep climb.  It was at this time I started to hear a “ticking” noise.  I figured out my wheel was flexing enough under the power I was putting out to cause the magnet from the speed sensor to hit the sensor arm.  That got fixed.  (And I have new stiff wheels on order anyway.) Lunch came after the dam – and after a couple of wrong turns.  The route sheet was a bit…imprecise.  
After a seafood wrap at Quiznos it was back to the same Coyote Creek Trail from last week.  Something about that trail doesn’t agree with me.  We kept going to the Hellyer Velodrome where I diagnosed a bit of a toe problem as being a sock issue.  However, I’ve also been getting numbness in my big toe on my right foot that I need to figure out.  After the velodrome and some great cookies we came home through Campbell and had a nice stop at a Starbucks exactly 10 miles from home.  Something about the dryness and the wind was really making me tired.  The last 10 miles were fine and I was glad to see the familiar corner of Fremont and Mary.  I really enjoyed the ride and the group – there was a lot less pressure than the groups I’ve usually ridden with.  It is something for me to keep in mind when I plan training for next year.
When I got home I figured out that perhaps using DuoDerm for saddle sores while riding isn’t a great idea.  It had disintegrated into a sticky mess that I’m hoping comes out of my chamois in the wash. 🙁
As far as Sunday I had two options – an epic ride along the coast with the Awesome Ahead group – 85 miles and 5500+ feet of climbing.  While I’m all for back-to-back riding (and including a quick ride on Friday this would be my third day in a row) I wasn’t up for that.  So I showed up for what I thought was a renegade ride, but actually was an official training ride at only about 36 miles.  A quick Portola Loop with some of my new friends from the Blaze.  It was great and I really pushed on the way back to get my speed average up.  14.1mph over 36 miles is not bad at all.  At our rest stop (Robert’s Market, natch) I happened run in to Chris, the leader of the Distance Training series.  Hearing that this really hardcore guy also didn’t need to punish himself with the mega-climbing ride that I ducked out of made me feel like I had made the right decision.
This week I am meeting with Vanessa again to try and sort out some butt and foot issues.  Hopefully those will get solved before Saturday, when I’m supposed to ride the 113 miles to Gilroy and back.
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Well that was unpleasant….

This is the time of year when the back-to-back rides become necessary, or so I’m told.  You need to get your body used to the idea of riding in that not-so-fresh state.  (Get your mind out of the gutter.)  And as much as I love Princess Bob and the whole Awesome Ahead crew I knew that I wasn’t up for 80 miles on Sunday, so I saw a 40-mile “late starters” ride and decided to give it a go.

Unlike most of my rides the start point was rather far to the south, and given that I got up a bit late I was in a rush out the door.  I made it to the start point 10 minutes after the meeting time but it turned out ok.  The bad news what that I had left something at home – the headband that keeps the sweat out of my eyes.  Todays ride convinced me that it is not really an optional bit of kit these days.  The route was advertised as only having one climb of the day and mostly flat for the rest.  Unfortunately there was no “Ride with GPS” link posted, so I couldn’t download the route onto my Garmin.  This would be my first training ride without GPS assistance and just reading a route sheet.   
We started off on a bit of bike trail.  That time of day it was pretty empty.  The climb up Bailey was ok – it’s a nice climb I guess.  Coming down it was way more fun as I had done on an earlier ride.  Up and over and done with climbing – or so I thought.  I was a bit concerned at the bottom of the hill as the turn direction didn’t match up with the route sheet but one of the TRLs told me we were going in the right direction so that was good to hear.  But then there were two more decent hills – so much for one climb only. Eventually there was a water stop near the reservoir.  I got my bottle topped off by fabulous sag driver Jim.  Sadly I was rocking plain water with Endurolyte caps today as I had run out of Skratch.  
The next bit to lunch was fine.  There were some flats where I got to sprint.  I love getting up out of the saddle and winding up the bike to 20 mph.  Eventually we were back in civilization and we stopped at a little shopping center.  I got a Jamba Juice all fruit smoothie which was a great idea.  Best rest stop food ever.  Even though it had only been 20 miles I also re-applied the Chamois Butt’r.  That’s important.
On the ride back my butt did really start to bother me.  I think part of it was that while I had shrunk down into XL size shorts from Pearl Izumi I don’t think they fit me well.  Not as well as the Specialized RBX bibs I wore yesterday. I was chaffing a bit at the edges.  Also my butt in general was sore and cranky – the change in seating position seems to have aggravated things.  I will be asking Vanessa if it’s something I will adjust to or if it means something else.
As we were heading east I was starting to get nervous.  The route sheet said we had 3 more miles to go east and I was wondering if there were going to be some more unadvertised hills.  But it turns out that the route sheet was just inaccurate and our north turn came a few miles early.  Eventually we came back to the bike trail which wasn’t too busy and I was able to do some fast cruising.  It looked like the mileage for the ride was going to come up about 4 miles short but the stretch on the bike path was longer than advertised.  My truck came in to sight and I was done for the day.
When I’m far from home after a ride I do enjoy my truck as something to come back to.  It has plenty of space for me to get organized.  I cranked the tunes while trying a new flavor of Recoverite and oddly enough the citrus flavor was not as foul as the chocolate of yesterday.  Thank jeebus for small favors.  I stopped by the bike shop to pick up some more Skratch and to get another pair of RBX bibs ordered. 
My legs didn’t feel too bad.  I felt I could have ridden longer.  It’s my backside that may be the limiting factor which concerns me.  I’m not sure what I can do about it at this point, however.
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It’s gotta be the shoes.

After debating and debating I decided it was time to take my riding up a notch and the way to do that was to start using clipless pedals.
I find the whole terminology confusing (and broken).  They’re called “clipless” because they don’t have the old fashioned toe clips like on bikes in the 80s.  And yet they call using the “clipping in”.  Basically you have a fancy cycling shoe that has a mechanical attachment point on the bottom that connects to the pedal, basically attaching you to the bike.
There are many advantages to doing this.  To start with the shoes tend to be much stiffer than regular shoes, so it means that less of your energy is going into flexing the shoe and more is going into the pedals (and this the bike).  Secondly I found that after a certain point (about 85 rpm) I was having problems keeping my feet on the pedals.  Not a problem anymore. (My “comfortable” cadence is about 90 rpm now.)
There are a couple of downsides, mostly in the safety department.  You have to move your feet a certain way to get out of the pedals – and failure to do so will likely lead to a slow speed fall.  This has already happened to me once – I was practicing doing a panic stop and I didn’t get out in time.  A slow speed fall and nothing injured except for my pride.
I’ve been practicing on my regular daily ride for about a week and change now and this weekend I’ll be using them on a longer ride.  We’ll see what happens.
For those that are curious the shoes are 2012 Specialized Pro Road shoes:
(and I do kinda wish they weren’t quite so shiny)
The pedals are Speedplay Zero Stainless:

The yellow part is actually the cleat that goes on the shoe and the part that looks like the lollypop is the pedal.  
So far I’ve been enjoying using them.  Hopefully that will continue.