Davidsonville 80 Miler

It seems weird to say that I had a great 82.5 mile ride...but I did.  The trick?  I ate more than I ever had before.  I added Hammer bars to the mix this weekend, and the extra calories seem to have made the difference, no fuzzy fading feelings.  Now, I was tired and the hills still hurt, but it wasn't a particularly hilly ride and we finished strong.  Carrie and I rode together the whole way as we have the past couple of rides, hopefully we'll do the same in Tahoe.  We're pretty evenly matched and boy is it nice to ride with someone.

This is us at, our third rest stop:

It's 64 miles and we're doing just fine.  Maybe it was the pie, this was the same place we stopped many weeks ago on our first ride out of Davidsonville.  I must say, the roads felt flatter this time around :)

Here's stop two - at "The Beach".  It's a little beach community on what looks like an inlet from the Atlantic ocean, I wish I knew more but I pretty much just followed the cue sheet.  That's me in the center of the picture getting ready to head out.

I took a moment to take a quick arm picture, first time I've had the motivation to get my camera out and snap a photo.  Of course it was a nice day (finally!) and a beautiful spot.

Had to include a picture of these two dogs.  I can't imagine the humiliation they must be suffering (actually they looked cheerful).  Please note that one is wearing a grass skirt, the other an aloha shirt and both are wearing flowered leis.  You know the owner made them on her sewing machine...you can see her doing it, can't you?

 Anyway, after marveling that we had a day with a good temperature, no rain and no headwinds, the second half of the ride the wind kicked up and we fought it for most of the last 40 miles.  And then, one rest stop at a time, one turn after another, one mile after another, we were done.  82.5 miles.  Carrie and I agreed that it seemed ridiculous to us that we had biked that many miles.  I can't explain it other than to say we focused on the short goals and after 6.5 hours, we were done.  

Sunday I went out for a recovery ride with my friend Geoff (who's riding my old Trek bike which he's named "Purple Rain") and for some reason rode another 25 miles through rock creek park.  By the end, everything hurt.  My knee, my backside (despite the expensive shorts) my shoulders, my neck.  I got home, showered, ate and then spent the rest of the day on the sofa.  Exciting weekend eh?  Ice, Advil and rest.  Repeat.  I think the miles caught up to me, I've been pretty tired the past couple of days.  I guess it didn't help that I woke up at 5AM on Sunday, for no good reason.   My legs are OK, not too sore thanks to the recovery ride, but being in the saddle for almost 108 miles this weekend has left its mark on me.

Next weekend is our last training ride before we ship our bikes off to Tahoe.  It's 90 miles in Middleburg VA, with Mt. Weather at about mile 20.  A climb of like 10 miles or so. Alums say it's a hard ride, and it sounds silly after all these rides but I'm a little apprehensive.  90 hard miles sounds...hard.  Apparently it's "a little bit of everything we've done so far this season".  What the heck does THAT mean?  We're meeting at 7AM, which means I have to leave home before 6AM.  Trying to get to bed early this week.

The good news?  It's a harder ride than the Tahoe century.  Which will be great news sometime Saturday afternoon!  We're having a BBQ to celebrate the end of the ride, celebrate indeed. I heard again that after all our training rides, Tahoe is a good time.  Looking forward to finding out for myself.

Go Team!

Naked Mountain - and more!

Another two-fer this week, since I didn't update the blog after last week's ride.  

Last Saturday we rode from Thurmont Maryland and up through Gettysburg battlefield.  Our first warm day!  Shorts and shirtsleeves. Very pretty, rolling hills, nothing too awful, about 62.5 miles.

Here's all of us going over the cue sheet before we took off from Thurmont.

Mount St. Mary's College, very gothic.  We had bets about what it was until we got to it and saw the signs.  Lots of farm country.

 

This is what a lot of the roads we're on look like.  We try to stay away from traffic as much as possible, although we do end up on some pretty big roads for short stretches.

This was some kind of miniature horse gathering.  Lots of trailers, lots of very small horses.

Also known as the covered bridge ride - we went over or past 5-6 of them.

Tuesday after work we rode the Great Falls loop, which although I was apprehensive, was wonderful.  Here's the map: http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/md/bethesda/346127301774198028 
Apparently as much climbing as one of our earlier rides, which totally shocked me, since that ride felt so hard and this one so delightful.  I felt very strong.  Rode right up the big climb and pushed all through the last part of it.  Felt like a rock star.

Saturday May 8th was scheduled to be a relatively straightforward 70 miles, part of it on the W&OD, which I would have been well familiar with. The coaches decided to change it out for the "Naked Mountain" ride out of Gainesville VA described as "more challenging, but you're all able to do this ride", from what the alums said, Naked mountain was about in the middle of the ride, and a really hard climb.  The start was about 45 minutes from home for me. I was apprehensive before the ride (as usual) but motivated myself be thinking about people going through chemo and how they must feel waking up to that prospect.  I was choosing to ride, and seriously - a bike ride compared to chemotherapy?  Come on.  Get your butt out the door, Phyllis.

Here, I'm going over the cue sheet before the ride. The forecast was 20-30% chance of thunderstorms and a little windy.  Not terribly exciting for riding weather, but that's 70-80% chance of no-rain, right?  Most people didn't take a rain jacket, since the window for the storm was short, and the weather was pretty warm.

A cool picture of all of us riding out from the parking lot - most people wore their team in training jerseys for the day.  I think that might be me to the left of the tree, but it's a bit hard to tell, what with everyone wearing the same thing...

And here's the sky we rode into within the first few miles.  Ominous to say the least - note the substantive dearth of rain jackets.  Anyway, about 5 miles in, it started to rain.  And then rain pretty heavily, big fat drops.  I had to take off my sunglasses to see, and then had to squint the rain out of my eyes on the downhills.  It would have been pretty grim had it continued, but after about 15 minutes, we rode out of it, which was AWESOME!.  At that point, however, the wind picked up :) Who pissed off mother nature? Seriously!

One of my more experienced teammates commented as we were getting ready to ride out that the 72.5 mile ride was really more like an 85 mile ride because of Naked mountain in the middle.  Since 72.5 already seemed like an awful lot of miles (10 more than last week) I tried not think about the bigger number.  When the wind started up, I just had to laugh, because after hills, nothing makes a ride harder than riding into a headwind (except for perhaps temperature).  We were going to earn our stripes on this one.  On the plus side, despite the wind, the temperature was really nice, and the wind dried us off pretty quickly (glass half full, glass half full).  The first SAG stop was at 26.2 miles, I had been feeling great for the first 20 or so - the teammate who I was riding with was feeling a bit sore from an earlier workout and we had decided that we were going to go easy at the start of the ride and pace ourselves, since no matter how great our starts were, the ends were always a grinding slog.

The wind took it out of me a bit, so I rolled into the first stop, had a bunch of food and filled up my water bottles.  The alums pointed out that that the next stage of the ride was the most difficult by far, and to pace ourselves.  The tried to describe Naked mountain, the steepness of the top part, but when they said "there's no shame in walking" that really kind of made the point.

OK, Naked Mountain is a stern climb, and the top gets really steep.  The particularly hard part (much like Sugarloaf) is that you climb gradually all the way to the start of the mountain, so one you get there, you're already kind of worn out.

We got to Naked mountain.  I started to climb.  I suddenly couldn't move my feet anymore and had to walk up the first bit.  Once the grade leveled out, I got back on and started riding again.  I got into a good rhythm, and started feeling like I was going to conquer the mountain!  I saw my teammate(s) up ahead get off their bikes as we got to the steep top part of the mountain, I stayed on the bike...kept riding...and just kind of hit a wall as it got steep.  At which point, I walked.  To the top.  Which was harder than you might expect, my calved burned and I huffed and puffed and then we were at the top - and I was deeply relieved.  Our honored teammate's father was a SAG volunteer for the ride, and was waiting at the top of the mountain to congratulate us and refill our water bottles.

He told us that that this was pretty much the hardest ride he had done when he was part of the team, and one of the all-time hard climbs.  And then he said what everyone else kept saying - after the training rides, the Tahoe ride will be great.  Well, then I'm looking forward to Tahoe.  After the ride he sent us a video that his teammate had taken when they rode Naked mountain in the fall, and noted that at 1:15 the mountain starts, and they walked from there...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2VdILSLfqw

So that was about mile 46 out of 72.5.  Still some miles left to go.  They were hilly, they were rolling, they had some sweeping downhills, and again, I didn't eat quite enough (I'm amazed at how much I have to eat, I think it's because the rides are so long) but it was beautiful.  About 10 miles from the end, though, I just felt the energy drain out of me.  I stopped and ate a bar and perked up.  Pretty clear what was going on.  Lots of wind and a bit of an allergy attack, but two more SAG stops (every 20 miles or so) and riding with my teammate(s) made it pass by without too much suffering.   And the last 5 miles were awesome (mostly) downhill with the wind at our backs, for what seemed like the first time all day. 

We rode into the parking lot feeling good! I was incredibly glad to be done, but if there had been more miles to go, I think I could have done them.  Slowly ;)  It took 6 hours and twenty minutes.  The lead group finished in about 4:45, the last people rolled in at least 45 minutes after I got back.  Happy to be in the middle, happy it was a good ride, happy to have it behind me.  Next will apparently seem easy compared to this week (now that would be fantastic for an 80 mile ride) and then our last ride is in Middleburg, it's 90 miles and is another hard one.  The last photo is with Rob, a team alum in the lot after the ride.  In the car on the way home, I heard all these weather advisories - high wind!  Trees came down all over the area, and the winds were fierce on the drive home. What a day! 

And that's it for this incredibly long post - go team!

Good Strong Ride

Saturday April 24th we rode 65 miles from Berryville VA.  The forecast was rain.  The trip was an hour and a half.  The meet time was 7:30AM. I woke up at 5:30, when I left home the sun was just coming up. 

Everyone agreed that it was a hard day to get out of bed.  After the really hard week before, it was hard to look forward to the ride, even though it's one of the team's favorites.

Turns out that I rode for most of the day with one of our coaches, Bill, and a pack of other riders.  He coached and encouraged me through the ride and since he's a coach he, yelled at us not to give up one the hills.  Yelling is part of coaching so it was all good.  In the end, I was faster and stronger that I'd been all season, and I didn't ride alone.  I think part of it was moving my weekday ride to Tuesday, I felt good when I started off, and part of it was eating more at the beginning of the ride.  By the second rest stop at about 40 miles, I was starting to flag - not sure if it was nerves or the result of having been pushing pretty hard up to then.  Probably both.  Anyway, by about 10 miles from the end I perked up and ended strong.  When Bill congratulated me and called me a strong rider, I felt awesome.  He (and this ride) made a difference in my confidence.

Coach Bill is wearing a yellow helmet in the middle of this picture. 

I spoke to an alum last night at a fundraiser who said that while the training for Tahoe was tough, the ride itself was great and she felt totally ready.  I hope that's the case for me too.

This week I went on a Tuesday Ride from Conte's with Velo Bella, a women's riding group, short but hilly and again, felt pretty good.

This week, we're riding up in Thurmont Maryland.  About last week's distance, 65, but I'm guessing a bit more hilly, although everyone denies that it is.

Supposed to be warm and sunny this week - for the first Saturday since we started!

Thanks to all who donated this week - GO TEAM!

Rainy with a chance of fur

Forecast for Saturday is 60 and rainy.  We're scheduled to do a metric century: 100km, or about 62 miles.  We ride rain or shine.  So it seemed a rain jacket might be in order.  The good news is that if it starts raining cats and dogs, at least the cats will like the rain jacket.

Rode 14 miles on the CCT last night, knee's been feeling better, but didn't want to test it out too much.  Next Tuesday ride will be the 20 mile Great Falls loop.

Two weeks in one...

Missed last week's post, it was a long hilly ride, 50 miles, but a beautiful one through southern Maryland.  At least it seemed hilly until this week.  54 miles of Hills (that's a capitol H), and up Sugarloaf mountain, with a wicked headwind.  That's me in the vest looking suspicious at the beginning of the ride last week.  Maybe I was just cold.  They call this one the the Hidden Amish ride, since a lot of Amish live in the area, and most people don't know it.  At least, I think that's why they call it that.

The picture of me smiling was taken at the second rest stop.  The smile is because we're only 10 miles from the end of the ride.  My mentor Lisa suggested I ride with team veterans Karen and Rob, with the thought that they might be about my speed.  We rode together the whole ride, which was terrific, and they waited for me when the hills were steep :)  That's them sitting at the school where we met after the ride.  We brought a picnic lunch (no restaurants nearby) and ate outside.  It had warmed up a bit, but you can tell from the layers that it's not exactly warm out yet.  Particularly when we start off in the morning.

The support car carries the extra layer that we shed, it's a great system, plus it shows up with food.  Not pie this time, but fig newtons and bananas.   One of my teammates snapped a photo of the Amish (see told you that's why they call the ride that) and the last pic is proof that I stretch after rides. Mostly I was getting sore already, so it made sense at the time.

Sunday after last week's ride, I went for a professional bike fitting.  So a new saddle (apparently it'll start to feel better any day now), a new stem - to make the handlebars a little closer (shoulders and arms feel much better), a seatpost to bring me in the right position with respect to the pedals and a rear cassette with bigger gears to make hill climbing a bit easier (it is, and the last two are making it much easier on my knee that started hurting last week).  Ice and ibuprofen last week, this one too.

And this week...it was hard.  Considered by on alums to be the most hills per mileage that any ride we do. Here's a picture of me on top of Sugarloaf mountain at the second rest stop. It's a terrible picture and I look like a mess.  That's the new white saddle at the bottom of the picture...pay no attention to the rider, she's 41 miles into a 54 miles ride and just glad to have climbed the mountain.  Now, I'm no whiner (who wants to ride with a whiner?) but but I'll say that when we started I could feel my Thursday night ride in my legs, at 15 miles into the headwind I was horrified that the worst hills could still be ahead, at 30 miles, my legs were really burnt out, at 38 miles I climbed Sugarloaf (needed to see if I could climb through switchbacks) part of it at 4 miles an hour, and then the last 10 miles were actually more like 13, but rolling so actually felt not too bad.  It was a relief to be done.

Today's 15 miles recovery ride was a lesson in pain, for the first 1/2 mile I couldn't sit in the saddle, I kind of perched close to it...Apparently the recovery ride helps with muscle recovery and with soreness on the second day. Had lunch with folks afterward, including my friends son Alex who's adorable and who loves black beans.

So changes coming up: This week, I ride during the week on Tuesday or Wednesday.  Thursday's not enough time to recover.  On Saturday, I'll carry more gels with me and I eat more in the first part of the ride - carry a banana in case there are no more at the first rest stop.  I ordered a foam roller for my IT band (my knee pain) and I'm icing and taking ibuprofen for the next couple of days.  Next week is a "metric century" in Northern Virginia - 62 miles.  Theoretically less hilly, apparently this is a lot of people's favorite ride.  Looking forward to it, and hoping for warm weather! 

Most importantly I hit my fundraising minimum this week!  And I'm still getting donations! Thank you!  Creeping up to $5000 and, as ever, incredibly grateful.  Here's the site if you're been meaning to donate: http://pages.teamintraining.org/nca/ambbr10/phyllisfrosst 

Go TEAM.

Rolling hills indeed

42 Miles ride. OK, 42.30 mile ride (the computer doesn't lie) yesterday in Davidsonville MD.  About 10 miles due east of the beltway at the "3 o'clock" point. I'd never been, but apparently local roadies have been riding here since bikes were invented.  Attached below my bike computer is the route cue sheet, kind of like guitar tab for riding.  Left here go so many miles, right here, pass this road, you get the idea.  Both hands on the bike is a pretty good rule to follow, so coach Ed "installed" a map holder.  The kit was composed of 1 small binder clip and about 4 inches of black electrical tape. Works pretty well :)

So rolling hills...oddly enough, I haven't ridden them in a long long time.  San Diego had a lot of big hills, this felt different.  Constantly shifting gears, every couple of minutes another hill, lots of turns.  It was active, hard to get bored.  Having missed a couple of rides, I'm still learning who rides at about my speed.  Of course, I went out too fast and after 9 miles was a little concerned at how tired I was.  I think I was also feeling the Thursday ride, which was relatively fast and only 2 days before.  I rode alone for most of the first quarter, then magically my teammates Dave and Dan showed up and rode with me for about 8 miles which made all the difference.  They've done Tahoe lots of times, and I think were on the lookout for floundering newbies.  Here's a photo from our honored teammate Ashton's dad who was supporting this ride, at a left turn where Dave is waving and I'm signaling a left turn :)  That's me on the left.  The forecast said 80 and sunny, so I wore layers that I could easily remove.  As it turned out, 55 and overcast was more accurate, and I didn't take off any layers, and wished for a while in the middle that I had a few more!

At the halfway mark, we stopped for a snack and a refuel by the water. One of the most awesome parts of these organized rides is that there's SAG support "short for Support And Guidance" so they set up food, stand at corners and generally are completely fantastic.  I had a slice of local blueberry pie, refilled my water bottle and ate a banana.  And then I felt a lot better.  

I picked out a few teammates who seemed about my speed and rode with them for the second half, which was much easier than the first.  I'm not sure if it was me getting used to the bike (this was really only my third ride on it), having some food in me, being with other riders, knowing that I was past the halfway mark or a bit more downhill roads on the course.  Which is not to say it was easy.  I'm really not sure whether I might have to make some modifications the the bike to get a few more easy gears.  We'll see, when the hill got steep, I was hurting for the low gears on my last bike...

 

Anyway, I survived, wasn't  too sore and feel much better today than I did a day after our 16 miles ride Thursday.  I think my body is starting to adjust.  Either that or everything's going numb.  Well not everything, I think I need a new saddle, which was predicted when I bought the bike :)  Oh, and I finally remembered to have someone take a picture of me after the ride!

Looks like my fundraising is at 92% - I'm almost there! Apparently amazing things happen as you increase over the minimum fundraising mark, maybe I'll get to find out...

Thanks to all of you who are making this possible.

Go team.

 

From 43 to 73 degrees in 4 days

Going riding after work in Bethesda, very excited since it's sunny and 73 right now.  Donations just hit 86% and I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for the fundraising.  Thanks to everyone who's donated in the past few days!  Did some lunges on Tuesday night (like for 5 minutes, nothing serious) and am sore today.  Clearly more of the same is needed...ahem.