"Dare to be 100"

While riding the other day around Woodside I happened to see this very old man jogging. His t-shirt was saying, in big thick red letters: "Dare to be 100"..... Wow! This made me think of the man, who obviously didn't look young, BUT was trotting. Rare for a man to reach the 3 digits mark... As of jogging, he must be a a very small circle of a few. Then I thought about my 43 years of age. I wonder what he was doing when he was 43. Was he running? riding bikes?Anyway: yes! dare to be a hundred!! and to run!!! We're all haunted by the thought of death, by the end of the journey. This man went through so many times, so many loves, so many losses. But yet he's still running.

All congrats to this stranger, if he ever reads this. If you know him, tell him! I am his fan!

First century!

Yesterday marks a new milestone in my biking; I crossed the 100 kilometers mark, on my Fuji Team V2, and reached the Pacific ocean. This ride carries a few climbs but is mostly an endurance one. I remained on the saddle some 4.5 hours. The exact length(based on what I could get from my GPS, see mishap below) was 108 kilometers, some 67 miles. The overall experience was okay.
Here are the hardest things I noticed:

• the buzzing wind in my ears; I need to stuff some cotton in there to limit it
• the cold of my feet; I need to buy these special shoe protections
• the cold of my legs; they were feeling so stiff, this probably contributed to tiredness on my way back
• the lower back pain; I was carrying a Camelback that I lowered a bit during the ride; after a while I felt a lower back pain; I heightened the bag and most of that pain went away
• the starting blister on my left palm; had me change hand positions many times. Might look into some more comfortable gloves than the ones I have.
• the butt soreness; the Chamois Butt Cream took care of this one; not too bad though.
• the handlebars position; I heightened them a bit before the ride and they were very uncomfortable when in the hoods and when using the brakes. I lowered the handlebars an inch when I came back
• the Garmin Edge 305 GPS froze; I could have it resume and altogether lost very little data. In order to properly load the ride in MotionBase I had to load the ride first into SportsTrack, and then export it in gpx format. Looks like SportsTrack and MotionBased dont load exactly the same way. I got most data rightm just lost the heart data
  

I know, this seems like a long list; but altogether this was not that bad at all. Now I can start considering longer distances, and figure some wider loops.

Carbon and satellites

As I was saying in my last post, there would be big news (at least for me), and in fact a couple of them! I purchased last month a carbon fiber road bike: a FUJI TEAM V2 2006 bike. 18 pounds, 20 speeds, Ultegra rear derailleur, and 105 shifters, front detailleur. That's been quite a story since the original bike I bought (out of the box) had a chainstay that was cracked... My buddies at Performance Bikes took it back and I could get a replacement in a week's time - thumbs up to Performance Bikes Mountain View! So here I was, bringing my 4th ride in our little appartment. The purchase was totally spontaneous. A classic chain of events; walked in the store with a friend at lunchtime, discovered the sweet ride at an amazing price, took a test ride, was told it was avalaible now, and bought it. What a thrill!

Once home, the real adventure started: the rides! Here in the Bay Area there are many possibilities to test both bikes and bikers: plenty of rolling hills and also tough climbs towards Skyline Blvd. The Fuji Team V2 is up to it, very responsive , supple and still stiff. Great complement to the Specialized Langster that I still ride very often and love. Riding that road bike after my singlespeed showed me one thing at least: keeping momentum isn't a cake walk, and dialing the right gear needs experimentation. Showed me another thing: singlespeed bikes are great ways to get fit.

After this purchase and some research, I also invested in a Garmin Edge 305, the top of the line in bikes GPS. Awesome tool for training, and fun too! I have taken the HR+ package to get both cadence/speed and heart monitor as well; in fact I have even bought another set for my Langster so I can complete my data. Not only the Garmin has already educated me more than the 100's of "blind" rides I was doing w/ more rudimentary devices, but it makes my training more challenging than ever. I am of course using motionbased.com website to load and track my data, and the Garmin PC program "Training Center", mediocre but still functional. Waiting for the announced Mac version of this one. I have discovered a great and free Windows program, for the time being: the already excellent SportTracks. This program loads my rides and associated data (HR, calories, cadence..) and pulls all kinds of graphs and statistics in a very neat and well thought interface. What ST doesn't do and TC does, is define routes out of existing rides, to later be reloaded to the GPS device.

Ride!