One of the standard routes around here that cyclists take for their training rides is the loop around the Stevens Creek reservoir. It’s got everything you’d need for a training ride. A hard climb. A fast descent. Some flat sections here and there. Pretty scenery. And some switchbacks and other hard turns.
I’ve used that as a meter of how good I’m doing, generally by not being able to do it. First time I tried, I didn’t get that far up. This spring, I tried again and got farther, but not all the way around.
Now, I’ve been wanting to do a really good nice long ride for a few weeks now. I decided that damnit, I was going to go on one this weekend. My prior record was 24.86 miles, but the next day I didn’t feel drained or anything. So clearly the actual limit of how far I could go was much farther than just 24.86 miles. Plus, I knew I was better at climbing because my new commute has me climbing three overpasses, and all of those have become quite easy. So I made a private route on Bikely and downloaded the GPX file to my phone so I could make sure I wasn’t lost. The last time, part of why I stopped is because I didn’t really know where I was in relation to the route and didn’t want to end up having to find a ride home from Big Basin or something silly like that. This way, I wouldn’t worry about taking the right road.
I started from the new place… which means that I bike a few extra miles on a very gentle slope before I can get to the actual loop, since the old place was pretty much a few hundred feet from where endless hardcore cyclists in spandex would unload their carbon-fiber racing machines from their cars to get started.
This time I made it all the way around the loop. From the hard way, actually. Most folks ride it clockwise, and I rode it counterclockwise. Clockwise gives you some breaks that counterclockwise doesn’t give you.
It was great. When I hit the approximate top of the route and realized that now I could tear downhill, it was great. I only let myself get to about 30mph or so because it was the first time I was making that sort of descent and didn’t want to end up flung into the bushes.
The funny part was when a team of three people rode by while I was taking pictures of the scenery. The last person in the group yelled “I was in front earlier” at me.
When I reached the end, I felt like it was a letdown. I mean, yes, I did do a total of 1400 feet of climb, to the altitude of 900 feet, and would have ended with about 20 miles. Yes, I was tired coming up the hill because I was pretty much at my limit of riding. But I felt I could do more. So I decided to work on my quest to find a good pair of biking glasses. Chain Reaction was closed, so I went to The Bicycle Outfitter and found nothing. Then I decided to go to REI, where I still couldn’t find some biking glasses.
So my end stats was about 1400 feet of climb, between sea level and 900 ft, 50 miles ridden, and I visited Sunnyvale, Saratoga, Cupertino, Los Altos, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Santa Clara. I rode past 3 bike shops.
I did get to try the Arkel panniers at The Bicycle Outfitter and I’m pretty sure those are the kind of bike stowage that appeals to me the most. So I’m probably going to get the XM-45 pair whenever I feel like spending something in the order of $290.
It was at this point that I decided to see if I could set a new personal distance record in a pretty major way. I figured I’d try to do 50 miles. And I also decided to see how many towns I could ride through. So I biked along the bay trail all the way up into Palo Alto, and then back along the Stevens Creek Trail and then did a little less efficient of a route to keep running the odometer up until I reached 50 miles in front of the next complex over to where I live.
I tried a few things, besides see how good I could climb and how far I could bike:
One theory I’ve had in the past few months is that it’s really a matter of plonking and, when I ride for hours, I really ought to be eating something. So I went through two Stinger gels and two Gu gels in the course of the ride and didn’t run out of steam. So I think those 100-calorie bursts of easily-digestible food help.
I was curious about how my new rear tire was going to work and I felt that I had the exact same amount of traction as before. So all that tread and width in the back wasn’t actually helping.
I also got to try out my cold-weather gear. I started out with a pair of light hiking pants, legwarmers, bike shorts, a t-shirt, and a jacket and ended up wearing just the bike shorts, legwarmers, and my t-shirt.
My next goal, of course, is to do a full century (100 miles) instead of just half that distance. And to get a little better at climbing so that I can find some camping buddies to ride up to the mountain campgrounds with.