Feeling the Crunch

I took the gravel bike out for a ride today. How could I not? After yesterday's epic gravel stage in the Tour de France, I was jonesing to feel the crunch of gravel beneath my own tires.

Much like the Tour stage, I have to get my gravel in short sectors. We don't have long gravel roads around my home.

Here is a one mile stretch near the river:

A half mile near Lake Natoma:

The gravel road between Beals Point and Granite Bay:

I still love to get out there and haul ass on the dirt with drop bars. I don't think the old cyclocross racer hidden somewhere deep within my soul will ever die.

Later.

Dawn Patrol

I had things to do this morning, so I went out early to get a ride in.

I left just after at 5 a.m. It was warm, at least until I got near the water.

Within 30 minutes or so it was light enough to extinguish my light.

I don't hate living by a lake.

I rode about 15 miles before the sun even touched me. It was nice to ride without sunscreen.

A quick 23 miles. It was a nice change of pace to ride in the dark on empty trails.

Later.

Medio Año

Half the year is gone and I am on pace for yet another annual mileage record, which is crazy. It would be the eighth straight year my mileage has increased.

There are two obvious reasons for this. One is moving down from the foothills. Riding on flatter terrain is simply easier. You can see the mileage ramp up in June of last year after the move. In fact, in the last 10 months I have set five monthly records (in red).

The other obvious reason is retirement. What's not so obvious is my retirement didn't increase the mileage that much. After all, I retired in 2021. No, it's Jennifer's retirement that caused the major increase.

Basically, I am now two cyclists in one. I am now the guy who rides about 80 miles a week with his retirement partner, which is great. However, I am also still the guy who likes to ride his mountain and gravel bikes. I do these rides on the days that Jenn goes to yoga.

Consequently, I typically average six rides per week, and I often ride 8-10 days in a row.

As a result, I can sometimes get tired. There are days when I am very excited to get out on the mountain bike, but I find that I have dead legs out on the trails. I am also suffering from some periodic overuse issues, like sore hips, which can happen if you perform the same exercise too often. There are also days when I simply don't enjoy myself that much (which isn't completely unheard of when you have been riding for over 40 years).

In the grand scheme of things, 6000 miles a year isn't that much. I am sure back in the 1980s, before I started keeping track of stats, I was riding well over 10,000 miles a year. Of course, there are some obvious physiological differences between a young, aspiring racer and a cyclist retiree. In other words, I am old.

Anyway, I am trying to mix in more walking and weight training, and I am on the hunt for another hobby that uses more upper body, like kayaking or paddle boarding. I do live right by a lake now . . .

Later.

Intervals

Back in the day I used to do intervals as part of my training. This usually involved something like climbing a steep hill over and over (the famous puke loop!), or perhaps some sprint repeats, or sitting at 90% of max heart rate for five minutes with one minute of rest in-between. Over and over. They were painful but effective training tools. I do not miss them, though.

Today, however, I experimented with intervals. On my camera. It didn't hurt at all.

I set my GoPro to take a photo every 30 seconds on our ride today. 

It's a wide angle lens, so there is some distortion, which isn't great for general use.

Sometimes the wide angle works out like in the photo below.

Or this one.

Passing lane only.

Speaking in Italian.

Overall it was a fun experiment, but combing through 300 pictures with similar perspectives was a bit monotonous. Perhaps if I mounted the camera on my helmet instead of the handlebars that might yield more interesting compositions.

Later.

Scream

Today I went for a mountain bike ride from the house. Normally this is a fun day, but it was more frustrating than anything. Every time I felt like I was getting into a rhythm, something stood in my way.

This tree fell across a trail. With poison oak lining both sides of the trail, I didn't attempt to go around it. My momma didn't raise no dummy. Alternate route.

The state is making levee improvements. Trail gone. Alternate route.

Found an alternate route. No bikes. With three hikers giving me the hairy eyeball, I moved on. Alternate route.

This continued to happen for one reason or another for the entire ride. I was so frustrated I even stopped taking pictures. Me. No pictures. I know, right?

It's enough to make a guy scream. Sometimes you just gotta let it out.

I am sure the next ride will be better.

Later.

Day Tripper

Today we went to Tahoe for the day to do a little riding and have lunch with my folks. I picked out Sugar Pine Point State Park on Highway 89 as our starting point. We have a Golden Poppy day pass, and this was one of the state parks we can visit for free.

We first rode north to Tahoe City. The West Shore Trail meanders through the woods and sometimes along the lake. Unfortunately it crosses the highway four times, which can be a nuisance. For the most part drivers were courteous and stopped for us at the crossings.

The main reason we like bike trails is having the ability to relax and focus on riding and not worrying about cars. This trail does a reasonable job at that, but there are numerous side street crossings and even a few places where the trail stops and you use residential streets to connect to the next trail section.

Any time the trail passed near a pine tree, there was a good chance we would hit root bumps. There were hundreds of them. Because trees also make shade, sometimes they were hard to see as you exited the bright sunlight. Even with our fat three-inch tires it was a bumpy ride at times.

When we hit Tahoe City we turned west and rode on the Truckee River Bike Path for a bit. The river is running high and clear, which is nice to see.

We were running a bit late due to Highway 50 construction on our way up, so we turned around at the 12.5 mile mark.

The water is as high as I can remember.

In places it is lapping right up to the trail.

Currently the lake is just under (6228.94) the 6229 flood pool level, which is the maximum they allow for flood protection. 

We finished up with a little over 25 miles on the day.

After cleaning up and changing into fresh clothes, we drove to Incline Village where we enjoyed a late outdoor lunch with my dad and stepmom.

The drive home on Highway 80 was a long one due to construction that narrowed the highway down to one lane. Well, technically zero lanes since we drove on the shoulder for quite a while. This added almost an hour to the drive home.

Except for the driving it was a nice day, and I already want to go back and explore the area more when we don't have time constraints.

Later.

Get Off of My Cloud

 We went for a ride today. I took this picture.

That's it. That's the post.

Later.