My kingdom for some Butt Butt'r!!!
Wow! Hardest training ride I've done in a very long time. Over the last few weeks I managed to get in some 50+ mile training rides, with the longest coming in at around 62 miles, so I thought signing on to do the 75 mile East Bay ride yesterday would be a good idea. Increase the miles, see some new sights etc.
The ride started in Orinda, worked north to Concord, then Clayton then up into the Morgan Territories Regional Park and then down to Danville and back to Orinda. I had never done the Morgan Territories, though I've heard alot about it so I figured it would be a chance to get in an awesome workout, enjoy some much needed sunshine and increase my miles.
Hoo boy was that tough. I don't know if I just didn't get enough sleep but it felt like we were climbing right from the word go. We climbed out of Orinda, we climbed up to the reservoirs off Ygnacio Valley Road and then we climbed climbed climbed climbed and climbed up Morgan Territories. Now, it's not as tough as say, Mt. Diablo, but its pretty darn tough.
My only complaints would be that our route maps were a little screwy, causing a few of us some confusion. The distances were off so we actually rode around 81 miles instead of 75.
My other complaint would be that I didn't lube myself up with some Butt Butt'r before we started.
Butt Butt'r is a brand name for something called chamois cream. You apply it liberally to the inside padding of your biking shorts and onto the areas of your anatomy in contact with said padding. It's a greaseless lubricant that keeps you from chafing on those long rides.
I didn't think about it because I hadn't been using any so far this season, but when I was about halfway up Morgan Territories I started to smell smoke and I swear there were little wisps wafting up from my shorts. Uncomfortable!
Fortunately, I brought a small packet of the butter with me and once I reached the restrooms at the top of the hill I immediately slathered it all over the inside of my shorts. Aaahhhh. You wouldn't think having some cold, wet, cream would feel good, but trust me. Ooohhhh yeah.
I'll be stocking up for the rest of the training rides, as I think the shortest on the calendar is somewhere around 68 so might as well get used to it.
Tally ho! Back in the saddle tomorrow for some fun fun fun spinning!

by Geoff Gillette on Mon, Apr 06, 2009 @ 1:35 PM

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Trying to get started again!
Well, a few weeks have gone by. Not quite as long as the last entry but still taking longer between blogs than I'd like. Something to work on.
Speaking of which, I'm working on getting back in that "groovy" groove I mentioned in my last post. In between being sick, having the weather turn on me and just being super busy on the weekends I've lost some momentum.
And for those of you who know me, momentum is a big deal. It takes me a long time to get started, but once I'm moving I'm hell on wheels. Metaphorically speaking, of course. But if something sidetracks me or I have to break my routine, it just gets that much harder to start up again.
I made a good effort this weekend, though, joining Julie Brown and the other training ride leaders for a really enjoyable 46 mile ride out to Tiburon.
We started at the Sports Basement, went up over the Golden Gate Bridge and then instead of going down into Sausalito we went up and up and up to the Marin Headlands, a 3 mile long climb. Ugh. The first part and the last part were steep and tough, but the middle part was okay with a more gradual slope.
Then we raced downhill, weaved around to Fort Kronkite for a quick break and a drink of water and then worked our way out to Sausalito and Tiburon. Four significant climbs in there, with Marin being the hardest.
I hadn't been on my bike in a few weeks and totally expected to just die on those hills but strangely, I felt good. Overall. I panted like a dog at first but slowly i found myself getting into a rhythm.
The key I've found is to go at the speed you are comfortable with. 4 miles per hour, seven miles per hour. Whatever. Just get into that rhythm, let your body work and just keep breathing. Sure it might take a while to get to the top, but you still get there.
With my body type and the roundness of my physique, I much more resemble the tortoise than the hare, which matches my philosophy pretty well. I'm not trying to set any new speed records. I just want to ride every mile, and stay ahead of the sag wagons.
My creaky mill wheel of willpower has been restarted...tomorrow it's back to the gym and into the spinning class. As the song goes, "Back in the saddle again."
;-)

by Geoff Gillette on Mon, Feb 23, 2009 @ 10:44 AM

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A new year! And an update! Woohoo!
Wow, I can't believe it's been almost three months since I told you about the hell that is a spinning class. Well, my friends, there have been a few changes since then.
Let's see, to start with I'm not hating my spinning class quite so much anymore. Of course, that depends on the day, but mostly I'm really enjoying it. If you've never tried it, it's an amazing cardio workout. It works your legs and your core really well and to a much lesser extent your upper body. It's not a substitute for getting out in the saddle and cranking out twenty or thirty miles, but it is good cross training and a nice supplement. It also helps to wear shoes that fit either in the clips or in the cages. And eat something before hand. Listen to me and my cautionary tale.
The second change is that I've already logged in a few miles in training rides. Those eager beavers in SF had a series of training rides called the Fall Crawl, headed up by Logan (whose last name escapes me sorry Logan).
It was pretty much your standard tiburon loop and we added miles along the way. I made it to alot of the rides, although I missed the climb up to the Marin headlands.
Still we hung in there until just before Christmas and the final ride of the series was a 52 miler up over the GG bridge, through Sausalito and Fairfax and out to Lagunitas, making a big climb up over White's Hill. Logan told us it was a nice warmup for Quadbuster, but I remember some hills from further down the road from Lagunitas and White's hill was not quite the biggest boy on the block. I'm sure we'll see those as the training season really gets underway.
So from a training perspective, things are pretty groovy. I'm spinning a few times a week, meeting with a trainer to do some weight work etc once a week and trying to get in the saddle at least once a weekend. Nothing huge, just get on the bike and get moving. I feel good. I feel like I'm already a lot further along than I was at this time two years ago and that makes me feel good.
Fundraising is also moving along, albeit a bit more slowly. I am just a hair under $1300 right now, enough that I got the cool ALC messenger bag, but still not quite halfway to the minimum of $3k to ride and only a quarter of the way to my stated goal of $5k.
I've had some friends ask me why I cranked my goal up, especially in a down economy.
It's a fair question, and it deserves a fair answer. My answer, quite simply, is that I wanted to raise more this time around because I feel more invested in this. My first ride, as I mentioned, I signed up for me. I rode most of the ride for me. I finished the ride for me and a whole lot of other people.
Those people still need help. And I want to try to do a little more. Go the extra mile, if you will.
I believe in the people I've been lucky enough to know. I believe they'll come through, and make that goal happen. They'll step up and be a part of something really amazing.
I believe that because economy or no, people still care about other people. I'm no pollyanna. I see the world. But I also know people. And i know most people deep down want to help.
And I believe they will. ;-)
Planning on doing a ride locally this weekend, want to see if my newly toned muscles can handle the annoying and difficult climb up Norris Canyon. Those who read the blog last go round remember that that hill routinely kicked my ass until I made it my beeyotch. Well, it's waiting for a rematch. I think I can take it.
Let you know how it turns out.

by Geoff Gillette on Wed, Jan 07, 2009 @ 9:43 PM

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Hell thy name is 'Spinning Class'
As part of our push to get ready for a triathalon (another one for Cindi and my first) and preparing for the Ride, Cindi and I decided to join 24 Hour Fitness.
They have a huge complex about five minutes away from the house and they are open all the time. Who'd have thought 24 Hr Fitness wasn't just a clever name? Apparently not me as I actually made the bonehead mistake of asking the guy giving us a tour of the facility just what their hours were. Doh!
I digress. We ended up joining and were given a nifty schedule of all their classes. Prominently featured were indoor cycling or 'spinning' classes. If you don't know what that is, it's a bunch of people who go sit on stationary bikes in a big room and an instructor is at the front. The instructor tells you when to increase the tension on your stationary bike to simulate going uphill. I'd like to point out at this juncture that at no time did we simulate going downhill. Which seems patently unfair, but what can you do?
Cindi and I were excited and decided to go so we got up at 5:30am this morning and drove over to the gym. Don't even bother remarking on the irony of getting up, driving a car so I can ride a bike. Been there done that.
I had noticed on our tour that the exerbikes had the pedals you can 'clip in' to so you can get the benefit of the upstroke as well as the downstroke, so I wore my cool bike shoes thinking I'd be in good shape.
Imagine my surprise when I find that my cleats don't fit the clips on the pedals and my shoes won't fit in the baskets because of the thickness of the cleats. Now I'm standing on these pedals and feeling like I'm going to slip off and hurt myself.
So we get started and at first it's feeling pretty good. I've got a good rhythm going and the resistance isn't set too high. But then the instructor tells us to crank up the resistance a little. So I do. And then more and then more.
I'm struggling to keep the pace now, but I'm getting a good sweat going and I'm feeling like I'm getting something out of this.
About fifteen minutes in, waves of nausea kick in and my guts feel like they're about to come out. My thighs are on fire and my shoulders are cramping from trying not to hold onto the handlebars too hard to keep from slipping off on the goofy cleats.
And I realize that I've violated the cardinal rule of biking. I hopped out of bed and ran out the door without eating anything. My energy level is going right through the floor and I can barely keep my legs moving. I'm bonking!
I look over at Cindi and she's sedately pedaling away. I couldn't believe it! I've done the AIDS ride, every freakin' inch! I can't be bonking, can't be falling behind.
Not only that, but I find out a bit too late that I didn't adjust the height on my bike's seat so I am overextending on the downstroke and having a hard time getting back in the saddle when we would stand up to work on quads and glutes. Truth be told, the darn seat was violating me a little. And it didn't even buy me dinner first!

I struggle to get my pace back up but just can't seem to get things going. My stomach hurts, I have barely enough strength to stay upright in the saddle it's all just a ridiculous joke.
Just as I'm about to give up the whole thing in disgust, Cindi leans in a little and tells me that she didn't crank up her resistance every single time the instructor called for it. She worked gradually and is having a great workout. Have I mentioned before how much smarter she is than me?
I didn't know whether to kiss her or kill myself for being so stupid as to walk into a class I've never done and try to keep up with everyone else.
With a grimace I gave the resistance knob a twist and immediately felt the difference.
I drank some water and just kept moving until i felt better and eventually I caught my rhythm again and cranked up a little. Still tough, but I managed to keep going.
And by the end of the class I had turned a corner of sorts and was actually feeling pretty good. No soreness, good stretching after, and I think I may be willing to try it again tomorrow.
If I do a couple spinning classes a week and training rides on the weekend, I am going to tear it up from SF to LA in June.

by Geoff Gillette on Wed, Oct 15, 2008 @ 3:19 PM

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Running sucks
Do I really need to say more?
Part of getting ready to do the ride is just getting in some sort of shape. I have a shape. Round. If I could roll myself from SF to LA I'd damn well do it. But I think I need to actually be able to ride it.
Cindi recently trained for and competed in a sprint triathalon. That's a running/swimming/biking event. I rode with her and swam with her to get ready for it and I was already thinking about doing one myself. As a matter of fact that has been one of the goals I set for myself by the time I'm 50.
So after she finished hers I told her I'd do one with her in the spring. That way I have time to train and it will dovetail nicely with my training for the Ride. A nice well-rounded (pun intended) plan.
So a couple days ago I tossed on a pair of swim trunks, a tee shirt and tennies and lumbered out to the street.
My plan? Run as much as I could in a loop that ended at our local pool, then swim a mile, then run back home. The run back home is less than a mile so I figured I'd be okay.
Let me tell you...in case the title doesn't adequately convey my feelings. I hate running. I ran cross country in high school for a year...hated it. I run when necessary. And sometimes not then.
Regardless I trotted off down the street. I made it about a half mile before I started walking. Then ran again for a while, then walked. Lather, rinse repeat, all the way to the pool.
Because I'm not the brightest bulb in the box (and I hate carrying stuff while I run) I didn't have any water.
After a few blocks I was ready to swerve off into one of my neighbors sideyards and start drinking out of their garden hoses. If anyone in my neighborhood had one of those waterfall landscape features in their front yards, you can rest assured the water level would have been alot lower after I passed by.
Still, I made my wheezing, panting, sweating way to the club house and got ready to swim. Fortunately I was able to hydrate first otherwise I might have been tempting to make my stroke pattern in the water breath/swallow/breath/swallow.
On to the swimming. I like swimming for the most part. My only problem with it is that it's really sort of dull. It's what I call a 'brain neutral' activity. Kind of like washing the dishes, mowing the lawn or sex. It's all muscle memory and instinct.
One of the things I developed during training for the ALC 6 ride was something I called my M-Pod (short for mental I-pod). We're not allowed to wear headphones while we ride so I got used to sort of playing back songs in my head and humming along on training rides. I would actually make up little playlists in my head. On the Ride itself quite few riders commented on my singing as I passed. You'll notice I said commented, not complimented. Nuff said.
Back to the pool. I tried that technique to make the laps go faster. Unfortunately my M-pod got stuck on the theme song to "Hannah Montana" my son Harry's favorite TV show. So for 34 laps I had to listen to Miley Cyrus singing "Best of Both Worlds" in my head. Even though our pool is in no way connected to the ocean, I feel pretty confident that there are whales in the Atlantic who could hear my tortured screams. Any CIA operatives monitoring this site, Hannah Montana beats waterboarding any day of the week.
Then it was over. Dry off, drink some water and run home. Then go into a coma. It felt good spiritually to do all that stuff, even though I walked part of the way, but my muscles did not thank me for it in the morning. That's why it took two days to write this. It hurt too much to type.

by Geoff Gillette on Wed, Oct 01, 2008 @ 10:57 AM

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Who am I and why am I doing this?
I have to assume that anyone visiting my site already knows me, or knows of me, or has met me. But just in case, I thought my first blog of the new season should be about me and why I'm here.
I'm a 45 year old midwestern transplant to the San Francisco suburbs. I've been married for 20 years to Cindi and have four children. Trina 21, Maddy 13, Emma 11 and Harry 8.
When I turned 40 I started looking for some sort of an epic challenge. Something that would 'define' me. I guess being a stay at home dad wasn't defining enough.
Anyway while out to dinner one night I saw a brochure for the AIDS Lifecycle ride and was intrigued. SF to LA in seven days? How cool would that be.
Now let me be totally honest. I have a few gay friends, but none that I know of who have been touched by the disease. AIDS/HIV wasn't my reason for doing this. It was all about me doing something big.
Since I rode my bike everywhere as a kid I figured that riding from SF to LA would be a breeze. I figured just signing up would be enough to get me going. It would all be downhill from there.
But anyone who has ever ridden a bike in California knows that there are more uphills than downhills. Not sure how that's even possible but it is. And no matter which direction you ride, the wind is always in your face. Strange atmospheric phenomena.
I won't bore you or me with the details of my training. Suffice it to say that I had a very rude awakening when I realized that riding that distance was going to be real work. Not the pseudo-challenge I mentally made it out to be.
Still, my motives were all self-oriented. Even after the ride started and I met an amazing array of people, many of whom had lost friends and family I wasn't invested in a cause so much as I was determined to beat this challenge.
It was our last night on the road that it happened. Camped out in Ventura, near the beach, we held a candlelight vigil for all those lost to AIDS. Over a thousand people, many of whom had ridden nearly 100 miles that day, filed out onto the beach in a huge double oval that lit the area up.
No one spoke at first. Alot of people grouped together, showing pictures of people they loved, people they were riding for. Then the stories started.
I don't cry often. You can ask Cindi. In 20 years she's probably seen me cry maybe four times. And I never cry in public. But that night I laughed to hear stories of people I never met and cried at their loss and the fact that I will never get to meet them.
It changed something for me. Something in me. When I got on my bike the next morning, I wasn't thinking about how in a few short miles I would cross the finish line having ridden every inch of the 545 miles.
I wasn't thinking about how I beat this challenge. I thought about all those people for whom AIDS would still be a factor in their lives after we got off our bikes. I was going back home, to my safe and comfortable suburb. Alot of my fellow riders weren't going to be that lucky.
So that's why I'm here again. I know I can ride the miles. I've done it before. But by riding these miles, by contacting people and asking for their help, by being a part of the fight for a cure, I'm honoring those people for whom this is a day to day fact of life.
In my next post, I'll be bitching about the joys of cross-training.
See you then. ;0)

by Geoff Gillette on Tue, Sep 30, 2008 @ 4:10 PM

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