This week, I will be turning old. I have been preparing for this inevitability by planning, many months ahead of time, something special I can do to prove to myself, if not the rest of the world, that I may be old, but I still got game. What better way to do this, than to ride the entire length of the Angeles Crest, from La Canada to wherever it ends past Wrightwood.
I even moved around all of my meetings, and took a day off from work for this grand venture, but alas, as has been the trend for the past 20 or so years, my birthday tends to be an inauspicious day, fraught with bad luck and misfortune. Whomever believes that one is special on one's birthday and is predisposed to good things happening to them is an idiot.
I guess no one beats Father Time. In retrospect, I should have known better than to indulge these sentimentalities. Next year, I will pick a completely meaningless and arbitrary day on which to execute an epic bike ride, and hope that I will still feel the warm glow of success on the actual day of oldening, which, try as I may to avoid it, will still come around again.
Sunday 08/09: 78.2 miles, 4:53:15 (16.1 mph) Seal Beach the short way. The week started auspiciously enough, with a nice relaxed flat ride. It was kind of slow, but productive, low HR, high cadence, and went a little bit harder for about 15 miles in the middle when I ran into a nice guy who rode with me for a while. I think my instincts are to push the pace when I run ride with strangers, which is how this section ended up a little bit faster.
Monday 08/10: Off. Taking it easy, body still not really used to training again.
Tuesday 08/11: 43.2 miles, 3:06:41 (13.9 mph) Angeles Crest to Red Box. Strictly enforced the low HR rule to try to establish a good pace for Friday. Feeling pretty good about the big ride. This pace is perfect for 145 miles, and I'm resting up.
Wednesday 08/12: Off, DMV. This is where things started to fall apart. A nice clerk at the bike store informed me that my drivers license is set to expire on oldening day... in 2 days. Uh oh. Due to the fact that I moved a few times in the past year, I did not get my renewal notice, and now it was too late to do it online. Crap! I tried to make an appointment online, but that also failed. First available was 9/1.... leading to the inevitable, which is that I sacrifice this ride in order to get up early and camp out at the DMV in the morning. Another thing that bugged me as I stood in line for 1 hour, was that there was this tickle in the back of my throat, but it must just be allergies...
Thursday 08/13: Off, sick. Despite my efforts to feel better, the sore throat got worse and worse yesterday, and congestion and coughing started to build. I decided to take this day off to see if it would pass... but it didn't really.
Friday 08/14: 35.8 miles, 2:45:18... Fail! Because I took a day off already, and because I'd told so many people that I was going to do this, I set off on my 145 mile bike ride anyways. I got a late start due to feeling poorly, but I was still determined to go. I rolled down the hill past Clear Creek before realizing that this was a lost cause. By the time I reached Clear Creek the coughing had gotten so bad that some random guy stopped to comment "huh... it doesn't look like you made it". Gah! Anyways, I guess he was right. I didn't make it. Instead I slowly rolled back down the hill feeling raspy and horrible.
Saturday 08/15: 11.8 miles, ~46 minutes? Attempted to do an easy ride with Peter, but was thwarted by some back wheel trouble on his part. We went to Ian's instead to true the wheel, but by then it was getting kind of late since we started in the evening. I wasn't really feeling up for a ride anyways, so I guess it was okay.
Training this week: 169 miles, 11:31:14 Bad times...
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