Beautiful day

Nice 12 mile rail trail ride (with a little exploratory single track thrown in).



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Location:Fall city

(Wed, Thurs, Friday) June 29, 30 and July 1st - Whistler Down Hill (Clinic with Simon).

Saturday, July 2nd - 18 holes of golf (walking the course)

Sunday - Rest day

Monday, July 4th - Rode xc bike to Duthie and rode one loop on Boot camp, one on Moving on, one on Ryans and two on Step it up - then rode home. 12.93 miles. 2:24:34. 1233 ft Ascent. 1207 Desent. 1677 calories burned. Max HR 166. Ave HR 136.

Tuesday, July 5th - Tiger Mtn with Ann. 2:40:44 time. Max hr 163. Ave HR 142. 11 miles. Ascent 1500. 1749 calories. 3 mile climb took 1:20:09. Descent down Preston took 30 minutes. The rest was road and NW Timber trail.

first commute

June 14, Rode with Fredrika and Soaring Eagle. 1:15 ride time. Max HR 159. Ave HR 130. Ascent 180

June 6, Today I rode to the bus stop and rode from the Seattle bus stop to work. 17 minutes total.

This was my first ride home. distance 23.16 mi, time 2:24:30:43; speed 9.6 ave mph; max speed 32.4. Calories 1609. ave hr 136 and max heart rate 163

50 miles

Today's ride was 50 miles (the Lake Washington Loop).

Ave speed 12.1 mph. Max speed was 31 mph. 4029 calories burned. Ave HR 154bpm = 80% of Max. Max Hr was 173 bpm=90%.

Since I've not ridden much in 4 weeks, I decided to drop my pace back a bit and ride with Fredrika (at what ever pace she wanted to ride at...knowing if she set a high pace, I'd drop back). I'm also still having some shoulder pain - so I took 2 Aleve and 2 extra strength Tylenol which worked great for the first 40 miles - so I rode pain free most of the ride.

The pace from the beginning was great for me, I was at 79-81%MHR on the flats and 85% of MHR on the climbs. The past few rides with the group I've been at 85%MHR on flats and 90% MHR on the hills. I felt strong and rode well.

I did a pretty good job of keeping my heart rate where I wanted it - except for a couple of instances. The middle group would stop to rest (it seemed like it was before each hill- I'm sure it wasn't) and would let us pass them and then they would pass us on the hills. So every hill I was being passed by the same group...well at one point one of the riders, as he was passing me very slowly mentioned that he was passing me again - well I decided if he was going to pass me he'd have to stand up to do it - so I picked up my pace and he decided not to work to pass me.

Once Fredrika left us to head across Mercer Island, I decided to put some distance between me and the middle group (so I didn't have them passing me over and over again), and I figured it would put some distance between me and the sweep - the sweep kept talking to me and part of the time I couldn't figure out what she was saying and part of the time I couldn't figure out what she wanted; thus, I found my attention behind me instead of in front of me. So I decided to risk increasing my speed (knowing I might very well regret it when the last 5-10 miles arrived); I decided the risk was worth it - so I picked up to 85% of MHR once we left the turnoff for Mercer Island and I pushed hard - My plan was to push hard to Coulon and then drop back to my previous pace. Well the sweep caught me a little before Coulon - which I didn't expect because I thought she was the sweep - so she road with me till Coulon. I knew she would need to wait for other riders at Coulon so I let her know I was going to skip Coulon and I'd see her back at the car. I then dropped my pace back to the 80% feeling pretty sure I was still well ahead of the middle group...and I was feeling the push to Coulon - my body was not happy at this point. The sweep flew past me as I was climbing on Rainer Ave, I figured I was free to ride the rest of the ride by my self. Nope, she was waiting for me at the turn off. So I started up the road heading to the last climb of the day. At this point the sweep began chatting and I was still not hearing most of what she was saying when she asked clearly if I wanted her to ride in front of me (which makes sense since I told her when we were on the burke-gillman that I'm partly deaf and can't hear the person behind me very well) - At this part of the ride, I was just barely holding on and had to stop to be able to answer her - my frustration hit the ceiling at needing to stop to talk to her - I said I don't care where you ride, it makes no difference to me. She asked if she was bothering me and I said absolutely yes so she road on and then of course I spent the last 7 miles berating myself for losing my cool with her - I know she was trying to be uber helpful, and I realize now that I needed to say more (than just that I can't hear the person behind me) - Part of my folly was thinking that she was the sweep and if I put distance between me and the people riding my pace I'd put distance between me and her. So I humbly learn...

My second concern today was that I came close to being hit by cars 3 times - I consider myself a careful rider and yet I almost bit the dust 3 times. 1) in Kirkland, a pickup was stopped (waiting to turn left) and decided at the last minute to do a U turn and literally accelerated into my bike lane - I was lucky because there was a cross walk there and I was able to swerve onto the sidewalk and not get hit. 2) after getting off the trail in Renton a Vehicle was making a left turn in front of me (no problem) well they didn't make the full turn so decide to back up very quickly (into my path). I slammed on my brakes and missed the car. 3) on the hill climb before the descent into Seward. There were cars parked on the right. I was on the right side of the lane where I'd normally ride (in hindsight, I should have taken up more of the lane) a car decided to pass me and I had a sense that it was too tight. There were oncoming cars and I knew the vehicle couldn't take the the oncoming lane so as I heard (the motor was loud and there was no hesitation in the sound as it approached) the oncoming car approach I move as close to the parked cars as I could and barely escaped being hit. In 10 years of riding road, I've only had a couple of close calls - to have 3 in one day was a bit un-nerving.

As much as I love riding - this was not a fun ride. My goal for the next ride is to have fun.

Friday, June 3, 2011

30 min run. I've worked late most nights this week, so I ran twice. I think I could also ride in the morning - 45 min to an hour. so I may do that one morning next week. Next week should be my last difficult work week (as far as having to work late).

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

30 minute run

Saturday, May 29, 2011

First day back on the bike

19.82 mi road ride with Fredrika. 1:37:35 Ave Speed 12.2 mph. 1264 cal. Ave HR 128 =67%MHR

It's happening

My workouts are less than stellar but I'm showing up

Monday & Tuesday I hung out at bike shops- I have2 bikes being worked on. New crank & bottom bracket on my road bike. The FSA has always given me trouble and so I finally had enough on Saturday's ride. I'm putting a compact ultra on the bike.

My free ride bike needed new handle bars - both should be ready to pickup today.

Wednesday: easy 30 min run- no data because my heart rate monitor was funky

Thursday: showed up for cycle U and rode for an hour. I'm tired of being on the trainer. It is time for me to get outside more. I didn't feel up to zone 5 intervals...so i rode for an hour and called it good

Today I'm riding Grand Ridge which is a long difficult climb. Not the best ride for before the Saturday 35 miles...but it is what is on my riding partners training plan.

My goal for today is to e-mail a few friends and line up riding partners. And I need to meet with coach soon to figure out my ride days. I'm really lacking in motivation thus the riding partners will help


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The first NW CUP race of the season went well. The trails for practice were fairly dry on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Thursday I made 6 runs, 5 on Friday and just two on Saturday (a rest day). We had one pre-race run on Sunday before it started to rain. The course was very muddy for the actual race with over 120 riders on the trail before we (Cat II women) raced. The Cat II Open Women's class (ages 19 and above) had 22 riders. Winner's time was 3:29:68. The last person's time was 4:52:77 (about a 1 min 23 second spread). My time was 4:14:85 for 14th place. I was very pleased with my time and happy to be in the middle of the pack. I didn't have a very good race run. The trail was slower than I expected and I lost a lot of speed in several spots and had to pedal hard to try to maintain a descent speed. What I did well was corner in the muddy tight corners and my rolling drops were excellent with plenty of speed. Another great thing was that Fox was at the race, and they fine tuned my fork and my shock; thus the bike rode amazingly well (almost like a brand new bike). I'm looking forward to the next race