Still swimming yes, but photos at the Y pool.... yeah, not so much.

Now mountain biking, yeah, that's photogenic.

Obligatory shot passing one of Tamarancho's famous signs.

Starting to like that place quite a bit.

What has 5 toes and is black and blue?

My left foot.

No workouts this week. The foot was so bad I didn't even want to be pushing off a wall with it at the pool. Worked on some home projects instead. Got some circular saw skills going!

Thoughts of broken bones faded this morning so it was on with the scheduled weekly ride.

Saratoga Gap. Like so:

The ride is an out and back with a big loop at the far end. We did the loop clockwise and felt like that was the right choice, but you could do it counterclockwise if you are willing to hike a bike about 2 tenths of a mile where the trail climbs over 20% grade. It was a real brake-burner in the downhill direction.

If you are old enough to remember Carvel ice cream cakes you might think like me that the loop is shaped like Fudgie the Whale

You think?

Nice place to ride for a couple of hours on a fine December day. Not too hard, but not unrelentingly easy either. And the price of failure in the tricky bits is pretty low, so it just encourages you to have a go and see if you can get around that rocky switchback or climb up that root staircase.

Annadel again.

Cooler weather makes for more fun here.

Still a workout though. Once again Annadel is where I record an new highest heart rate on a bicycle. 193 this time. Again climbing Two Quarry.

[Click to see original size image]

And yeah, it looks like the new elastic strap for the heart rate monitor needs a bit more tension to deal with the shaking forces in the rock gardens here.

Moving time: 3hr46mi
Total time: 4hr17mi
Distance 25.4 miles
4200 feet of climb. That's gonna leave a mark.

Last time we were here: Annadel two months ago.

This time:

[Click to see much bigger original image]

I got separated from the rest of the group and did a bonus out and back on the lower part of Marsh Trail. Nothing like an extra 3 miles with 500 feet descending and then climbing.

Possibly related to the above detour, we finished the ride in the dark and had to walk a couple of rock gardens on the appropriately named Cobblestone Trail. But that's just what we in the business call leaving more for next time.

Kick drills --threat or menace?

Kicking is hard.

Especially front flutter. I swear if I didn't push off the wall at the start I'd never make it. By about 40 meters in it feels like I've stopped and have begun going backwards. At least, if I keep my head up to breathe. If I lie flat in the water, face submerged, then I start moving just in time to need to breathe again.

This may be a long slow process.

It was interesting to note though how easy normal crawl seems to feel in comparison now. I can do 100s with breathing every 4th stroke (and 50s with every 6th), which is new, and may be pretty useful since it isolates technique. It is also faster than going all-out but breathing every other stroke.

October: breathe right month
November: kick month
December: find a coach month? Might be a bit early.

Return to JMP. Also; trial and error.

Did some loops of Joaquin Miller. Intended to do all descents on Cinderella and climb back up as many different ways as possible. Each time down I'd click a clicker and see if the suspension felt better or worse.

The rebound damping on the Rockshox Revelation seemed pretty fast at a middle of the dial setting so it got cranked up to where it felt like the clicker was actually doing something, 19 of 22 (3 from turtle). That was good but felt a bit slow to reconnect the wheel to the ground over bumps. Took out one click and it felt very good after that.

The amount of time it takes me to get down that trail has plummeted in just a few months. It ain't gonna get much faster though since I think the 15mph limit in the park is a good idea given how popular the trails are with hikers, etc.

It may be time to try Chapparal. Or even to try climbing up Cinderella, which I don't think I've attempted before. My climbing over technical stuff needs lots of work. $2 hill just baffles me so far. Most of the big HR spikes in this graph are trying to go up it.

Oh, and this little dude was hitching a ride with me at the end.

Water Dog again

[Enclicken to embiggen.]

Last time we tried to ride everything in the park at least once. Moving time was 2:02. Total time was 2:40. Mileage was 12.

This time we tried to ride the good stuff with a good flow. Moving time was 2:04 out of 3:00. Mileage was 11. It was a bit damp after yesterday's rain. We finally got to the bit of Chapparal we missed on the first ride and it was a steep climb.

Finally rode the very bottom steep bit of Berry. Stopped above it and had to talk to myself for a good minute or two to just get back on the bike and let it roll to the point of no return. Felt like I was being electrocuted just standing there thinking about it. The rational mind knew it was not impossible but sometimes that doesn't count for much.

Oh, yeah, and this time I was at least game to try riding over the roof of the Rambler but pedaled too hard and spun the rear tire and nearly fell off the bridge. Something to work on for next time...

Dirt: we found it.

The size is a lie!

Bought some new tires for the mountain bike. Current ones are WTB Wolverine 2.2. They are good for the fire roads around here, and were very good for the not-very-technical and part pavement bike leg of the Tinley's offroad triathlon, for example. But they were making me wonder if I'd be having more fun on the rocky, rooty single track if something more grippy were on the rims.

Enter a Maxxis Minion DHF for the front and a Maxxis High Roller for the rear. Due to my limited internet skills these were ordered in 2.35" and 2.1" sizes respectively. Concerns about pushing the bigger front tire disappeared once I saw it mounted.

See for yourself.

The WTB clais to be 2.2 and is 2.15. Good effort.

Main cross section of the tire is the same width.

Maxxis has different ideas about sizing. Taking the calipers straight off the 2.2 tire and holding them over the allegedly 2.35 tire shows plenty of gap.

Maxxis math says 2.35 < 2.2.

Actual size of the "2.35" is 2.0.

The weird thing is, they actually sell a 2.0. This ain't it though.

And the 2.1 HR is small as well.

Actual size 1.9".

Conspiracy theory man says maybe this is a kludge to compete on weight. Our 2.35 is lighter than the other guys because it is undersized. Dunno. This set of tires is almost a half pound lighter than the last set. Very interested to ride 'em.

Windy

As windy as it was during today's road ride, the wind got even stronger after the sun went down. So much so that it seemed like a good idea to look up how to estimate wind speed based on observable effects. The online forecast for the area was pretty useless. 10-20mph they said. Sustained, maybe, but the gusts are pretty frequent and strong. Dust blowing off the ground into your face: check. Snug fitting ball cap trying to blow away: check. Small limbs falling off trees that are in near constant motion (branches, not just leaves): check. Boards popping out of fences: check. Dog's floppy ears standing up if he faces the wind: check.

Matching some of those to this chart puts us into Gale and Strong Gale territory.

[Source is NOAA]

Perhaps that bit of geeking out was a bit excessive. But it does relate to this blog if we go back to this afternoon's ride. Normally the wind around here blows eastward, coming off the Pacific. There's a big hill (10% for over half a mile) where you can hit 45 on a typical day straight into that ocean breeze. On a calm day add a few mph. Today the wind was behind you coming down the hill and if I didn't have motorcycle racing in my background I'd have been dragging the brakes for sure. But 54mph was a bit more than I expected. If you were willing to bomb that hill in the dark right now you could probably hit 60. You go ahead, I'll stay here and drink Belgian ale and watch Stargate SG-1 reruns.

[Click here if you don't have bionic eyes.]

Data:

[Blogspot shrinks the image to fit it in standard blog width. You click it to make it full screen.]

Still working on the swim/bike/run, it just looks like it is all mountain biking all the time now.

Rematch with China Camp today.

Did some stuff I didn't feel up to the first time. A lot of the stuff that looked crazy to me before looked pretty tame today, but some of the new stuff was either gnarly or skinny and the tension level was still a bit higher than it needs to be. This was pretty much the full, good stuff loop.

18.4 miles
2800 feet of climb
2hr54min moving time, 4hr02min total time. Stopped time seems a bit high. Made me wonder if the app calls anything below x mph "stopped" but after looking at the data, not so much. But if anyone needs the lat/long of the porta-potties, let me know.

The track:

[Click for full size image]

The data:

[You can tell the elastic in the heart rate strap has had it. Flat bits in the graph mean no new data for a while because the monitor isn't held against the skin.]

[Click for full size image]

Waterdog, Belmont CA

Today's ride was at Waterdog Park in Belmont.

Park map looks like hya:

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The track from the ride looks like ya:

[Click for bigger image]

Note that the track covers almost everything in the park proper. Just one segment of Chapparal got left out where we turned off to other connecting trails. [The lake loop trail looked like it was underwater. We passed on that too.]

It's an interesting trail system tucked into a tight space, closely surrounded by neighborhoods. Not unlike Joaquin Miller in Oakland, some of the perimeter trails run right along lines of backyard fences. You may smell more than one barbecue as you ride.

Lots of fall line stuff. Not too many ledges or high risk features. Lots of short hard climbs. A very up and down place with hard pack topped with loose crumble. Really made me wish I had remote lockout for the suspension.

A couple trails have good long hairpin practice zones. Like this one (Finch) we did up and down.

[Click for bigger image]

Today's ride was 12.3 miles, which required repeating some sections.
2100 ft of climb.
2hr02min moving time
2hr40min total time
Average heart rate for me was 144. Probably because we exited on a fire road with a long easy decline.

And yeah, don't believe Google Maps when it tells you where the park entrance is.