At the risk of sounding self indulgent (that is what these things are for, right?), I’ve been reading my old ride reports from the start of my year with SIR. It started when I got an email from K over at Cycle Commuter. He was asking about the group generally and I pulled up some links of the Urban 100k and the 200k Chili ride. It was really interesting to read my perspective on things from fresh eyes. I kind of half expected this thing to slowly die off but I keep getting positive feedback from people, especially other riders. It has been an adventure to be sure.

I’m curious to see how good or bad that slog up to Greenwater on the 200k feels this year. I should be in better shape, but you can’t really predict these things. Either way, chili is always motivation for me.

People have been asking how my running is going as well. I haven’t really posted on it much because I feel like I am cheating it a bit. The program calls for runs on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The impact of my 200 pounds hitting the pavement is more intense than I imagined it would be. I don’t feel like it injures me or anything, but I feel pretty jello-y the next day. Since I always have a ride on Saturday, I’ve been skipping the Friday run… and of course the Saturday one too.

To be fair, I’ve been consistent on the Monday’s and Wednesday’s though. I am on week 4 and am up to 7 minutes of running with 3 minutes of walking repeated three times. I feel like I could go further, but the soreness the next day keeps me in check.

I can really tell how little impact my joints used to get from how much this training affects me. I have plenty of leg muscle, but the knees and ankles never got this kind of work out. Hopefully it will encourage a bit of bone strengthening.

If you ever want to yell or throw something at me, you can catch me around South Seattle between 11 and 11:30 on Monday and Wednesday. I usually have inappropriate clothing for exercising on… usually rolled up jeans. I’m sure my coworkers appreciate the smells coming out of my cubicle. I can’t talk myself into putting on shorts or a monkey suit before heading out. I feel goofy enough in my bike clothes most days.

Speaking of bicycling, I need to get back in to commuting. My lack of will power first thing in the morning has been pretty pathetic.

I had every intention of getting up Saturday morning for the Winter training ride with SIR. It looked like a fun course on some well worn roads. The puppy that we were dog sitting had other ideas. She decided to start yapping until she got sick of it, only to repeat the process every 20 minutes. From 11pm to 7am, she started whining and barking from her kennel. I’ve never felt so angry and violent towards an animal before. It took everything I had to stay in bed and not get up and strangle the poor thing.

I had pretty much committed to supporting Matt on the ride. Chris had gave me the impression that he might back out of the ride anyways, but he let me know the night prior that he was in for it. I texted him at like 4:30am (sorry, Chris) after I had been up for a couple of hours straight to let him know that there was no way I was getting up to ride my bike all day.

Around 9 or 10, after getting a little slower start, I asked Chris if he would still be in for a shorter ride around West Seattle. I had splurged a little on the dinner and dessert the night prior. I needed at least a little bit of activity. Thankfully, he was in.

Paul Johnson was nice (and crazy) enough to let some of us newbies take the reigns on mapping out a course for the 100k this summer. I’ve had a collection of leg breaking hills that I’ve been trying to string together for a while now, and Jane showed me an amazing one that connected Delridge to as far as California across West Seattle. I knew it would be perfect for the ride, if only the pitch wasn’t too steep.

You can look at our Saturday loop here. I am positive that we won’t be able to get away with every turn and street on the map, but that isn’t really the point right now. We are still fleshing it out. Somehow we squeaked out 2,000 feet of climbing in 15 miles or so. The last 5 miles is mostly downhill and was strictly to get us back home.

The general plan is to keep routing south, possibly as far as Dash Point and swing back up, starting and ending in the general South Park area. It will probably be a top heavy ride as far as hills go. Whoever doesn’t bail out from leg cramps should be treated to a pleasant second half… maybe.

South of the Fauntleroy ferry, you climb a hill and then dip back down into a neighborhood (Shorewood?) that rests at sea level. There is a fantastic switchback followed by a completely epic climb. Oh lord that hill is amazing. Once you crest the top you are treated to views of Mount Raininer and the Puget Sound behind you. If we luck out with a nice summer day, it should be a stunning ride.

Considering the neighborhoods we are running through, we’ve found some nice low traffic streets. It isn’t exactly the country, but we aren’t putting you on I-5 or anything. Wait… that isn’t a bad idea… Sorry Paul. You gave some city boys the ball and we are going to run with it.

I started this painting for Jane about a month before Christmas. I didn’t exactly plan on rushing it, but I also didn’t expect to spend 3 months on it. I can’t say I’m 100% happy with it, but I suspect that I never would be.

Still, it turned out pretty decent for not having painted in like 12 years. I’m hoping that I’ll keep it up and be encouraged to paint a little more often. It is tedious but fun. I’m too used to getting the instant results off the computer without having to really mix colors.

For those who don’t know (I’m imagining that is most of you), this is based on a Japanese game where you control a character (the Prince in green on the right) who rolls up objects as his ball of junk gets bigger and bigger. Eventually you are rolling up people, cars, buildings, even cities. I pictures him here rolling up our dog and cat that both passed away in the last couple of years. They were pretty special to us.

Chris and I set out on our last unofficial ride of our R-12 on Saturday morning at 7am. Like so many rides before it, we were alone to tackle the course together. It was kind of appropriate really.

In our heads, this was our final ride. Thanks to some goofy rando paperwork logistics, the 300k that we completed on April 3rd counts as a March 29th ride. So we have a couple more months of riding ahead of us. Still, I am comfortable in being proud of our accomplishment. This is my first season and Chris’ second. We’ve come a long way.

We began the ride like we have on other Leschi starts, by riding over Beacon Hill to the Starbucks for the first control. It was a very cool morning, but oddly comfortable. I grabbed a last minute chocolate milk and we head off down south as the sun was rising over Lake Washington. It was threatening to be a wonderful day.

We caught the Cedar River Trail down south and were treated to some beautiful no traffic (foot or car) riding for a number of miles. There was a small section of the road closed where we had to get back on the roads for a mile or two, but it was a small price to pay.

The route eventually pulled us out into the roads where we had a few climbs along with some light morning traffic. Chris and I stopped for pictures of a building that had a dangerous love of decorations. There was a valentine’s day heart (pictured above), a skeleton in the window, a bunch of America jingoism, and some Cars lyrics wrapped around the building.

We pulled out on to some back roads that lead towards Black Diamond. I had never ridden to the town from North to South, so it was pretty fun to experience some new roads. There were a couple of real leg burners in the bunch of hills too.

The route lead us in to a gas station in Auburn. Nature was calling and I was glad to be at a control. There was a door inside that had a picture of a woman in a bikini. The haze in my brain concluded that it must be a bathroom. I opened the door and the lady manning the cash register freaked out on me. She repeated gave me lectures on why I need to ask her before I “go opening doors around here”. Everytime I apologized and explained it was a mistake, I got another lecture.

Sell me my damn peanut butter cups so I can get out of here. Peanut butter cups are delicious by the way.

The cue sheets surprised us with a trip back towards Black Diamond. The farms along Green Valley Road were as pleasant as usual. It took some climbing to get out of the valley, but we were soon on our way towards Cumberland, home of the infamous (in our minds, anyways) bar that we crossed on our overnight ride. Cumberland isn’t quite so imposing during the day though. We got some food and water at the store that was closed to us previously.

Chris had to haggle with the clerk to let him use his card. I wondered how many more people we could piss off before the day was through. Maybe we could make it a game.

There were many familiar roads by now on the way back north. From both the overnight 200k and the 600k, we’ve ridden these roads from Cumberland to Issaquah to almost go into auto pilot. I say almost because we missed a turn on the 200k and were determined to not repeat that painful 15 mile mistake.

Eventually we were on to the east side of Lake Sammamish. It seems to show up at the end of a number of rides where I am wiped out. There are always weekend warriors out whizzing by and I am usually embarrassing my SIR jersey. We were pretty determined to set the pace. Somehow we got into a rhythm that wasn’t being matched for the rest of the ride.

Our final control in Woodinville was an in and out affair. All that was left was well worn trails all the way back to the start.

I’ve written about my battle with sloppy 200k times for a while now. I always seem to end up with a 12 hour finish. I think one time I had 11 and a half. No matter how strong or slow of a start, we always seem to take about that long. Sometimes I’m hurting or fatigued and sometimes I feel pretty good. It doesn’t seem to matter. Chris and I finished this ride in 9 and a half hours. We were pretty damn happy with that actually.

We rode back through Georgetown and grabbed a celebratory beer and peanuts at 9lb Hammer. We’ve completed at least a 200k every month since last March.

Thanks go to everyone who has encouraged me, especially my beautiful wife (who was understanding enough to let me run around on Valentine’s Day) and Chris who has been there for every single one of them.

I mentioned before that the R-12 status wasn’t “official”, so what is next? There is a 200k Chili Ride coming up in March put on by Greg Cox’s family. He managed to buy a house at the very top of Kent so we can climb up right at the end of a 200k. How very SIR of you, Greg.

I set out to prove that I have none of my dad’s woodworking skills this weekend. Norman, Jane and I have been talking about putting together a garden for a while now and we finally got the ball rolling. They worked on clearing the blackberry bushes and I set sights on building some boxes.

After a very expensive trip to our local home building store for materials, I attempted to slap together some boards with large shiny objects. I knew that carpentry is a lot of manual labor, but I forgot how intense squatting and handling a drill for hours on end can really be.

We are doing raised beds so we don’t have to mess with our local toxic soil too much. The first box took me probably about 5 hours to put together. For some reference on the difficulty of the project, the second box took me about an hour and a half. I consider myself fairly intelligent, good with my hands even. Something about putting 8 boards together threw me for such a loop that I was completely frustrated.

My neighbor made things worse by popping by and tried giving me “tips”. Those tips were to do things completely different of course… with materials that I didn’t just spend a bunch of money on. I shushed him away as soon as I could without being rude.

I never learn anything without messing it up though. I learned quite a bit on this project. For instance, every trade has their own cryptic measuring system that nobody (except the insiders) can possibly understand. Does 2 x 2 mean a board is actually 2″ x 2″? Of course not. Duh. Everyone knew that. 2 x 6? Two of those stacked equal about a foot, right? Maybe! Measuring stuff is for chumps. Eyeballing is where the real action happens. I like a little adventure with my wood working.

They may not be the most beautiful boxes ever assembled, but they are going to grow the hell out of some vegetables.

I started my foray into the world of running today at lunch. I’m sure that the years of bicycling helped me with a base fitness… but it sure didn’t feel like it.

When I was in high school (and a hundred pounds heavier), I used to dread having to run the mile in P.E. class. The thought of putting on those stupid shorts and light colored shirt that showed my man boobs still gives me shivers down my spine. And oh, god the heat… Southern California is lovely until you drive about 30 minutes inland where I grew up and are encouraged to run in 90+ degree weather “for fun”.

So what in the hell is wrong with me then? Why did I spend a good chunk of change for a pair of shoes when I could have bought… I don’t know… a shiny new doohickey for my bikes? Maybe the randonneuring has sucked the good judgment out of me. I am a gluten for pain and torture.

Needless to say, I am planning on working this in to my regular routine on my lunch breaks.

I’ve started a 10 week training program with some loose goals in mind. I’m not interested in marathons or triathlons or anything like that yet. I just would like to be able to run 30 to 40 minutes without having to walk. A little gained fitness and weight loss couldn’t hurt either.

Bicycling is still the bee’s knees though. Consider this cross training.
Week 1 – Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday:
Run 2 minutes
Walk 4 minutes
Repeat 5 times.

Warm up and cool down by walking about 5 minutes. Stretch at least post run and before bed.

It ramps up week to week until I am (hopefully) running for 30 straight minutes.