So far, so good.

Today, I did Amalfi loops (four of them) with the Perpetuem, and had no nausea, no gas, and no emergency potty stops (except one when I had to pee, but that doesn't count).

I had two bottles - one with water and a Nuun tablet, and one with the Perpetuem. I worked back and forth between the two and it seemed to go well. The only problem is that I got the strawberry vanilla Perpetuem and it tastes like watered down depression. It's not gross, it's just.. sad. Watery and sad.

Which is a shame, because I like the strawberry Recoverite. So I'm going to try the Orange Vanilla Perpetuem and see if that's less depressing. They also make a flavorless, which might not be a bad idea, except that no one around here seems to carry it.


Should you care to peruse, here's today's Strava ride data. Remember, when you look at how slow I'm climbing, that Gary doesn't have a compact crank or a granny gear and weighs over 20 lbs. He's not fat, though. He's just big-boned.






Guess it's not so bad. I did get "Queen of the Mountain".

The Amalfi loop is like a big mind you-know-what. It's got a climb, followed by a flat section, followed by a climb, followed by a flat section, followed by a climb that makes me want to cry. Or barf. Either works.

Here's where I wiped out a couple of weeks ago:

My nemesis. Note extreme banking on the right side. That's where I went down.

 This is "Chainbreaker Hill" looking back from the top:

Goodbye chain, it was nice knowing you.

It looks fairly innocent, except that it comes after a nice downhill so you're in a high gear, and then it goes from a gentle slope to a really crappy incline and that's where the chain breaks due to too much of le torque. Luckily, this hasn't happened to me, as I'm too much of a wimp to even try this one on the big chain ring.


And last, but not least, is "Surprise Hill". You know you're just about done with the loop, you've had a nice downhill and then a nice stretch of flat street and you start getting optimistic and thinking that you got this shit handled and then.. Surprise! It's a hill! D'oh! 

Surprise Hill

End of the ride view of the Pacific Ocean:

Dammit, forgot my swimsuit and bike lock. Next time.

Ocean Ave. and San Vicente Blvd.

I'm always tempted to take the commuter to the hills as it's got a granny gear and the climb would suck marginally less, but the point of this loop is to get stronger.

And tired.

Very, very tired.

I'm meeting a friend in Santa Monica for dinner tonight, so I'll grab the beater bike and stay in a low gear.

Hey, a deal's a deal.

A facebook friend is selling her 2008 Specialized Allez road bike. It was only ridden for one year, never crashed, and has been gathering dust in her living room since 2009. She's got the same pedals that I use (the Look-style), and is including spare tubes and tires, 6 CO2 cartridges, a bento box, etc..

All for $600. Since just the bike goes for about $800, I'm seriously considering it.

It's not that I want to replace Gary, it's just that I start getting all funny when there's a really good deal offered up. 

I'll go and test ride it, have a look at the components, and see if I either come to my senses or try to cram one more bike into my already crowded living room.

Or, should I save my pennies and get a real time trial bike?

In other news, I've been using Cytomax as my sport drink of choice for quite some time now, and it's always worked well, except lately it's started to cause considerable intestinal distress, which is a polite way of stating that it causes me to feel nauseous, fart uncontrollably (which I guess would discourage drafters), and then spend an hour on the pot cursing the day I was born.

The Accelerade looks and tastes like Windex, doesn't work very well, and gives me gas (although not as bad as the Cytomax), so that's out.

Everyone else seems to like the Hammer Perpetuem, so I got a single serving packet at REI (for $2.50! That stuff better be made with unicorn tears and all-organic glitter), and I'll try it out next longish workout.

If you're in the Southern California area and would like a 30 serving jar of Accelerade that's only had two servings taken out, let me know. I swear I haven't spit in it, farted on it, or poisoned it. Much.

UPDATE: After reviewing my financial situation and then having a good cry, I have decided that I simply don't have a half-dozen spare Benjamins to spend on a bike when I already have a perfectly good road bike. 

Beer me!

I'm not normally a beer drinker - I don't like the taste of it very much, and it's too, well, beery for me. I'd rather drink wine, sake, vodka, etc..

But a strange thing happened the other day. I was scheduled to do a 30 mile training ride, so I decided to do it on the commuter bike and make a stop at a farmer's market that's about 8 miles away from me in Culver City.

So I headed out, figuring I'd do a couple of loops on the Ballona Creek bike path, hit the market really quick as I knew what I wanted from a particular vendor (he sells seedlings for $1.50, and I needed some more tomato plants for my garden), and then book it back home.

Of course I forgot about the strong winds we have this time of year, and since the commuter bike doesn't have drop bars, I was really fighting the wind for most of the ride. On an 80 degree day, a nice brisk wind coming from the ocean should be refreshing, but in reality it was just exhausting.

When I got back home (after doing a tad under 30 miles), I had, for the first time in probably my entire life, an insatiable craving for beer. Not a heavy dark beer, either, but a light pilsner. I hiked up to the local bar, downed two glasses, and felt better.

I didn't continue to want beer and I haven't had the craving since. In fact, I'm back to thinking beer is yucky.

I've been riding in the heat for *coughcough* years and this has never happened before.

I wonder what it was?

Ah, hot tub. How I love you.

My friend, the beautiful and talented Jenna Phillips, leads an indoor Mission: Possible at the Sports Club LA.

Since I'm not a member of one of the most expensive gyms in the city, I have to beg Jenna to put me on the club's guest list for the class.

When she can, it's great. Jenna's Mission: Possible workouts are fun and extremely challenging, and afterwards I get to sit in the club's hot tub. 

While my gym is nice, they don't have a hot tub and the bathtub in my apartment is too small to get more than a third of me in there, so getting to soak my entire self in overheated water while getting a back massage is a rare treat.

I know it's bad for me, but it feels so good.

So after an ass-kicking Mission (push up tabatas. Ouch), I swam a few laps in the club's beautiful pool to get the lactic acid out of my limbs, lolled on the sun deck with the rich people, then retired to the locker room where I soaked in the glorious hot tub. 


When I started to feel like an overcooked noodle, I got out, hit the shower , then strolled over to the clubs in-house restaurant and had a happy hour pepperoni pizza (personal sized, not a giant one) and a beer. I then biked about a mile home while chanting "shut up, legs"

This morning, I'm only moderately sore, but I am feeling a little bloated from the salt.

It was worth it.

Gary's about to get a lot girlier!

Baby pink handlebar tape for the low, low price of $6, with free shipping. I love you, eBay.

The Laws of Physics

Today was a team ride, doing what's called the Amalfi Loop on the Westside.

It's a great training ride, because it's a steep hill with some switchbacks - one of which is a hairpin turn to the right on a steep hill. Said turn is excessively banked, so when one is riding it, the bike tries to veer to the left, thus requiring the rider to lean right to correct.

When I was halfway through said turn, I chose a spectacularly bad moment to reach - with my left arm - down to grab my water bottle, and, of course, started to fall over. Also of course, since I'm usually accustomed to unclipping the right foot first, that's the foot that I got unclipped first.

Unfortunately, I was falling to the left and turning to the right so not only was the wrong foot unclipped, the combination of my weight, the turn, and the angle of the hill meant that I got up close and personal with the pavement, resulting in a really nice scrape on my left knee and a chainring mark on my right calf. Like so:

Gary bit me

This was taken at the end of the ride after I had washed the blood off my shin

This resulted in high fives from my teammates, and a lecture from the well-meaning sports massage guy (who was there to give promo massages and get us all hooked) about how I should better learn to use my clipless pedals.

He really did mean well, so I just smiled, nodded and refrained from trying to tell him that the reason I fell was because the laws of physics, not because of my ineptitude with the clipless pedals.

Massage guy turned out to be very knowledgeable about vintage bicycles,and may be able to help me locate a stem bolt for Gary, since the one he currently has is stripped, making any height adjustment of the handlebars impossible.

Massage guy also gave me a discount card (and a free sample of BioFreeze), so a sports massage may be in my future.