Every day I'm strugglin

I should have started writing about my bike rides about 2 months ago, when I was actually riding. In the past 2 weeks, the only riding I've done besides hither-and-thithering was a 26-miler one Saturday morning. It was fun to be on the bike and my legs felt rested (too rested), but shit man. 150 miles/week is just not an option right now. Rowing summer camp, of which I'm the director, started up and all of a sudden I'm working 8-5 instead of super early mornings and late evenings which left me with the middle of the day to crush some mileage. I want to start commuting via bike which might help throw in some miles, but overall it just makes me sad. I had pushed my normal 2-3 week dedication to training out to over 8 weeks, but life still got in the way. All part of the revolution, I get, but I'm goddamn ready to get back on the bike. Gotta make it happen I guess.

Shit, work calls. Can't bike, can't blog.

Windigo

The past two rides, Friday and Sunday, have been dominated by the Windigo; when it's windy as hell but you still go. Friday proved to be the most misadventure-strewn ride I can remember. Departing in the crazy-ass wind, I thought I was pushing through and getting a ride in. Starting out to the ocean, I thought I'd go the bridge via the other side of the city and then go to Marin. Cruising down Sloat Boulevard, there was a bunch of unavoidable glass in the bike lane, and soon after I felt the horrible wiggly and jarring flat tire. My first flat since I've moved to San Francisco, so... 3-plus years of no flats. Pulled over on a grassy corner, went through the steps, but my vulcanizing rubber cement was mysteriously empty, perhaps it leaked. Anyways, no cement, no patch, no extra tube, one loser. iPhone to the rescue, bike shop 4 blocks away in West Portal, new tube and tire and some time with 3 old bike shop dudes.

Post-bike shop, I rode in the gnarly wind along the Great American Highway. The sand in the wind stung my arms and blurred my vision. Totally sweet.

Decided to cut my losses, went past my waterfall in GG Park and charged it home, blocked at Dolores Park by the  fallen SF firefighters procession and just gave in and sat at the park for a while. Ended with a disappointing 20 miles but could tell it wasn't my day.

Yesterday was... well, different than Friday I guess. Nothing went wrong the way they did on my way to the ocean, I just felt tired and heavy the whole time. The summer weather pattern, though favorable in its warmth and I shan't complain about that, brings some serious wind, which can sneak up and make it feel like I'm riding in Nutella. That was Sunday. Made it out to Tiburon and back for a 51 miler, but didn't feel very good about it. Kept thinking along the way: "Aren't all these miles I've been biking supposed to make this shit easier?" Guess not yet.

Well, the biking wasn't that much fun, and I guess that's reflected in how much I feel like writing about it. I guess that makes it a great time to discuss one of other namesakes for the this blog: my love of cars. In fact, my girlfriend calls cars my "one true love." Probably true. If you know me, you've probably heard me talk about cars or seen me get distracted by something obscure on the road. So, you're gonna have to deal with it on my blog too.

On our way to Sausalito on Saturday, we passed 5 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwings, one of the most revolutionary sports cars in history. I'd never even seen one in person, and all of the sudden Truck-E was rumbling next to 5 cars each worth nearly a million dollars. They came in all flavors, too...

 I didn't realize how much I would love this car in red. It's incredible.

Pictures also never showed me how frickin long this car is.

We unfortunately didn't get any of the crazy, deep burgundy example.

They were all led by the new SLS, the modern interpretation. Doesn't have nearly the gravity as the 300s, but was cool to see and looks hewn from a single block of aluminum.

Another revolution began again today, as Stanford Rowing Camps started up for another year. 36 little bundles of joy today, and the wind was still effing with my shiiihhhh. One boat of 8 small children blew away from the dock so fast and so far that it took the next 45 minutes for them to just try to row into the wind back to the dock. It actually didn't go as badly as I had anticipated, so here we go.

This is great

Mileage makes champions

I started writing the mileage of my rides on our Bainbridge-Ometepe Sister Island wall calendar on April 14th. 56 miles. That was a serious ride for me at that point, and one I still love; a flatter, gorgeous run along the east coast of the west bay, from the Mission in SF out to Tiburon in Marin. From April 14 to June 1, the smattering of numbers had accumulated to 969.5 miles. I nailed my rear wheel on a pothole in Sacramento while coaching at the NCAA Rowing Championships (another form of revolution I will get to eventually), so my bike was out of commission for a while at the same time as the lunatics were posting thousands of miles on my Bolder challenge. Got it back earlier this week, had a day off, and decided it was time to bike. While 70+ mile rides have become pretty standard, my biggest ever was still riding around Lake Tahoe in the summer of 2005, when we did 82 miles in a day. I've felt that I could beat that for a while, but hadn't yet embarked on a ride to do so.

I don't set an exact course to follow when I leave, but I have a general idea and know my favorite bike roads pretty well. Marin Headlands, Highway 1 out to Stinson and over Mt. Tam, or the awesome and fast ride out past Sausalito to Tiburon and sometimes along Paradise Drive up to Corte Madera. Well, on Tuesday, I decided to go big before I could go home. I packed up some leftover pizza, a good playlist, and set out to combine my two biggest rides: Mt. Tam and Paradise Drive.

It's 15 miles of mostly flat to Sausalito, which I consider my warm-up time. On the way out, I pondered how to go about this. Do the long, rolling ride to Tiburon and up Paradise Drive and THEN try to drag myself up Mt. Tam? No, that sounded terrible and I worried that I would lack the resolve to force myself up the mountain after being over 50 miles in. Up the mountain first, then.

Thus far, doing Tam, I've gone up the mountain first, then descended to Stinson Beach and ridden back along the amazing coastal Highway 1. The descent is kind of switchbacky and bumpy though, so I decided to mix it up. I rode up 1 to Stinson and began the trudge up Tam. 6'3/220 is the worst build for a biker ever not exactly the "ideal" climbing build, so climbs are slow and arduous. But I did it, stopped at the top for a water and pizza break, and then charged down the mountain at 35+ mph, using a new "look at the exit of the corner" technique to minimize braking (funnnn!). Tam spit me back out by Sausalito, I hopped back on the bike path and headed along my route to Tiburon.

For most rides I don't stop longer than to fill up my water bottle, but as evidenced by my pizza stop at the top of Tam and a relatively-leisurely lunch in Tiburon, I knew however long my ride ended up being, it would be worth it to take time and get some fuel. So, another piece of pizza, coffee, and a fruit cup got me ready to go for Paradise Drive, another great rolling coastal road, just this time looking across the Bay instead of across the Pacific. I was pretty zonked at this point and a bit of headwind didn't help, but I was able to push forward and cruise. Turned around in Corte Madera because you can either shortcut back through Mill Valley to Sausalito there, or just do Paradise Drive in the opposite direction. I prefer the latter.

Though my butt was increasingly sore and my legs were leaden, the rest felt like it was essentially downhill home, at least mentally. Cruised my Sausalito route, back over the treacherous tourist-laden Golden Gate, and along Embarcadero for the nice cool down. One of my (many) neuroses, I only check my mileage once I get home (or at my block, at least), but I had hit 94 miles. New record, and a good start into the challenge now set out by my challengees on Bolder. My butt hurt bad, my knees were pretty painful, and I had have a pink stripe of gnarly sunburn where I had accidentally pulled my bike shorts above my rather distinct tan line.

But I felt really, really good. 100 miles probably would have been cooler, but for some reason I didn't care about those 6 miles at all. I guess that's indicative of how I feel about my riding in general: it's for me, and only my personal goals matter. I am stoked to have the Bolder community giving me additional support to ride as far as I can, but I've learned that my biking is about me, biking. Riding with people other than family/closest friends makes me feel weird and competitive. By myself, I just get to be competitive with myself, which is the truest, realest competition. I know when I'm being weak. I know when I'm killing it. I know when I pushed through a tough part and came out better for it. That's why my initial goal was very simple, and unfudgeable: 150 miles a week. No time to shave off, no speed to hit. Just gotta put in the miles.

On that note, it's a sunny day, I got some work done this morning, and it's time to go for a ride.

Why another blog?

Seriously, why another blog? Why create another blind-shooting self-indulgent personal blog when I'm (clearly) not a huge fan of them and have consistently failed at maintaining them?

I blame Eric. College roommate/friend is helping out at some friends' startup, Bolder. A new function in their great positive-actions-gain-rewards system has people make personal challenges, so instead of "eating organic and getting a coupon," it's more like "make friends food and I'll give you good recipes," or "run 3 days in a row and I'll run to work for a week straight."

So the next part, the main impetus for this blog, centers around my recent attempt to bike a lot. More on the philosophy of biking later, I suppose, but long story short I've been trying to use biking as a way to challenge myself, to get back into some not-round shape, and it's revealed itself to be something I love doing. It's my "Nate" time, zoned out, music in my right ear, miles of road running below. I set out a couple months ago with the goal of riding 150 miles per week (seemed achievable but seriously challenging), and with exception of a week and a half of a broken bike, I've been doing it. I think I'm close to 1000 miles down and loving it.

So, in launching their new personal challenge section, I was given the chance to make one. I figured "I'm riding a ton, how about for every 1 mile you ride, I'll ride 2." Great idea, Nate. Things started off simple enough, and actually even slower than I expected. People posted 3 miles, 6 miles, 10 miles. Then the bombs started dropping. "210 miles last week." Shit. 420 miles? Alright, I can do it, but that's gonna take me a little while. Then some smart alec rides from Vancouver, BC to SF. 1300 miles. Umm... 2600 miles? Plus 420? Plus the other 100 or so from the stragglers? All of sudden I'm staring more than the width of the United States in the face, realizing I may need to shift the timeline I had envisioned for holding up my end of the bargain.

Well, if the challengees got to stick it to me be creative with the timeline (i.e., including miles done before the challenge started), I figure I get to play by the same rules. So I'm going to include the miles I've done since I started my personal challenge, and use the other thousands of miles to be inspiration for staying on the bike.

Which brings me back to the blog. Eric, being the savvy genius that he is, encouraged me to blog about it. Well, blogging is for dorks (says the kid who writes for a German car blog), but it will be cool to document my biking, keep myself honest, and let people, challengees and otherwise, see what I'm doing to fulfill my role as challenger.

One revolution as a blogger at a time, I guess; maybe this one will be different.

Trying Again

I think Google says this is my third blog, of which the first two died slow, unremarkable deaths. I cannot guarantee that this one won't do the same. But at least I'll try, because recording the revolutions that turn my life is important and consistent. More on this later.