12/17/97
The regular team bike rides on the weekends are starting up.
On the Saturday before last (12/6/97), we had a pretty big turn out. Don Perry, Mike Petty, Mark Nelson, Mike Gordon, and Scott showed up. I was a little late to the ride, because of a little mishap. I stopped halfway to the meeting place in order to adjust my seat height. While retightening the seat post binder bolt, I snapped it. I was halfway between home and the meeting place, and I couldn't sit down on my bike. I thought about riding home, but that would mean going up hill in an uncomfortable position. Since I knew there were some bike stores near the meeting place, I rode standing to the meeting place.
After meeting up and talking with the guys, Don pointed out that the bike stores probably weren't open, so we decided to ride to his house (which was pretty close) so he could take a bolt off of one of his other bikes to let me borrow.
This only took a few minutes, and was good, since as we were leaving Michael Gordon caught up to us.
It was a pretty long ride, going up north through some hills and looping around east to the Sammamish River Trail. Mike Gordon had some problems with cramping because he hadn't been riding for a while, and I was surprised to be riding as well as some of the other guys. either they had deteriorated, or I had improved dramatically since last year. It's probably a little of both, since most other guys on the team haven't started training seriously.
Last Sunday (12/14), I went for the first Sunday ride in awhile. I couldn't make the Saturday ride because of some experiments I was doing. Jeremy, one of the new members, was there. He said Scott normally shows, but he didn't. We rode north out to Marymoor park at a nice, easy pace. On the way back, we had a very strong tailwind. It was rather interesting to be going 18mph without feeling any wind, because the wind was also going in the same direction at 18mph. It would have been a great ride, except that about 5 miles from home, I totally ran out of energy. It was the first time I had ever experienced anything like it, and I now know why people tell you to being energy drinks and food on long rides. I had a pretty un-nutritious breakfast, and compounded my error by not bringing any food. I guess the combination of chilly weather and the long ride totally depleted my energy. I was cruising at an effort that raised by heart rate to around 140 beats per minute, but when this 'wall' of hunger and tiredness hit, my heartrate dropped to 66, around my resting pulse. This happened very quickly, much quicker than my heart rate normally slows down after ceasing hard effort. I barely made it up some small hills near my home, and was dreading the big hill, when I remembered the 7-11 near the bottom of the big hill. Noticing that they took ATM cards, I went in and had a sandwich, a cup of coke, and two cookies. After that, I felt fine and was able to go up the hill with not too much of a problem.
After that, Lan and I went to two holiday parties, and ate too much.