Oh! Canada

So Last years traveling adventure was Vienna to Prague... this year its back to Ron's roots with a 10 day trip to Canada.

We start in niagara falls, then up through Toronto to see Ron's Brother and Sister and families. after a short stay its on to Peterborough Ontario and hopefully a day at the cottage out side of Buckhorn.

From there we drive for a few days in Old Quebec City and return to Peterborough via Montreal, Kingston and Ottawa.

We will celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with Ron's Sister and family in Toronto before returning for a last night in Niagara Falls.

All of the recent hurricanes ( one of them named Lisa as it turns out :) and tropical depressions are giving lots of rain to the east coast so we may be in for a soggy holiday. We will also have top se how we can maintain our bike training in gyms and with maybe the odd rental of a bike here and there.

Hope Fall is lovely where you are

Ron and Lisa

Recap of Park City UT Training Camp

Lisa and I went up to Park City UT for an awesome training camp with 20-30 folks associated with Team Donate Life. The camp was supported by Max Testa, Mike Brown and who have some great pro riding credentials.

The camp started with Lactate Threshold testing on Thursday Oct 15. Lisa did a new test as a follow up to her test at Athleticamps in late May. The encouraging results were that Lisa's power had increased by about 20% from 2.8 W/kg to 3.5W/Kg(!) normalized to sea level.. This is impressive and explains why I am always watching her disappear up the hills.

The Fall colors were happening and the roads and hills around Park City were gorgeous which made for some stellar riding and climbing. We had some easier days and then some hard climbs with grades up to 16% ( all at 6500+ feet elevation) Also on tap was a 12 mi time trial and sprint races.

The whole camp is geared toward goal setting and intelligent training based on your current fitness, LT zones and goals and in this some wonderful one on one with Max Testa and Mike Brown was indispensable. We returned on Sunday after a great long weekend. For Many is was also an opportunity to hear more about Race Across America and start training for a place on a RAAM team next summer

Unfortunately for me on day 2 while descending on some wonderful new pavement I discovered that the pavers had raised the road surface 4" but failed to raise the manhole covers with the pavement... I went down hard and fast ( about 35mph) which resulted in a trip to emergency, lots of road rash and a large investment in bandages and antibiotic ointment etc at the local Rite Aid. The bike did OK but needed new DuraAce shifters, New carbon bars, bartape and wheels re-trued.

All is pretty well mended and repaired and I managed to get some nice photos from the Sag vehicles on the remaining days and still participate in the lectures and other activities.

Thanks to Jared Ellison and every one that made this a great Camp!

Best regards

Ron and Lisa

A Couple of New Rides

Now that we are comfortably in our new place in Roseville - we need to discover some new bike routes that are convenient to the new area. With this in mind, we set off on two separate new rides...

Loop Around Sac International Airport...
This route takes us on mostly lightly traveled roads including the E. Levee Road, Garden highway, PowerLine Rd and parts of Elkhorn near the Airport. Baseline Rd is busier but has a decent shoulder for most of the ride.

The ride took us out in to the levee and wetland areas as well as into the rice fields ( who knew Sacramento- with no rain for months and months could grow so much rice!) The area is a great place to watch Great blue Herons, White Herons and egrets as well as Jack rabbits etc etc.

Unfortunately one section of the Garden Highway is horrible for bikes so we will have to adjust the route to not go north of Elverta Rd...now we know what it is like to ride the cobbles in France!

Then we tried a route that takes us from Roseville into Rocklin on Park Drive. the route serves up some nice 1+ mile long climb ( up to 10%) in the counterclockwise direction, and a very steep climb ( less than a mile) with gradients up to 16% int he clockwise direction... see the route profile attached. good preparation for the Vuelta in January in Puerto Rico

Hope you are out riding as well enjoying the cooler weather

Ron and Lisa

Recording Album 3 at Expression in San Fran

Just sitting in the Alan Parsons Studio at Ex'pression College recording Too Much Fiction's third album.

We have most of the basic backing tracks recorded and are recording the vocals and bass. And hopefully we will get some of the guitar solos and overdubs done.

Album 2 was mastered last week and should be out in the next few weeks.. also available at http://www.toomuchfiction.com/

Rock on!

:)

The big Move Weekend - and a trip to Napa

So this was the big move weekend.


Jason and I loaded the truck on Friday evening at my place ( jason tripped while dragging the fridge and hurt his ankle) but otherwise all went smoothly. On Saturday morning, Dan and Neil from Reliable Movin helped us to drag Lisa's really heavy f urniture down the three flights of stairs from her appartment. Thanks goodness for their help! Unloading was prettty smooth and painless ( the advantage of a single storey house:)


We did a bunch of organizing and setting up of beds on Saturday evening and Sunday morning... and then decided that we had had enough of moving... so we packed up the bikes and headed to Napa.


We had fabulous weather - topping out at about 80F as we rode up the Silverado trail up to Yountville and then to St Helena.

Along the way we kept our eye out for possible wedding reception venues - and we check out the Silverado resort, the Harvest Inn and a few others. Lovely views and lots of beautiful wineries.

The Tour of Napa Valley event was going on so we saw lots of riders heading the other way on Silverado Trail

We drove back past Lake Berryessa, and through Winters to avoid any big traffic jams associated with the Indy races at Infineon Raceway.

Attached area few pictures of the Napa ride... house pictures to follow once we get some semblance of organization to the chaos :)

Have a great week

Mount Diablo Climb

Busy times with moving and all so not that much time to write and advise on our latest rides but let me at least catch up on the climb of Mount Diablo in Alamo/ Danville CA.

Lisa and I did the climb on Aug 7th with a 9:30 am start and beautiful weather - not windy, not too warm.

Mt Diabolo climb about to 3849 ft in about 11.5 miles with a brief respite a few miles in through the Rock City area. This works out to an average of about 6%. This actually makes it a climb worthy of the Tour de France. By comparison a few of the legendary climbs in the tour are:

Col de Tourmalet (east) - ~4100' in 10.7 miles
Port de Bales ~3990' in 12 miles
Col de la Colombiere ~3750' in 10.5 miles
etc

Of course we were not racing - nor did we do Mt D after 100 miles or racing :) but we like to think of it as a significant climb.

We started with 5 or 6 miles of flat riding or gently climbing 1% or so to warm up and then we started the main climb. We purposely controlled out tempo to keep our heart rates below our Lactate Threshold (166-8 bpm for both of us) Lisa has been riding more than I so her heart rate was consistently about 10 bpm less than mine - but I only went over my Threshold on the last 200meter climb ( which exceeds 15 or 16%)

The climbs were busy with lots of folks testing themselves on road and mountain bikes. There was also a Vespa club that scaled the mountain on their scooters.. dressed in leathers. It was hard not to smile and imagine them congratulating each other when they reached the top:)

We did not stop at the Junction but rolled right on through reaching the top in about 1:45 with out a break and feeling pretty good.

The trip down with 11.5 miles of downhill was fun as usual.

We are thinking of organizing a group ride up Mt D in the fall for our cycling friends interested in the challenge... stay tuned:)

Regards

R & L

Vuelta Puerto Rico Revisited

Lisa just received the photographs made by Kip Pierson ( http://www.kippiersonphotography.com/) during the 2010 Vuelta.

These shots - unlike the ones I took give some outsider's unique viewpoints...

We are registered to do it again at the end of January 2011 ( and hope to be in better condition for the climbs and the pace so that we can hang with the 18 mph avg group on all three days this time :)

Enjoy the pictures

R