It has been a long lull in serious training, with Franz’s cycling accident on April 8th, then the travel to Washington State, Utah, Atlanta and Florida.

After returning from Atlanta, we started our crash recovery course on cycling, quickly getting ready to do a Century ride in Utah that Saturday. It was the first time for quite awhile for both Anne and I to reach 200 miles of cycling in a week. The next week we were now back in California and it we should  have cycled more than we did, but the long ride we were planning on that Saturday turned out to be short due to very cold conditions.

Today we decided to join the club ride “Lunch in Pescadero” but started at McKenzie Park, in Los Altos, so we could get some additional miles.  Russ and Sheila were planning to bike on their tandem from home and we met them on Foothill.  Barley had joined them also.  The five of us biked up Sand Hill Road, then over to Woodside to meet the rest of the riders who had driven to the start.

It was then over to Old La Honda, down Highway 84 then over to Pescadero for some lunch.  We needed a break because keeping up with these young riders took a lot of energy. The forecast had been for cloudy and cool but the weather had turned very nice and it was sunny in the mid 60′s.

After splitting a sandwich, it was over Stage road to San Gregorio.  But there was no stopping there, so we went on to Highway 1, then over to Tunitas Creek.  Russ & Sheila and Barley were going to put in even more miles so we said goodbye at the bottom of Tunitas Creek, and then started the long climb of 2,000 feet in 6 miles.  The difficulty of the climb was greatly minimized by the beauty of the surroundings.  We are lucky to be able to do a local ride and be biking right up through the redwoods.  We just had to stop to get a picture.

Going up Tunitas Creek road

We finally reached the summit and made a brief stop, the fist one since we had left Pescadero.  Then it was down Kings Mountain, to Woodside and back to the car the way we had come. It was about 80 miles and 6,500 feet of climbing.  See map of route.

We feel we are finally in shape for the 10 day bike tour we will be starting in a little over a week.   Anne has now biked 3,300 miles so far this year, even higher than last year at this time.   Taking a look at the miles we have both biked so far this year, you can see that Anne’s mileage is much closer to that of Franz than in prior years.

We really enjoy biking on the tandem.  You can see that we had a period when we were not able to bike on the tandem while Franz was recovering, but for the past two weeks we are doing even a better job of getting ready for Sierra to the Sea than we did last year.  It was over 280 miles on the tandem this week.  Time to put on a new chain!

Categories: Cycling
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