Pedestrian Adventures

Another week of shelter-in-place has gone by.  The Bay Area counties issued a new notice extending the previous shelter-in-place order through April, to the surprise of no-one, and added some new stipulations.  Mercifully, outdoor exercise is still permitted. For the current global outlook, some locations are indeed starting to flatten the curve.  California has so far avoided inundated hospitals; the next couple of weeks are expected to be make-or-break here.  The UK is not looking so great and is adding increasing restrictions.  The Prime Minister just got admitted to hospital after failing to recover from coronavirus. A bit of local good news, some friends successfully produced the first pandemic baby of our social circle.  A healthy baby boy, born into the strangest of times and blissfully unaware.  Another friend, currently living in Ireland, had a baby in January and her mother had arrived a few weeks ahead of the due date to help out, befor...

The second weekend of shelter in place.  Re-reading Part 1 inspires surprising nostalgia; the world has changed a lot over the course of the past week. A substantial portion of the global population is now under lock down.  The UK's shelter-in-place order is of a similar flavour to the Bay Area.  The elderly, or at least my mother, seem to have escaped the specific notice to shelter more in-place than the rest of the populous, but another relative with underlying health conditions received a letter from the UK government recommending to essentially stay in her bedroom for three months. The US now has the most known coronavirus cases of any country - 100k and counting.  News stories of overwhelmed hospitals and putting guidelines in place to ration healthcare to the critically ill.  Partners banned from delivery rooms in some hospitals, although fortunately not yet in the hospital where a good friend will give birth to her pandemic baby this weekend. In mo...

Today's blog post marks the beginning of a new, exciting, pandemic-themed Pedestrian Adventures series.  As you might be aware, the COVID-19 pandemic is currently ravaging the planet, and the Bay Area is a veritable hotspot of viral activity. What a time to blog. Rewind a few months.  At the beginning of January upon returning to the US from Christmas at home in the UK, renewed China visa freshly in hand, I was excited to plan a visit the brand new factory my company was ramping in Shanghai.  Work was very occupying, scrabbling to get programs on a smooth footing ahead of the annual Chinese New Year holiday which shuts down most companies in China and beyond for a couple of weeks in January.   There had been rumblings for a few weeks about a strange new virus in Wuhan, which seemed like a sad local problem at the time.  The Chinese factories did not reopen for several weeks after CNY this time around, as the government rushed to contain the outbreak....

14.5 mi, 949 ft Today is special.  An entire year after the left hip started hurting , finally back in the saddle for a hill ride. Rewind.  2018, a summer of pain and limping, of physiotherapy and rehabilitation .  And the pain goes on, and on.  January 2019, switch to the zero-deductible mega super platinum health insurance plan with both fewer tax benefits and many fewer disincentives to stay away from medical treatment.  X-rays, MRI scans, and a terrifying visit the the "musculo-skeletal oncologist" later, led finally to a (mercifully benign) diagnosis.  The pain transpired to have been in no respect psychosomatic, and probably not aided by the months of vigorous hip flexor massage.  Myositis ossificans: the rectus femoris hip muscle sort of got mangled and damaged, presumably from all the biking, then instead of healing back into muscle... turned into bone.  An odd decision on the part of the rectus femoris, but would explain quite neat...

0 mi, 0 ft There has been a pain in the left hip since June 2018.  It was attributed to an enthusiastic excess of biking.  Biking for May bike-to-work month, 26 miles in headwinds both ways.  Weekend biking.  A personal best biking up Mount Hamilton for Memorial Day weekend.  Hip pain not an illogical outcome. For details of original diagnosis and physiotherapy, see here , here and here .  Suffice it to say that in the interim, counter-balancing muscles have been vigourously developed to mitigate the strain on the hip flexors when walking, standing, sitting.  The pain is not gone, but no longer a central feature.  Focus has been dissipated to further pains - an October left knee injury at the gym, and ongoing slight pain in the left elbow, attributed to the general stresses of working out.  Perhaps too many push ups.  This is presumably the essence of mid-thirties life; chronic niggling joint pains. Come 2019, a shift from the ta...

0 mi, 0 ft Good news to commence: a powerful mind-glute connection has been developed for both left and right sides.  "Like night and day!" per the chipper physiotherapist "B" at the most recent of many expensive appointments.  Better yet, through mountains of practice, hours in front of the mirror, constant core engagement , and judicious leveraging of now-mighty glutes, perfect posture has become routine.  The pelvis no longer tilts posterior or anterior, the spine is straight, and it is once again possible to multitask whilst standing, walking and sitting.  "Your posture is transformed!" gasped a friend upon sight following a month-long lapse. Secondarily, the less good news: Month Three of ongoing hip pain despite the successful postural rectification.  The trochanteric bursitis is all but gone, but transpires not to be the initiating symptom.  There was a subsequent long phase during which an overly tight tensor fascia lata (TFL) hip flexor was ...

0 mi, 0 ft One month into hip pain, and both life and this blog are rather less biking-oriented than had been hoped for the glorious summer months.  The trochanteric bursitis of the previous post shows no sign of abatement, and may likely now be classed as "chronic" rather than "acute".  Let this be a lesson, dear reader, to never ride, squat, walk, stand, or indeed sleep with imperfect form. Physiotherapy appointment Number Two with delightful physiotherapist "B" took place a few days ago.  In the week and a half since the initial session, considerable effort had been engaged to rectify the posture that had elicited such horror during appointment Number One and is no doubt the root cause of the deleterious hip inflammation.  Extensive interwebs research yielded a self-diagnosis of "posterior pelvic tilt", the less common variant of poor posture relative to fashionable "anterior pelvic tilt".  There transpires to be a sizeable onl...

0 mi, 0 ft Following the Memorial Day Mt Hamilton extravaganza , some pain was experienced in the lower half.  This is a reasonably typical occurrence, having surmounted a veritable mountain under one's own propulsion.  Most of the pains evaporated over the ensuing days, with the exception of a particular niggle in the left hip.  Of course, bike commuting continued for the remainder of the week as it continued to be May, and thus points were accrued for the bike-to-work month challenge. The following week entailed international travel, and as such, an enforced week off the beloved bicycle.  Probably for the best as the hip was becoming increasingly painful.  A week off biking would undoubtedly permit adequate recovery.  But the week wore on, the pain increased, and the ibuprofen so foresightedly packed had to be rationed.  An online search yielded a great host of exercises for hip pain, which were obediently executed on the floors of various hotel...

38.8 mi, 4,908 ft Owing to Monday's fortuitously being a holiday, the ride was somewhat more interesting than the typical bike commute.  All the responses to my solicitous team email pertained to travel plans for the long weekend; the route was therefore selected on the merit of solo-ride excellence.  Not, for example, a ride wherein one could collapse alone on the coastal side of the Santa Cruz mountains, unable to muster the energy to return.  This ride was Mt Hamilton, on naturally the hottest day of the year so far. For those whom have not yet had the good fortune to ascend Mt Hamilton, some information.  It is a rather tall peak east of San Jose, with a long but relatively un-steep climb (~6% grade), culminating in splendiferous views from the parking lot of the Lick Observatory.  The ascent comprises three stages: six miles up then two miles down, three miles up then 1 mile down, and finally seven more miles up.  It is imperative not to consume a...

30.6 mi, 2,740 ft Two of the team commenced the ride early in Santa Clara to log some extra miles and thus points for bike month.  Commencing a climbing ride with a few miles of flat provides the added bonus of an intial warm up prior to the steep shock.  In this event, the initial warm up may have been overkill, due to again-ferocious headwinds. Indeed, for a full fortnight thus far, the South Bay winds have cruelly and inconveniently reversed direction, adding several daily unwanted commuting minutes and much extraneous psychological disturbance.  My manager, after several days' exposure to my moaning on the topic, motivationally suggested that we work harder to develop more and better versions of our product, so as to reduce fossil fuel viability and mitigate climate change, thus returning the Bay Area winds to the prior orientation. After scooping up the third rider, the Montebello climbing portion began.  Feeling gratingly self-congratulatory on a good inti...

47.4 mi, 1,367 ft The 2018 training season kicks off with what promised to be a gentle ride along the Coyote Creek trail to Morgan Hill, followed by some pleasant rolling reservoir hills on the return.  Five riders convened at the unseemly Saturday hour of 9 am.  Apparently there had been a request to start even earlier.  It is of course important to embrace the weekend, but not overly strongly. The gentle Coyote Creek trail transpired to be unexpectedly gruelling, owing to vigourous buffetting headwinds.  At the rest stop just 18 miles in, I was thus... deflated.  Various of the riders proceeded to guess at the distance traversed thus far.  "Ten miles" was the first punt, resulting in general nodding.  Apparently riding for a significant portion of the morning in ghastly headwinds was such a breeze for everyone else, that it felt like a mere 55% of the actual distance had been consumed.  This transaction was then followed by the remark that ...

64.2 mi, 2494 ft An alarm twanged somewhere in the thistle field at 5 am, despite the ride being not scheduled to start for a further two hours.  The flood lights relit, appearing as a glimmer of dawn under canvas.  Struggling into cold fresh lycra in the semi-dark, bundling extra layers of coats and hats on top.  Stepping gingerly through thistles in search of coffeeeee. Following sunrise and a satisfying breakfast burrito, the team chafingly remounted bicycles with a collective groan and set off for Day 2.  The route soon bifurcated into 60 miles versus 40 miles, and reluctantly the realisation of once again taking the longer.  Chafe chafe chafe. Soon, we were a group of five riders of similar speed, travelling companionably together.  This fortuitously prevented my getting lost as the route suddenly veered left on a narrow alley at the bottom of a steep hill, down which we were passing at some speed.  We made our way uneventfully to the lunch...

103.3 mi, 6092 ft The Day of Reckoning dawns.  This is the Saturday in which the chronically unsporty asthmatic kid bursts free from her pre-ordained life trajectory of sofa-sitting and grocery home deliveries to stock up on crisps.  This is the Saturday to do something different, maybe heroic, that only seventy-eight percent of the Bay Area populace has already accomplished per extrapolation from rigourous conversational sampling. This is the Saturday of the century ride.  One hundred miles. The alarm clock shrieked at 4.45 am.  Car pooling team mate acquired, the Honda Civic conveyed us effortlessly to the start line in Brisbane (naturally mis-pronounced Brizz-baayyyyne) Marina, in South San Francisco.  Incredibly, despite ungodly porta-loo queues, the team rallied timely and well-equipped, achieving a cohesive 7.06 am departure.  The ride commenced well. The team captain efficiently marshalled his ducklings into formation up until the first rest s...

74.3 mi, 4506 ft Riding the rim of Lake Tahoe is my final training ride before the main event, the make-or-break before heading into the century brimming with either confidence or terror.  Billed on a website on the internet as "America's Most Beautiful Ride", the Lake Tahoe circumference combines the heady trinity of distance, climbing and altitude. Seven of the team bravely set out into the brisk South Lake Tahoe morning.  With quite a large group, over quite a lot of hours, statistics dictates that something was bound to go wrong I excitedly noted.  But what would it be? The GPS first routed us along a bike path, and shortly thereafter onto a main road wherein a steep ascent quickly loomed.  The team fell silent, huffing, puffing and chest clutching in the thin air, climbing up over Emerald Bay, fortunately without attrition.  Marvellous vistas of the lake and surrounding forests rewarded the collective asthma attack, followed by a terrific hurtle down...

83.4 mi, 2614 ft This ride was lovingly planned with mileage in mind.  Lots and lots of miles, to bridge the distance gap from my previous lengthiest ride (72 mi) to the Bike MS century.  In fact this ride was planned to be precisely 80 miles, but a combination of my slightly poor Google mapping, and somewhat egregious navigation from a team mate, added a little extra treat. With the aggressive heat wave of the prior three days firmly in the rear view, three of the team set off from Santa Clara on this overcast morn, braced for excessive heat which did not materialise.  We wended our way through increasingly froo froo neighbourhoods of San Jose, southbound.  After approximately 10 minutes a fierce headwind arose.  It is well known that the wind direction in the South Bay switches in the afternoon.  Inwardly and outwardly I sighed, confident we would be contending with headwinds the entire day. Leaving San Jose, we rolled through some slight hills up ...

25.9 mi, 2730 ft A lovely little uppy-downy jaunt in the East Bay.  This ride commenced in Oakland, with one other rider.  We set off in the Sunday morning humidity, up into the steaming Redwood forest. Through many short ascents and descents we slowly hurtled.  The earlier descents were wide enough to permit minimal braking, which was fortunate as there is certainly something wrong with the brakes on my bike, and I have been too slovenly to get this fixed.  After a somewhat gruesome ascent, a high point was attained on Skyline with marvellous vistas across the Bay.  How remarkable to have arrived up there, propelled of one's own volition. On the steep descent back to urbania, it became actively apparent that my brakes really were not terribly functional.  Squeezing with full hand strength, and clawing the tarmac with a cleat, I managed to roll to a brisk stop.  A perusal of the bike kit revealed no appropriate allen key to remedy the situation,...

72.5 mi, 4810 ft This ride was motivated by mileage.  As Waves to Wine looms a mere 6 weeks away, it increasingly becomes apparent that 100 miles is rather a long way to ride in any given day, and the feasibility should surely be probed beforehand. The team of three riders set off bright and early from Santa Clara, wended through the mercifully quiet Los Gatos Creek Trail, through the hideous gravel patch near Lexington Reservoir, and up Old Santa Cruz into the Santa Cruz mountains.  By 10.30 am we had already attained the Summit grocery store at the highest elevation of the ride, and were feeling great.  One of the riders bought an entire fistful of protein bars, which seemed like overkill at the time. We pointed our bikes down the mountain and descended Soquel-San Jose, which I do declare to be my favourite descent of all.  It is just straight and wide enough that even the most wussy of descenders does not need to apply the brakes.  Better yet, the mass...

35.5 miles, 3983 ft This is a ride that I have been dreading most copiously since conceived of three weeks ago.  The clue is in the name - literally Mount Satan.  A co-rider assured me there was a mistranslation from the Spanish; apparently it should actually have translated as "Satan Thicket" from the origin story.  Is that reassuring?  It does still have Satan in it, though considerably less Mount. Last week, I endeavoured to explain my Sunday plans to some co-workers.  Having this discussion out loud really served to highlight that riding up a mountain in the apex of Californian summer is not what most people consider to fall within the scope of fun weekend activities.  Apart from one co-worker who had actually done the ride in June and described it in particularly gruesome detail.  Ah well, I rationalised, this ride would be excellent training, and provide undoubtedly fertile material to delight the readers of this blog.  At that time, m...

62.2 miles, 3528 ft What a lovely jubbly ride!  Two team mates and I met up nice and early on the corner of Fremont and Foothill, and set right off for an ambitious day ride to San Francisco.  I had attempted this ride once before, at the beginning of my cycling career, and was such a perspiring, heaving mess even by lunch time that there was a touch of trepidation in my craw this weekend.  But the ride could not have gone more smoothly this time around. The ride entails a delighful sweep through the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains, right along the scenic San Andreas faultline, poised to gobble the Bay Area into its gaping maw at any moment.  Cañada road is closed to traffic on Sundays as an extra special bonus, and even the Sawyer Camp trail was not overly heavy on foot traffic.  Lunch of course at the marvellous Lily's Creperie halfway, wherein I somehow devoured half a savoury crepe, half a sweet crepe, two scoops of gelato, and blue Gatorade, desp...

30.5 miles, 3695 ft Today's ride commenced bright and early in Milpitas.  With no preamble, we plunged right into the hills, dismissing several signs warning ominously of road closures ahead.  I have yet to come across a road closure that bikes cannot traverse.  A few minutes in, some pedestrians excitedly relayed tales of a rattlesnake up above, which, disappointingly, transpired to be a regular snake. "Will there be steep sections?" I enquired of the team captain.  The unreassuring response: "There's one coming up, but no worse than the driveway to Loma Prieta Winery."  He achieved Strava King of the Mountain on the Loma Prieta driveway so maybe he does not construe that section as terribly steep.  I was compelled to walk up the driveway on both attempts to attain that winery by bike, with so much sweat dripping that a woman literally screamed in disgust when she saw me on one occasion.  I drove once, and my leg was aching from the sheer amount ...

54 miles, 5880 ft On June 3rd, I did my most hellacious climbing ride yet to prepare both physiologically and psychologically for ghastly ascents to come.  This ride has so much climbing that the person who suggested we go riding that weekend (who shall remain un-named) dropped out the day prior because he is a wuss.  By then, two other team members had already been persuaded to join, so there was no backing out for non-wussy me. This particular ride starts and ends on the east side of the Santa Cruz mountains with the mid point on the coast, which thus necessitates not one but two mountain crossings in one day!  We began with an ascent up the infamous Old La Honda.  I experienced instant queasy regret regarding the large amount of cheesy marmite toast I had just consumed as fuel for the ride.  OLH was followed by a delightful descent then rolling hills towards the coast, then some more mini-mountains to reach the quaint village of Pescadero for lunch...

40 miles, 2600 ft Non-commute training began on Memorial Day weekend with a delightful ride from Santa Clara to Santa Cruz via a most magnificent winery. Perilously, the Soquel-Santa Cruz road had a massive hole in it due to California's complete inability to cope with any rain. This turned out to be an unexpected benefits as riders were able to edge round the enormous hellmouth, but drivers could not so there was zero traffic on the descent.

Much of my training is taking place via bike commuting. You may be thinking "I commute by bike too - it's no big deal." But get this readers, I commute 26 miles a day! I do possess a lovely silver Honda Civic, and there is a shuttle to work albeit at an inconvient boarding location, but nonetheless the bicycle is my main mode of conveyance. For smugness reasons mostly. As car drivers sit frustrated in bumper to bumper traffic, I slowly huff and puff my way past them with a big crocodile smile. Another upside of a long bike commute is the terrific ability to combat work stress. I alternate daily from an endorphin-fuelled high, to not being able to feel much of anything at all due to sheer exhaustion. Radiating marvellous zen at my frazzled coworkers. How they must rightly dislike me.