It’s 2010 now, and AIDS/LifeCycle is closer than ever. Leading up to the ride, LifeCycle staff put on plenty of training rides to prepare riders, starting with slower, easier rides and gradually amping up the difficulty and length the closer we get to June. The problem a valley rat like me has, though, is that most of these rides are in the San Francisco Bay area, so I’d have to drive in and out, and I’m not sure I want to spend 4 hours in the car to go on a 3 hour ride, and definitely not if I’ve just burned out riding up Mt. Tamalpais.

Fortunately, a few of the Sacramento-based riders got together and put on a simple training ride this morning, from Watt and La Riviera up the bike trail to Sunrise and back, at a relatively mild pace for a 20 mile round trip. That ride started at 9:30 this morning, which I was thoroughly unprepared for. Instead, the usual crew at the Bike Kitchen (Emjay and Doug) met up there around 11:00 and took off up the trail for Sunrise. We hit the Guy West bridge across the river by CSU Sacramento around 11:30, where Jim caught up with us, and then we all continued on to Sunrise.

Since I was planning on biking out to the early morning meeting place anyway, I got the same ride I would have, but I got to sleep in and enjoy my morning rather than spend the early Sunday hours in a mad rush to get to the meeting place in time.

Overall, we had a rather fun ride. We logged roughly 19 miles to Sunrise from the Bike Kitchen, and we shaved off a couple by coming back home across the Guy West bridge and cutting through town. Though it was 50 degrees, it felt a lot colder – misty and dreadfully overcast conditions chilled us to the bone. And because we turned around and came right back the way we came with only a brief pause at a drinking fountain at Sunrise, it was a bit more tiring than a normal ride.

The length helped me figure out a few more things about how I ride, though. The way my bike is currently set up, I’m far more comfortable hunched over into the drops than I am sitting up and grabbing the handlebars with extended arms. I’ll have to be careful riding too far like that; after 35 miles today, my neck and shoulders are a bit tight. Also, I’ve found out that the saddle on my bike is good for about 30 miles at a stretch, so I’m going to have to replace that soon.

Still, I held a pretty solid pace over today’s ride, and I felt very confident and somewhat relaxed when I got home. Good signs, I think!

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Miles/time this trip:         35 /  2:25
Total training miles/time:   166 / 11:55