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February 24, 2007 / Saturday

Foiled Again

I was hoping I'd get to title this post "Metric Half Century Plus", but it was not to be. :(

I can't complain too much, though. At least I snuck a ride in before the rain returns. It was nippy out, but that made for an opportunity to wear my new tights and full-fingered gloves. Still love them. Superb temperature control.

Superb. I love using marketing clichés. They make me laugh.

The plan was to ride just over 34 miles. Leaving from my house, we'd take Sunnyvale-Saratoga to Fremont to Foothill/Junipero Serra, do a counterclockwise loop on Sand Hill/Portola/Alpine, return to Foothill, and head back. I popped a couple Advil before the ride to try to head off any mild knee discomfort or inflammation. Like last time, my knee felt fine for about the first 20 miles.

Aaron had mapped out the route for me the night before, which included information on where the climbs would be. For some reason, I think that anything Aaron climbs on his bike is bound to be ridiculous, so when he said that the biggest climb of the ride was on Sand Hill Road, I fully expected to get my ass kicked there. As it turned out, it wasn't so bad. I managed to ride that, plus all the other hills today, without using the little chain ring. (No, I didn't power up on the big ring; I ride a triple.) Cool.

So, the dreaded mile 20. This seems to be my distance limit on the road bike. Actually, even before I hit the 20th mile I started feeling some level of knee discomfort, but at around 20 miles my knee pretty much had my full attention. The problem was, when it started hurting, I was approximately halfway into my ride. Turning around wouldn't have helped much, so I continued on.

After mile 20, my knee felt worse and worse. My pedalling slowed, and with it my speed and heart rate. It's pretty interesting to see everything on the graph drop toward the end. Eventually, I couldn't pedal standing, had trouble at stoplights (whether balancing on both pedals or clipped out of either side, both legs have to be straight), and couldn't sprint away when lights turned green. Aaron asked several times if I wanted to stop and have him return with the car, but I declined. I wanted my metric half century, dammit!

As we approached downtown Los Altos, I asked how many miles we had left. "About 10," I was told. Given my slowing pace, the amount of pain in my knee, its rapidly deteriorating condition, and a pestering little voice in my head (previously Aaron's voice next to my head) blathering something about further damage, I knew 10 miles was farther than I could ride. I was fewer than 3 miles from the elusive metric half century, but I had to stop. I accepted Aaron's offer to pick me up with the car and ended my ride on Main St. Total distance ridden: 28.5 miles.

I scoped out Main St. for some restaurants to try in the future, noted a crêperie and a pot pie place, and stopped at Posh Bagel for a coffee, where I had a nice chat with some random customer about my bike. Then I headed out to wait for Aaron. During that time, I did some pushing on my knee and discovered a sore spot along a tendon on the outside. (We suspect it's an ITB issue.) Finally, something concrete. It sure is easier to localize pain by reproducing it in a controlled setting than to try to figure out where it's coming from when the entire area is screaming.

Anyway, Aaron arrived, we loaded my bike into the car, and, because we now had a way of carrying stuff, stopped at Andronico's (I didn't know there was one so close to me until last night!) to trade a paycheck for some yumminess on the way back. :-* to Aaron for riding extra slow, stopping so many times for me to catch up, and picking me up when my knee broke down.

February 24, 2007 09:14 PM | Injuries:Road

Comments

Posted by: Dan Lyke at February 28, 2007 03:40 PM

Posted by: Viv at February 28, 2007 03:46 PM

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