As always, this is an incredible ride. The people are wonderful, the support is first class, and the scenery is gorgeous. Some rides I’m glad I did, but n  ever need consider again. This one is different. It’s always worth whatever hassle or adversity that comes beforehand.

Great Job by Best Buddies.

After all of uncertainty following the crash and recovery. I think I beat my previous best by almost an hour. I usually finish around 5pm but this year it was 4 pm on the nose. Riding with the Beach Cities Cycling Club group paid off big time. It really pushed me to keep up on the climbs and push ahead to get some breathing room on the descents. The only mechanical problem for the group was a flat (not me) with less than a mile to go.

Piers are a few pics

The start was rather warm this year. No wind vest or arm warmers needed – only the sun sleeves to protect my scrapes. Fortunately there was a lot of cloud cover. Everyone was glad as we all would have been fried.

And finally, here’s an obligatory panorama.

Well, after the events of the last few weeks, and not getting back on the bike until Thursday (only 14 mi.), I never thought it’d go this smoothly making the transition to being ready to ride the century.

Today I rode 71 miles with about 5400 ft (Garmin & Strava) or 6300 ft of climbing (leaning toward the former).  Feel free to check out my ride stats here, if you’re interested.  It was tempting to stop and take a number of pictures while riding along Piuma Ridge, but I wanted to keep things simple for today and I have a number of photographs just like it already.  Perhaps I’ll add those later/

The scrapes are now only covered by a handful of bandaids, while on the ride the other spots get  extra protection in the form of sun screen AND sun sleeves.  Things are healing nicely.  I think I have everything dialed in for big ride next weekend.

Over the last 24 hours a lot of things have started to fall into place.

Most of my scabs have come off.  This means that all I’ll need are a number of well placed band-aids under my sun sleeves (skin still too raw for sun exposure) – no more taped on bandages!  The riding is starting to be much easier to manage.

I also don’t seem to have any after effects of riding a lot the last few days after relatively little activity for the 2+ weeks after my crash.  My final major training ride goal of going 70+ miles with 4500 – 5100 ft of climbing (2/3 to 3/4 of that for next weekend) seems very tangible.  The main thing to be careful of will be to not be too enthusiastic and do too much more.  With the afternoon asphalt temperatures in the valley likely reaching triple digits, I’ll have to ride smart.

Although too late for it to do the ride with it next weekend, my new bike (a black/red Specialized Roubaix SL4 Comp) has finally arrived at the store.  It should be ready for pickup tomorrow evening.  When stopping by the local bike shops to check out the Labor Day sales, the staff at Cynergy Cycles gave me the good news.

The Century is starting to look like a very real possibility next weekend.  I did a good 50 miles, most of it with Beach Cities Cycling Club.  Two trips up Mandeville Canyon helped get met up over 3000 ft of climbing.  That’s half the mileage and almost half the vertical.

With the little climbing that was done in my previous rides, and the way my body seemed to react to it, I was a little apprehensive as to how I might be able to handle the full ride from Carmel to Cambria.  While never getting about 1000 ft in altitude, the amount of vertical is on the order of 6750 ft … lots of up and down (fortunately nothing very steep).

One final major training ride of 70 miles is planned for Monday to bridge the gap to the full distance.

Today’s ride commuting in ended up being longer than the 25 give or take a little originally planned – 34 miles!!

Late on in the ride I came across our Beach Cities Cycling Club President and Group (‘Butts on Bikes for Best Buddies’ or B4) Leader.  Jim Hannon has always been a great resource for the club, the Best Buddies ride (since its inception), and the South Bay cycling community in general.  He has patiently listened to my recent (and previous) challenges and helped greatly.

Since we were close to some new bike lanes (complete with separation from the regular traffic, bike lane dedicated traffic lights and bike related artwork) at the Redondo Beach harbor gateway. He insisted that I go a little bit further to check it out.  I must say, I was very impressed. Bike safety has come a long way in recent years (new bike lanes in many communities in the LA basin).

This unexpected extra mileage makes me hopeful for 50 or more over the weekend.  Although the ride generally went pretty well, I tired fairly quickly on hills (even short ones).  Today’s ride would translate to only 1500 ft vertical over 100 miles while the BBC century has over 6000 ft of vertical.  That 50 miler would need to  have at least 3000 ft of vertical to be comparable.  We’ll see what happens in the next few days.

It was great getting back out on the road again.  I can’t remember the last time a simple 14 mile commute was so pleasurable … and it didn’t seem to be any more of a strain on my scrapes than being at the gym.

The only embarrassing part is forgetting my bike shoes at home.  At least my pedals are two sided (with one being a flat one for street shoes).  That won’t happen tomorrow, though, when I go for a longer route to work (25 mi give or take 5 mi, depending on how things are going).

Tuesday night saw my second recumbent bike workout at the gym.  I upped the duration 5 min and finally went up to the full peak values (although only a 30 sec duration rather than 60 sec).  One more gym workout and I should be at my levels for there.  Should I feel up for a commute Thursday or Friday I have no concerns about the fitness levels for that.

The only ‘minus’ has been that the larger scab seems to have opened up in a couple of small sections.  The AC at work really dries things up too much.  I’m now covering up the more serious ones so that they maintain the right consistency.  This seems to be facilitating good progress.

It looks like that those opened places may have finally closed up again overnight.  We’ll see how that goes and if it will allow some outdoor riding later this week.