It was a rough day at work today. They are repainting the exterior of the building, so all the doors and windows are covered in plastic and taped up from the outside. A very loud compressor has been sitting just outside my window every day this week. Today it really started to get to me. I work from my home office, so it’s not like I can escape the noise, paint smell, and heat (no breeze with everything shut) by simply “working from home” for a day. No, I either work through it, or leave and get nothing done.

At some point I realized I would get more done by not working. I needed to get away from it to clear my head. A nice long ride sounded like just the right solution. It was.

Like yesterday, there was a lot of wind coming in off the coast today, but it was coming from the west north west. I thought it might give me a boost climbing Torrey Pines. Nope. The road is cut out from the cliff and almost completely shielded from the wind on the way up. It was torture seeing the trees just across the street whipping in the wind while I felt none of it. The trees on my side were calm. I managed to push through it and get a PR anyway, so I’m not too upset. But I really did not like coming back down on that rough road into the gusty headwind. It wasn’t fun.

Heading up the coast was almost like riding into a headwind the whole time, since the coastline goes sort of north north west. I figured I would just ride up the coast until I got too tired, then turn around and let the wind push me home. That’s pretty close to what I did, except that I couldn’t stop myself from pushing hard on the way back too. It turned out to a be a pretty good ride for me, but I’m really sore now. I think I might need a real rest day tomorrow.

I chose to ride instead of run at lunch today. Part of that is because I need to put in more miles to prepare for STP in July. I think the Strava Junedoggle challenge may have played a role as well. No matter what got me to do it, I’m glad I did.

I decided to try the 3 Witches climb at the end of San Dieguito Road. I have heard a few people talk about it, but I’ve always turned off San Dieguito at El Apajo to head north. Today I didn’t turn. I rode San Dieguito all the way to the top, then headed south on Camino Del Sur until I hit Carmel Valley Road. I took that to Del Mar Heights Road and took that the rest of the way home.

It was really windy today. It was blasting me as I headed down El Camino towards San Dieguito. I wasn’t sure if it would be a cross wind or a tail wind until I made the turn onto San Dieguito. The wind was at my back and I used it. I wondered if I could beat the time we set going up San Dieguito as a group last Saturday. I pushed hard all the way to El Apajo. I knew I didn’t have anything to compare against past that, so I let myself relax a bit. Well… I was dead tired and the road starts the 3 Witches climb right there, so there really wasn’t much rest to be had. But I did slow down quite a bit and didn’t push myself quite as hard.

The climb itself wasn’t that bad. There was some construction going on, and I found myself riding next to a concrete barrier part of the time. I don’t remember if that was on San Dieguito or after I turned south on Camino Del Sur, but it’s amazing how much motivation a concrete barrier can motivate you to ride fast until you’re past it.

When I turned onto Carmel Valley Road, it was like turning into a wind tunnel. I was going down a steep hill, but had to peddle hard to keep moving. Then when it changed to a hill climb, I had no strength and even less motivation. The wind stayed in my face all the way home.

It was still a really fun ride. I’m sure I’ll do that same loop again sometime in the near future.

Charmaine changed her work schedule so that she’s through with work early in the afternoon on Mondays. This means I try to finish my own work a little early so we can go for a quick ride before it gets dark. That’s exactly what we did tonight.

There was a pretty good wind blowing from the west which helped push us up the trail, but was really in our faces on the way back. It didn’t matter too much, because we were mostly just taking it easy. Charmaine was practicing staying on my wheel and I was practicing blocking the wind. I don’t really need to practice that; it just sort of happens naturally. We pushed a few times, but mostly just had a nice relaxing ride.

On the way back, we took Carmel Mountain Road from Rancho Peñasquitos. I think we were hoping it would connect us to Camino Del Sur, but instead it wrapped us back around to the 56 Bike Trail, which was also fine.

This morning we met up with Ryan and hooked up with the San Diego Bike Club for a skill development ride. We practiced paceline rotation along San Dieguito Road. It was interesting riding with the group. There were all sorts of skill levels in the group. Most the group was pretty good, but there were a few guys that were wobbly. One guy was wearing a bag over one shoulder and would swerve all over the place when he would shift his bag back up when it fell down. Despite that, it was a pretty good ride. We had a lot of fun.

As we headed home from an evening with Ryan and Julie, we talked about doing a ride together this morning (Memorial Day). I passed along my wisdom that the optimal start time for any ride is prior to McDonald’s stopping breakfast service. Ryan called this morning to say they were loading up the car to come up and do a ride with us. We didn’t get out the door until pretty late (11:30). The wind had already picked up, but it was still nice and cool.

We introduced Ryan to the loop up past Lake Hodges, through Rancho Bernardo, and back along Carmel Valley Road. He was much faster than us. I think we were still a bit sore from our big ride just 2 days ago. Ryan was nice enough to wait for us to catch up from time to time. It wound up being a fairly nice recovery ride. I pushed a few times on climbs here and there, but mostly just took it easy and enjoyed the scenery.

After lunch we left Ryan to watch the kids and took Julie on another ride along the 56 Bike Trail. She’s still very new to biking and has only done 3 or 4 rides total. She didn’t want to have to ride from our apartment down to the trail (or back up) next to the fast traffic, so Charmaine and Julie packed their bikes on the car and met me at a parking lot along the trail.

The trail ride was extremely relaxed. We made Julie ride further than she had ridden before, and she seemed to handle the hills better than ever. Hopefully she had fun and wants to keep riding.

When we were done, the girls packed their bikes onto the car while I raced home. They passed me on the final hill, but I took a short-cut from Carmel Country Road directly to the apartment and wound up getting there first. That was pretty cool. I wound up getting two PRs going up the hill, despite having to stop at a red light during the first climb.

I’m not normally a morning person. The big Seattle to Portland ride starts way before anyone should be awake, so I need to get used to riding early. Today I decided to try it. I made a few key mistakes like not eating before I started, but it was still a pretty good ride.

The winds tend to blow toward the ocean in the morning and from the ocean in the afternoon. I’ve done plenty of rides where I end up riding east into a headwind right around the time the winds change direction letting me ride back west into yet another headwind. That wasn’t the case this morning. This morning I only had a headwind going east, and I may have even had a slight tailwind coming back home. That tailwind probably saved me, because I was wasted (see my earlier comment about not eating before starting).

I wasn’t just riding against the wind, I was riding against traffic. That’s the way to do it. As soon as I turned onto Paseo Delicias there were cars just sitting there, waiting to come west. I was on the opposite side of the road heading east, happy that I wasn’t heading west. I had considered just riding to the top of Del Dios Highway and then turning around and heading back the same way, but the longer I rode past stopped traffic, the more convinced I became that I needed to ride all the way over Rancho Bernardo and back down Carmel Vallery Road instead. The traffic was constant all the way to the lake (about 5 miles). I didn’t want to ride home in that.

So I followed the same route from Saturday. I crossed through Rancho Bernardo right as people were heading to work. The traffic wasn’t bad, but I hit most the lights red. I also had a guy in a car cut me off and slam on his brakes. He completely blocked the bike lane directly below a “No Parking – Bike Lane” sign. I slammed on my brakes but couldn’t stop as fast as he did, so I had to either hit him or cut into traffic. The car next to me saw the whole thing unfold and stopped in the lane to make sure I had room to get around the idiot. I yelled “Hey!” as I went by and he honked at me. I looked back to see him open his door wide and almost lose it to the traffic that had resumed moving slowly past him. I’m very glad other drivers had been paying attention or I would have been forced to ram the back of that car in the bike lane. And I wouldn’t have had a way home if that broke my bike. I thought a bit about that prospect as I finished the climb up Black Mountain.

The ride down Carmel Valley Road was great. I did hit one or two annoying red lights that made me come to a complete stop when I had been going really fast, but I was feeling good and pushed it most the way home. I’ll have to try another morning ride sometime, but I’ll be sure to eat before I head off into the headwind.

Someone told Charmaine that his favorite ride around here was up through Rancho Santa Fe and past Lake Hodges. That’s not too far from where we live, so we decided to try it today. The ride up was amazing. I’ll definitely be doing it again, probably during my lunch break one of these days. There was a decent amount of climbing, but it was never too crazy.

When we got to the top, we weren’t sure if we would be able to go south and connect to any roads we know, or if we would have to ride along a section of I-15 on our bikes (not a fun sounding option), or just go back down the way we came. I had spent a long time looking at maps trying to find a way south, but it seemed the only road that went from Escondido to Rancho Bernardo (without a 20+ mile detour) was the freeway, so I was voting for going back the way we came.

Luckily, we caught up to a group that knew a lot more about the area than we did. They knew about a pedestrian underpass across the freeway and a pedestrian bridge that crossed the bottom of Lake Hodges. It was great. We connected up through Rancho Bernardo and made our way back along Carmel Valley Road and Del Mar Heights Road. That makes the loop very doable.

Unfortunately, I thought we would only be outside about 2 hours, so I wasn’t wearing sunblock and I got sunburned. Hopefully I have learned my lesson, but somehow I doubt it.

I don’t know why, but I decided to skip swimming today and do a quick ride along the 56 instead. It was a bit windy, but I figured that would just add to the workout. I wasn’t wrong. There were several times when I actually yelled at the wind, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”. It seemed no matter which way I turned, the wind was in my face. And sometimes it was really howling. Going through the occasional underpass nearly picked me up off my bike it was so strong. At one point I almost stopped to take a picture of some of the trees bowing to the wind, but I didn’t want to mess up my time on that segment.

Despite the wind, I managed to set a bunch of new PRs and make it into my top 3 for almost every segment I rode today. It’s hard to ask your body to do more than that (other than ride more segments). I’m pretty happy. I guess it was worth skipping the swim… this time.

Charmaine got home from work a little after 5:30. We grabbed a quick bite to eat, filled our water bottles, and headed out for a short ride up the 56 bike trail. We were on our bikes by 6:00. We took things extremely easy on the way up and mostly just coasted on the way back. It was a lot of fun and provided a great opportunity to get a little more time in the saddle.