Bike Diary entry

One of the other measurable goals I think I'll shoot for is to ride in to work 50 times in the year, and to log a total of 5000km for the year.  I rode in to work today, which makes twice this year and a total mileage (kilometerage?) of 124km.  I've adopted metric in deference to the French founders and overseers of the whole thing, and also just that I'm working up to this 200k ride in 2-1/2 weeks. 

Today was windy and cold, and I didn't feel as strong as I did Monday.  Whether that means that I'm still recovering from Monday, or the cold affected me, or I didn't sleep as well or if it was just in my head is unknown.  I've never been good at understanding much less controlling that kind of thing, and when people say that they do, I tend to be skeptical.  When I hear a rider say "I skipped todays ride.  I don't want to overtrain and peak to early in the season." what my brain thinks is "I was totally hung over/too lazy/stayed up too late playing X-Box so I skipped todays ride."  I came really close to staying in bed this morning.  I felt sluggish, and thought maybe I'd feel better tomorrow.  I've been working hard on the house, etc.  Once I'd decided that I was going to stay in bed, though, a guilt/remorse/panic of underpreparedness kicked in, and it was still before 6:00, so I got up and did it anyway.  Up yours! laziness!

I've received some advice from San Francisco Randonneurs members to pay special attention to the Route of the Point Reyes 200k.  Sometimes people get confused and lost, especially on the return leg.  The ride starts at Crissy Field, at the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge.  It heads across the bridge, up around Marin and then west to the coast and to the Point Reyes Lighthouse.  Then it heads east through Marin towns that are a jumble in my mind (Inverness?  Ross?) but eventually loops back through the same city streets and back across the Golden Gate Bridge.  The time limit for a 200k is 13.5 hours.  The start-time is at 7AM, so I have until 8:30PM to finish.  Last year the average finish time was 10 hours 11 minutes.  It all sounds do-able, but still seriously challenging.  I turn 42 in a month and I haven't ridden over 120 miles since I was 30.