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Sunday was gorgeous, wasn’t it? I took advantage of the weather (albeit, it was pretty hot in the direct sun) to go for a long bike ride with Lucy, Wilmot, and two of his high school friends. We left from Lucy’s place in Cupertino and made our way on Foothill Expressway to Sand Hill Road and then climbed Old La Honda. The 3.3 mile, 1300 foot climb was a lot less painful than last year, but I still clocked in at a pathetic 32:30. Here I am, happy to be atop OLH, but kinda tired:

From Cycling Photos

By comparison, Wilmot climbed it in ~27 minutes and the other two fellas were in the 45 minute range. I really want to go below 30 minutes by the end of the summer. Descending 85 was exhilirating but around the 40 mile mark, the ride started to take its toll. The other two fellas dropped off (due to cramping and were later picked up by Lucy who had ridden back much earlier). Wilmot told me to go ahead so I rode the last 16 miles by myself, trying to beat nightfall. I rolled in around 7:00ish, beating the sun by about 30 minutes.

Here’s how MyTracks saw my ride:

View Old La Honda in a larger map

For some reason, it completely missed the Portola Valley loops of the ride, even though I’m pretty sure I had a GPS signal for that section. As a result of that and whatever else my phone was thinking I was doing, my stats look kind of bonkers:

• Total Distance: 90.38 km (56.2 mi)
• Total Time: 4:17:44
• Moving Time: 3:31:18
• Average Speed: 21.04 km/h (13.1 mi/h)
• Average Moving Speed: 25.66 km/h (15.9 mi/h)
• Max Speed: 135.05 km/h (83.9 mi/h)
• Min Elevation: -32 m (-104 ft)
• Max Elevation: 8770 m (28775 ft)
• Elevation Gain: 9931 m (32582 ft)
• Max Grade: 149 %
• Min Grade: -120 %
• Recorded: Sun Apr 19 15:21:01 PDT 2009
• Activity type: cycling

I’ll accept the 56.2 mile distance and biking time, but was my max speed seriously 83.9 mph??? Did I really climb 32582 feet?? Hilarious. I think the fastest was probably around 35 mph down 85 and around 3000 feet of climbing. (As if by coincidence, I just got a notification that there’s an update for MyTracks…hopefully I’ll have better data for my next ride).

As I mentioned earlier, I’m training for the June 14th Palo Alto Tour de Cure, a bike ride to raise money for the American Diabetes Association. I would greatly appreciate any donation for this cause!