Astana Training Camp in Santa Rosa

A few miles north of here, the Astana team is doing a week long training camp. Lance and Levi are getting ready for the Amgen Tour, while Alberto is getting ready for the Tour de Algarve in Spain. Pretty cool that we have two TdF winners (including a 7x'er, and a guy who won both the Vuelta and the Giro last year) and the defending Amgen champ riding the local roads. There's a great photo set up on Flickr of a ride the team did this week over King Ridge/Coleman Valley with BMC's Scott Nydam. Check it out.

Who's the guy in the middle in the goofy black/yellow kit?

The Pros are in Town

Great commute rides yesterday. I had a bunch of early work calls from home so I didn't hit the road until around 9am. The streets were pretty empty and the air was very warm for February. As I got to the bottom of my hill, a guy on a very nice looking BMC Pro Machine whizzed by. He was sporting team issue Assos BMC bibs and jacket, so I figured it was probably one of the pros out for a light training ride in advance of the Amgen Tour. Unfortunately I was on my commuter bike and not my shiny BMC. Still, I caught up to him and it looked like it was Ian McKissick, who is not a local guy but does do some training and events with Endurance PTC in Mill Valley. It's always cool to see the pros out there (yes, they do ride the same roads we do), and after we rode our separate ways I ended up pushing a bit harder than normal over the bridge and to the office. I'm guessing that as we get closer to the ToC, more and more pros will be out on local rides -- but probably mostly up in Sonoma and down south.

The afternoon ride home was more of the same great weather. I met Tom at the normal group spot along the Embarcadero and we ended up having five strong riders all the way into Mill Valley. I peeled off towards Tiburon, and the other four headed up over Camino Alto towards the Larkspur Ferry. One of the guys, Ken, was riding a fixie back home to Olema on his regular commute (burly!).

Trackhead posted a video of Matt Dixon's group ride last weekend at an "undisclosed local spot" (you'll know it if you watch). Be sure to watch the HD version. Some of the helicopter mounted shots are fantastic.

The End of June-u-ary

I returned home from Kauai to some incredible weather in Northern California. The mid-January "thaw" (or "June-u-ary", as my skiing friends like to call it) is always fairly predictable around here after the equally predictable New Year's storms. But this year it is ridiculous. Long rides with no leg warmers or vest. 65-70 degree high temps. Crazy. I could get used to this global warming thing if it weren't for the loss of the polar bears and the Maldives. Friday afternoon's ride home over the bridge was about as good as it gets.

But all good things must come to an end. Of course nothing is guaranteed to make the weather turn foul like the staging of a major bike race in California. Last year's ToC sported some crazy rain and winds, especially on the Big Sur coast stage. Phil Liggett called it "absolutely diabolical" and Levi said it was one of his top three worst days on a bike. Well, Levi (and Lance!) are back this week for an Astana training camp in Santa Rosa getting ready for the ToC. This means rain is in the forecast. Weds through Saturday is gonna be wet. Have fun guys!

Levi and team on the miserable Stage 4 of last year's ToC

In addition to the rain, and contributing to the damper on the fine local riding, Loren reports on a lame tack throwing incident somewhere in a local bike lane. I hate flats, especially when caused by thoughtless jackasses.

Skinny Love

I'm off to Kauai for a few days of R&R, but I leave you with this fantastic video shot by Derek (aka Trackhead), some of it with a mini-helicopter mounted camera. The heli-footage is insane. He will be out in Cali next week shooting video like this with some local folks.


Skinny Love from piton productions on Vimeo.

EB on the Evening Commute!

Its new years' resolution time, so my buddy EB has decided to dust the cobwebs off the bike and start riding again. Even shaved his legs for motivation (a mental tactic I strongly endorse, along with retail therapy, as in "I sure do need that new Zipp carbon wheelset to motivate me to ride more"). EB met me down at Crissy Field last night on the ride home for a quick jaunt across the bridge and back. Hopefully we'll get to do this more often, especially as the days get longer.

The Bakery Loop

Big group ride today for the 60mi Bovine Bakery loop from Mill Valley. My friend Matt has launched a new fitness counseling venture, Purple Patch, and is organizing Saturday rides around Marin and elsewhere in Northern California. Today's ride was more of a "word of mouth" deal rather than an official PP ride, but quite a few folks still showed up at the Book Depot this morning. We rode at a nice "social pace" through the hamlets, then the tempo picked up a bit over Whites Hill and into Nicasio. We regrouped there and then pedaled around the reservoir for a mandatory coffee stop in Pt. Reyes Station. The group splitered a bit on the climb over Olema Hill and through Samuel P. Taylor park, and a lead group hammered back up to Whites Hill into a very unfriendly headwind.

Funny note: On the way back through Kentfield, some crazy hippie-looking mountain biker guy heading the other direction veered wildly towards our pack. Matt was all ready to scream at the guy and then realized it was just a certain local Marin denizen who invented the mountain bike saying hello in his own way.

Big group at the Depot

Rolling through San Anselmo

Regroup at Rancho Nicasio

Happy after Pain d'Amande at the Bovine

Heading out of Pt. Reyes Station

Climbing Olema hill

Burning off those Popems

The first week back from the Xmas/New Year's break has come to an end. It's always great to have some well-earned down time from the job but I'm glad to be back in the routine. As with most people, the holidays for me generally mean a time of limited exercise, lots of "red light foods" and copious amounts of booze. This year was certainly no exception. The upside is that I skied 15 days in a row, including two outrageous bluebird deep powder days in Tahoe and many more better-than-average days. The downside is that for all the calories burned while skiing, I probably tripled them up afterwards in the form of Nachos, steaks, Pacificos, French Toast, Cabernet Sauvignon and even these luscious little things called Popems (as in, ya just Pop'em in yer mouth).

Behold the Popem, in its glazed, succelent and NON-organic glory. I must've eaten 157 of these.

So needless to say, while fun was had in Tahoe, I needed a good reentry plan to get back to clean livin'. I took a couple of indoor cycling classes at the gym, but the best was being back on the bike for the commute. I rode home from work Monday and Wednesday, and rode both directions today. There's just nothing better to start your engine in the morning, or clear your head in the evening, than a great bicycle commute. Especially on days like today -- tule fog in the morning yielding eerie mists along the Richardson Bay bike path; a huge full moon bringing the bay waters way up in the morning, then running them out past the bare tidal flats on the ride home; crisp clear skies that somehow still cough up a sunset to make Arizona proud. Yep, it was one of those days.

I always see a few other folks doing the SF-Marin homeward ride, and many times there are the same familiar faces seen along the wharf, Crissy Field, the Golden Gate, or Bridgeway in Sausalito. One guy, Tom, is particularly enthusiastic. He and I seem to share the "holy crap can you believe we live here and get to ride this every day while other people actually choose to sit in traffic talking on their cell phones" attitude -- except that he actually does seem to ride it every day. There are many others too. It's a fraternity of like-minded souls, enjoying the free scenery and plentiful endorphins on the homeward train.

Tom and Eric lead out onto the Golden Gate.

The blurry camera phone shot can't do it justice. Looking over the tidal flats of Richardson Bay to San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.