Friday ride around San Francisco

http://www.strava.com/rides/88111
Distance: 21.6 mi
Moving Time: 01:25:31
Resting Time: 00:15:20
Total Elevation Gain: 1,989 ft

It is so great to work in San Francisco. I feel like I have two days within a single one. To celebrate the beginning of the week end, I decided to go for a ride around our great city.

Starting with the usual Twin Peaks. I confirm, 17th st is a really hard (but short) climb. The view is beautiful as always.

Next step is ocean beach after crossing the Golden Gate park.
The view from the Lincoln Park.

And then, me, kind of lost in this small park. I ended up off trail with my road bike.

The view from the Palace of the Legion of Honnor. This place almost makes me want to play golf...And finally, a quick picture of this amazing neighborhood on the sea cliff. Houses must each be worth tens of millions of dollars ... but it is stealing, it's foggy there :)

Enjoy your week end. On our side, it is time to pack since we are moving out next week (moving in date is not clear yet).

Up and down Twin peaks

Since I now work essentially from the San Francisco office (yeah \o/) I have a lot of spare time I did not use to have. After work, I decided to go for a small ride on Twin Peaks. If you want a short city challenge, go up 17th from market. Your legs will love it.

So, I parked on Beaver st (which will become an important street for us if everything goes well) and I went up and down twin peaks for the east side to the west side, I think 4 times. Beautiful view as usual:

http://www.strava.com/rides/87380

• Distance: 12.3 mi
• Moving Time: 00:55:21
• Resting Time: 00:05:20
• Total Elevation Gain: 2,030ft

A nice sunset on the twin peaks antenna. Of course almost no cellphone reception. AT&T is first on my list of company I admire the less (weather forecast guys are second as you know)


And last night's food :)
Goat cheese tartines, green salad and tuna gratin. Yummy!

Less than 100 days left!

Time flies by. There is less than a 100 days left before the D day. I have to stop doing flat rides and practice my climbing if I want to finish that ride.
With that in mind, I went up mount Tam yesterday. The forecast as usual in San Francisco was wrong. It was supposed to be cloudy and it was absolutely beautiful.
I think they should just give up on trying to foresee the weather in the bay area. Their models are not even correct 2 hours ahead... I think the website should display "Not a clue" when you ask for next day's forecast and "look outside your window" for today's weather. That would surely be more accurate. If you think about it, one would fail that much on predictions in a financial institution, one would not stay long. Anyway... the pattern "sunny everyday, foggy in SF, windy after 2pm NNW" is coming back soon so it will become easier for these poor guys.

Coming back to Mount Tam, here are a few pictures:

As you can see, pretty bad weather!

On the top, I met a guy who had done the Death Ride a couple of times and he gave me some good advices, like don't be competitive, just keep your own pace. Good advice! Also, weather can be 90F and then pouring rain an hour later (imagine how lost our poor guys from the weather forecast would be...).

Ok, now is time to go home. SF is on the horizon, where the car is parked. 40mph downhill. Life is great!

http://www.strava.com/rides/86809
Distance: 43.1 mi
Moving Time: 02:47:51
Resting Time: 00:15:59
Total Elevation Gain: 5,616 ft (one third of the death ride...)


Happy week end everybody. Thanks to all of you who have already donated.

First real Mountain Bike ride

A beautiful weather today for a nice Mountain Bike ride with Arbi in the portola valley on top of Page Mill. That was simply awesome!



Before a bike ride, nothing better than pasta and home made fried tenderloin turkey :)

http://www.strava.com/rides/84920

Bike to work and Raclette

Big crows on this friday, 6:30am for a ride down to Palo Alto:

New personal record to get to bike all the way in 2h13:

http://www.strava.com/rides/84921

To start the week end perfectly, a raclette, the best dish in the world.

Finaly some update. Still training still eating

Ok. I haven't been updated the blog but it does not mean I am not training anymore. A few things happened, I broke a spoke twice on my bike, got a brand new wheel for free thanks to Valencia Cyclery's great job.

Here are a few random rides I did, including multiple SF to Palo Alto:
http://www.strava.com/rides/78737 6am, 39.9miles, 2:17:00
http://www.strava.com/rides/84088 46.2miles, 2:42:00
http://www.strava.com/rides/81653 12miles (broke a spoke midway), 42:53
http://www.strava.com/rides/81654 43.2miles, 2:34:00
http://www.strava.com/rides/84087 15.4miles, 47:12:00 (I used to do it in 49:00 before this whole training and I was not in my best shape this day. Yeah!!)

On the food front, here are some random notable dishes:
Home cut filets of sole.

Final result for the sole.



Home made pizzas

The training continues

Last week, we were on vacation in Honduras/Roatan. The idea was to go kitesurfing, but we ended up scubadiving. The Roatan Island is _not_ a kiteboarding place. Unaccessible beaches and most importantly unreliable and most of the time absent wind... Anyway, we are now back from vacation.

Before we left I biked to work from SF one more time. While we were riding on the bayshort in Palo Alto, we saw an electrical poll cut in half and firemen everywhere. We quickly learned that a small planed had crashed an hour earlier and created a 12h power outage in Palo Alto. No traffic light, traffic jam everywhere and... no power in our building, so we got a free day off.

This week, I must have biked a little over 200km. Two rides from SF to Palo Alto (2 x 70km), one indoor ride (my ghost beat me with 30s. I am still not over it) (~20km), and Palo Alto to San Mateo (35km). In addition to that, some leg strengthening. I can start feeling that I am progressing. 120 more days to go! Tomorrow, Das Butt class.