Tour of Napa century ride report

I started this season with the thought of doing a triathlon by the end of season but later realized that not knowing anything about 2 sports (biking and swimming) out of 3 wasn't an ideal way to go about it. I was better off building some base in all 3 sports this season before doing all of them at the same time. But by the time that realization had hit me I had already bought an awesome bike from my triathlete friend at work. So it was time to make some good use of the equipment at hand and build some good biking base..

My ride was ready for long day :)

Before April the maximum I had ridden the bike was 25ish mile and that too on sport shoes. I was scared of cleating issues. Though I had cleats from day 1 I was never comfortable wearing them because of the fear of fall. It was due to the constant encouragement from Jesse and Larry from TVTC that I eventually mustered enough courage to try them on. Sure I did had my fair share of falls (some on the middle of roads) but eventually I got use to them. Now it was time to do some REAL biking stuff :)

When I heard about riding 100 miles on bike in a single day it seemed ridiculous at first. Seriously, I don't even like driving 100 miles!! but at the same time it seemed that it would be something amazing if I was able to pull off. I was definitely up for the challenge

Training:
I started training for Napa century back in April end -May time frame. What I quickly realized was that unlike running, biking will require lot more training miles on the legs. This resulted in a training schedule consisting of 4 rides per week (in addition to 3 runs that I was already doing)...Weekends were dedicated to long runs (on Saturday) and long bike rides (with Asha gang) on Sunday...Weekday rides were broken into a recovery ride on Monday, 60-90 mins, depending on how hard weekend was. Wednesday were usually strength building rides, either doing max interval sets or doing sets of increasing cadence in ladder form (usually 60-90 mins) and then Friday were more aerobic base building rides with high cadence (60-90 mins).

Arun, me and Rohit before the riding on the golden gate bridge

On top of King Mountain

The most fun rides were definitely the weekend rides when I rode with Team Asha. It was definitely the most fun I had in a long time. Getting up at some insane times on Sunday morning (OK that was not fun), meeting the 100 miler gang, riding really early in the morning where the only other breathing soul around you would be your riding buddy :), all the banters and rubbish talks with Jayant, Venkii, Sunny, Sri ram, Arun and others,  crushing all the hills of south bay on each of our rides and then feeling that sense of accomplishment. Over the course of 15 weekend ride we tackled quite a few of the hills but ones I will most remember are Mt. Eden, Mt. Hamilton, King Mountain, Old La Honda, Going up Calaveras. Looking back I can see how well thought out this rides were organized and how strong each of us became with each ride.

Actual Ride:
Thanks to Prakash, everything was already planned for us. Hotel bookings, food etc. I went to Vallejo on Saturday afternoon, picked up my wrist band and checked into the hotel. Later we all gathered for a fun dinner at pasta pomodoro.  Surprisingly, I was quite relaxed the whole time. I was mentally prepared for a long day on Sunday. But thanks to all those long training rides this seemed no different. Also, this being a ride and not a race also helped a lot. Back from dinner and some relaxing at the room I was off to bed at 10:30. The plan was to start at 5:15 in the morning to get to the start point at 6 and start rolling out at 6. Surprisingly, this was one of the rare occasion where I did not get up single time at night..straight in the morning at 4:30. Once I was up, after some quick breakfast we went to start point of the ride. After some pictures we started at 6:40-6:50. Our plan was to stick as a group and if we get separated then regroup at the rest stop.

First 30 miles:

100 miler gang after the first major climb

With fresh legs and all energy stored completely charged those first thirty miles went really well. For 100 milers there were two major climbs. First one of those climb (the shorter but more steeper one) was in the first 15 miles. This was good since climbing is much easier with fresh legs. The climb up mount Veeder (I think) was definitely a tough climb. But having done so many hills in training it felt I was well equipped to tackle it. Slowly we crawled our way to the top. The cool part about the climb was a bag piper. Being an early morning you could actually hear the bag pipe from the distance.Pretty cool thing. We all regrouped near the top of the hill (the views from the top were spectacular). Rest of the miles were flat flat flat. We all rolled into the first rest stop. I was still feeling strong at the first stop which was a good sign for me :)

Miles 30-66--Things go south:

Doing the work

Out of the rest stop group decided to do pace lining for next 35ish miles since they were all flat miles (with some roller hills) through beautiful wineries of Napa with average head wind. I must admit I was not very keen on doing pace lining. For one I had never practiced pace lining with this group of riders and I had no idea at what avg pace everybody rides. Even though the effort level does go down when doing pace line I was not sure if my pace was high as other riders in the group and I was not too keen on pushing myself that early in the ride. So I requested them to go ahead and we decided to regroup at rest stop at mile 46. Within minutes the group disappeared and I was riding all alone in beautiful landscape. I was really enjoying the lone time on the bike soaking in all the pretty sights. But I guess I forgot that I have to finish the ride in that moment. Since the routes were well marked I did not carry a route sheet with me and it happened I missed a right turn. Ouch. I continued riding without knowing it and then suddenly I was just riding alone. The markers on the roads disappeared. And I realized I was off route. Luckily, there was a rest stop close by for 50k riders. So I quickly made it to that rest stop. Talked to the ride organizer. Looking at my really worried face he offered me to give me a ride back to finish location. HELL NO!! I had worked way too hard for it to end it like that. I requested him to give me his route sheet and point me in the right direction. Luckily, I had only gone 4 miles after the missed turn. So I quickly saddled up and in the haste forgot to refill my electrolyte bottle and off I went as hard as I could go. My initial plan was to regroup with the gang at mile 46 rest stop but again I missed that rest stop as well. Once I realized that my best bet was to regroup at mile 66 rest stop. Being a lunch break I knew group would be taking a slightly longer break and I had some time to catch up with them. By mile 50 both my electrolyte bottles were empty. Luckily, I had enough gels and chews for keeping me going. Finally, I rolled into mile 66 rest stop. Luckly, the group had not left (they were about to). I was completely exhausted. I had ridden 44 miles really hard without a break. I was definitely ready to get out of the saddle for some time. But I was really happy to see the group finally !!!

Mile 66-88--We conquer Ink Grade:

On top of ink grade..still 35 miles to go

100 miler gang at the top of Ink grade

Ever since the training had begun we were always told about ink grade. It was suppose to be the toughest climb in the ride. Some 4+ miles with 8-10% gradient. I was definitely looking forward to it. After regrouping and eating some food I was ready for it. It was definitely a tough climb. No doubt about it. Climbing non-stop for 4+ miles is not really fun but then I felt that we had trained on more challenging hills in our training. All along I just kept thinking about king mountain, old la honda climb. Those seemed much tougher than this one. Once we conquered ink grade we all regrouped at the top of the hill to celebrate our climb and got ready for one final push to the finish line. From Ink grade to mile 88 was smooth, uneventful and fast. We stuck together as a group.

Mile 88 to 100 (108 for me)---The finish:

Once we rolled out of rest stop at mile 88 group again decided to do pace lining :) I again bailed out and decided to ride at my pace. Looking at the past disaster I decided to ride harder than the group and stay WAY ahead of them so that there was no chance of dropping me off ;) I biked hard for those last miles. There was tons of head wind but being the last part of the ride I was really not worried of burning out. I just kept pedaling hard. Finally, once in the town we all rolled into the finish line together.

Some of the 100k folks were waiting for us to finish. Had I known that I would have definitely made the grand appearance where they were standing. I directly went to my car and got changed into clean clothes and it was time to celebrate the achievement with Asha family !!

End of an awesome day

So after 7 hours on the saddle (close to 8.5 hours total) someone who had no clue how to change gear on the bike, who kept falling off not knowing how to unclip few months back finished 100 miles..actually 108 :) This by far was the longest endurance event I had ever done and I enjoyed every minute of it !!

Ride File:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/212715383

What's next:
When the idea of doing a triathlon was scrapped I had penned down 4 attainable goals for the season
1) run a sub 2 half marathon
2) Do a century ride
3) Run first full marathon
4) Learn how to swim (work in progress)

With this ride I was able check off my second goal of the season. Now on to the final one...The one I am most scared off so far..Its time to tackle it head on...MCM full marathon is T-10 weeks. Lets get cracking !!

SF Half Marathon Race Report

Like I wrote in my last post, I was satisfied with my training coming into this race. Since I did not have a very specific time goal for this race I was really anxious to see what I can pull out on race day. Butterflies and anxiety had started showing its way by Thursday. No matter how many of these you do they always show up for me !! I went to the expo on Friday to collect my race packet. I did not waste too much time at the expo. Just a quick browse through all the booths and back home.

Expo

Race Weekend:
Team Asha, East Bay had planned a carbo load lunch on Saturday for all the first time runners  (and old runners) at Satya's place. Thanks Satya for opening your home and for delicious pasta !! So half of the Saturday went listening to coaches and talking to friends. Its just so amazing that even after running for more than a year you still hear something and think Ah!! I never thought about it. That was some quality time spent learning lot of new tricks from the experts. Get this--San Francisco full marathon was Arun's 50th Marathon.  We already have another coach who ran his 100th Marathon last year. Team Asha has some seriously talented coaches !!

Race Strategy:
Really ? Aren't you just suppose to go as hard as possible until your heart explode and then suffer for the rest of the race:) Apparently not :) I talked to Jeremy on Saturday to discuss how to run the race. It actually turned out quite simple. His advice was to keep the HR below/close to 175 bpm. at least during the beginning miles of the race and then run the later miles completely based on perceived exertion keeping heart rate as good indicator of it. Simple enough, right ?? To make sure I follow this properly I decided to try to follow the 4 hour pacer group (for full marathon) for initial half race and then run my own race towards the later miles. Running at 9:08 pace with fresh legs was  manageable for me.

Race Day:
SF marathon is an early race with the first wave starting at 5:30 am. So the plan was to get up early at 3 and catch the team asha organized shuttle to start point. As expected there was hardly any sleep on Saturday night. But once I was up I was ready to roll. My pre race day breakfast involved two whole wheat toast with cashew butter and one bonk-breaker peanut butter jelly bar. Due to some delays we reached the start point later than expected.There was hardly any time for warm up and I immediately lined up to get into my wave. I was placed in wave 4 with start time of 5:50. But since 4 hour pacer group was suppose to be in wave 5 I decided to switch to wave 5 (Big mistake #1).  I also convinced Ramesh to join me in wave 5. Once we entered wave 5 we made our way to the front and there was no 4 hour pacer group !! Apparently, 4 hour pacer group went with wave 4. What the heck!!! By the time I realized that it was too late. So my first part of race strategy was in dustbin :) At that point, I had two options: 1) Follow the 4:15 pacer group or 2) just run your own race from the beginning hoping i will not blow up myself in the beginning miles. I decided to go with first option. You can see how confident I am with my pacing abilities :) and off we went.

Mr. Flash came to say good luck in the morning :)

Mile 1-3:
Within first 3-4 mins of following the 4:15 pacer group I felt that pace was really slow. So I decided to go on my own and do my own race. I started putting up some effort so as to bring my HR up and once I saw it was close to 170-172 my pace was around mid 8:40ish. This was perfect. I kept telling myself not to push harder. Stay there. Keep it there. I kept checking my garmin every few seconds to make sure I was staying there. But within first mile I felt some pull in my abductor muscle and it started hurting me with every step. I guess when you don't warm up properly things can go south especially if you are pushing yourself. This slowed me down a bit and Ramesh caught up with me. I told him about my muscle pull since he also had the same issue couple of weeks back. He said the only way to fix it was to take rest. Not something I could do in race. I decided to take it by the mile and see how it feels. We ran about 2 miles together and he patiently listened to me while I whined about the late arrival, wave goof up and the muscle pull. He wanted to take quick walking break before we hit our first major hill at 2.5 mile so we decided to run our own race and then meet up at the end. My previous two weeks of hill training at SF came in really handy when we hit the first hill. I went hard confidently and I crushed it without stopping or gasping for air. Sweet!! That was probably the only positive thing that had happened so far till that time!!

Mile 3-5:
As soon as we crossed hill @ fort masion we entered another long flat terrain. Before the race I had decided to push hard (i.e., go beyond 175 bpm) in those 3 flat miles (Knowing the race course in advance does really help !!). But when I looked at the watch i was already moving at 8:45-8:50ish pace which was already 15+ seconds faster than 2 hour half marathon pace (9:08) so I decided to stick with it. Surprisingly, my heart rate was still under 175 beats at that time and effort felt bit hard but still manageable.

Miles 6-9:
Mile 5 to mile 6 was the steepest climb of the race. This was the part where we would hit the golden gate bridge after the climb. Having done that climb (atleast part of it) multiple times I knew how hard it was. First thing I did was stop looking ahead and at my watch. That climb is REALLY long. I kept telling myself put your head down and keep moving. It will be over in no time.  Once we reached the top I was just beyond happy.  I did not stop a single time on the climb and considering I had walked the whole hill last year it was definitely big personal victory for me and testament on how far I have come in my fitness. When I got my mile alert my pace for mile 6 had dropped from 8:40is to 9:47. But who cares !!

A quick check on my garmin and I saw my avg pace had fallen from 8:40ish to 8:55ish. But still under 9:00. This was the first time I thought may be just may be I can get a sub 2 if I run the rest half of my race well. It was game on !! At least I thought so :)  My plan was to run hard on the bridge and try get my avg pace back to 8:40ish before we hit the last 5k of the race. The only information I had about the last 5k was that it was full of rolling hills. So having some cushion for slower pace seemed a good idea....

Mile 7 went fast. My pace for that mile was 8:29. But then that's where it all started going south. There was seriously no room to run on the bridge. Instead of focusing on running I was just trying to navigate through the people and survive all the hits. This was really really frustrating. Every now and then someone would just start walking without moving to the side and every now and then I came across people who would just stop running, pop their camera and start clicking pictures without moving to the side. Some random person even asked me to take her picture. Seriously ?? How about I throw you off the bridge and take that picture (OK I did not tell her that). Seriously, that part of the race was just crap. Firstly, the organizers did not secure enough space for people to run comfortably (especially when they charge exorbitant amount of money as race fee) and then I was paying for my bad decision to start with slower group in the beginning. I was definitely looking forward to running on the golden bridge all along but I certainly wasn't enjoying the experience.

At the turn around point (vista point) I saw my garmin for the first time and it still said 8:55ish pace. But honestly, I was just not interested in it anymore. I just wanted to get done with the rest of the bridge portion. At the vista point water stop I drank atleast 4-5 glass of water/gatorade. No idea what happened there but I guess my mind was just out of the race at that point. I had same experience while coming back but it was slightly better (probably because I navigated through a sea of slow runners in the first half). By the time I reached the end of the bridge I was feeling really uneasy in the stomach, mind filled with all negative thoughts and flaring abductor muscle in left leg.

Mile 9-13:

Are we there, yet ??

At the end of the bridge, I decided to take my first real walking break. I badly needed that to clear my head now that nightmare was over. My pace hadn't made much progress and it was still around 8:55ish. But it was not relevant any more. Good thing about the last part of the race was i had no idea about the course. So it kind of made the plan simple. Go about it as it comes. Mile 10 was another small hill followed by big downhill at mile 11. That portions went fast (not by pace :)). Mile 12 consisted of 3 rolling hills with increasing elevation. Probably, that was the last challenge in the course. So without thinking much I took each hill as it came. By the time I came to third hill I was running slower than I walk !! So it was time to just walk the hill. Once on the top of hill I started doing running/walking thing for the next mile. When I reached mile 13 marker I saw avg pace pop to 9 min/mile. What !! I did not expect that. I had stopped looking at the watch after the bridge so that was kind of good surprise. So I still had a chance to make a sub 2 time, really ? That just refreshed me. At the last right turn I started hearing the music and announcer announcing names. I just sprinted as hard as I could. When I crossed the finishing line and saw the time 1:59. AWESOME!!!

After race carnage:
I regrouped with Ramesh, Samar and Vishal at the end of the race. Everybody had an incredible day. I asked them about their experience on the bridge and everybody had the same experience. I was happy to know that I was not the only whinny baby out there. Did someone remember that flaring abductor muscle ?? Well I ignored the pain during the race but it surely made a grand appearance at the end once my body started cooling down. I did not wait long at the race afterwards and went home to see how bad it was. Turned out I could not lift my left leg an inch from ground without screaming like a little girl. I told you I learned few cool tricks at the carbo load, right ?? One of them was to walk backwards on the stairs if you have such issues. Works so well. So for next few days if you see me climbing stairs backwards don't ask me why :)

Showing off our hardware

Samar, Vishal me and Ramesh..Training buddies. Solid race for all of us

I guess sometimes I just think too much about pace/time/speed etc and in the process forget about how much I enjoy running and how far I have come from last year. Last year I could barely run 100 meters without taking (long) walking breaks. It took me 2:58 to finish the course. One year later, I have shaved off ~60 mins on the same course. This was also a new over all PR by 10 mins. This by far was the biggest satisfaction. I cant wait to get back on to the training wheel and see how much we can get out of my body by the year end. But for now its time to rest and recover quickly :)

Garmin file from SF half 2011:
 http://connect.garmin.com/activity/103204119

Garmin file from SF half 2012:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/204484658