Finished Century Ride #2

Last Saturday I finished a century (100-mile) bike ride in Solvang with Team in Training. It's a tradition to carry the names of people we're riding in honor of, and I had several family and friend names with me.

The ride started out easy but in the end was pretty hard compared to my first century ride around Lake Tahoe in June. There were three big climbs with the latter two coming at 68 and 85 miles, when we were already tired. I was a Team in Training Mentor for this event, and one of the things we teach participants is that no matter how hard the endurance event can get, it's always going to be easier than fighting blood cancer. And that's what I kept reminding myself of as I crept up Drum Canyon at a snail's pace!

We made it, and here's a picture of me and a couple of my riding buddies at the finish line. You can't see in the picture how much my butt hurt. :-)

I'm ready for another TNT Century Ride

While not blogging (it's been way too long since I posted last), I've been a non-fundraising mentor in Team In Training's fall season. This Saturday is our event, 100 miles of cycling at Solvang's Finest Century. We have fewer participants in the fall than we had for Tahoe in the spring, but their enthusiasm for the cause and for their first 100 mile bike ride is no less.

I'm a lot more comfortable with riding since Tahoe, thank goodness. I felt pretty good on our 80-mile training ride. I'll post an update after the event. And I will finally get my Thank You letters out to those who sponsored me for the Tahoe ride (two events for the price of one!).

50 miles? No problem!

You know, with Facebook and Twitter, I forgot about my blog! I need to update this blog on my progress -- like the fact that I rode 126 miles last weekend (45 Saturday and 81 Sunday) and could still walk!

But for now, I need to get a letter out, and I need to rest up for the ride tomorrow. It's just 50 miles because we're tapering, which means we're resting up for the 100-miler on June 7.

72 miles!

Our weekly rides are up to 72 miles, but I'm missing them! I'm in Virginia now, after spending a few days in Washington, D.C., just a few blocks from the White House. The kids loved the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. All the walking actually helped my knee pain go away, so maybe taking a rest from the bike was a good thing. But I miss the rides and my TNT teammates. I probably won't lose much fitness, but I do miss burning 6,000 calories each weekend!

I did my best to simulate climbing on the upright bike in the gym yesterday (but it burned only 800 calories!). I won't get home until late Friday, so the next time I get to touch my bike is on the big ride Saturday morning. Wish me luck! And please consider donating!

-- David

Rides are getting longer

The recommitment date is past, and the rides are now getting longer.  Here I am 30 miles into a 50 mile ride.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2304026&l=a1f684efb5&id=768556053

Forty miles and a mule!

Ok, it wasn't a mule, it was a really steep climb. 22% at one point, according to my Garmin 305. I felt pretty good on the climb. The legs are a little sore today, but I may ride some more to help get the lactic acid out.    You can see the data below.  The hills there are Mt. Eden and Pierce Drive. 

Another season, another sport!

It's great to be back on a Team in Training team, only this time it's the Cycle Team. There will be no running for me for a long time, but cycling is even more fun! I will be riding with TNT in the century ride around Lake Tahoe, which is called America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride.

My fund-raising page is up and working for this season, too. It'll be a tougher year to get donations given the economy. But I hope I'll be able to remind people that leukemia, lymphoma and other blood cancers strike whether or not the economy is growing. So we need to keep funding research and finding cures.

So please, if you can, donate at http://pages.teamintraining.org/sj/ambbr09/dgaertner and help find a cure!

Go Team!

Business Trip

On to the next charitable activity: The Silicon Valley Duck Race

I found a new way to give back to the community, one where I'm not required to run 13.1 miles, bike 40 km, and swim 1.5km. I'm helping on the 2009 Silicon Valley Duck Race, which raises money for several local charities.

I'm doing a couple of things. First, I'm updating their web page. That's kind of fun because it's reminiscent of my days as a software engineer creating one of IBM's first external web sites in 1994. (It's a lot easier with Dreamweaver than handcoding HTML using vi! But HTML is a lot more powerful and complex now.)

My other task is to find corporate sponsors for the duck race. I hope I can find a company or two willing to pay $5,000 or more for having their logo on our web site, in Camera Cinemas for 2-3 weeks before the race, on 20- or 30-thousand duck adoption forms, and so on.

By the way, I'm still recovering from the knee injury, but I'm hoping to go on a bike ride outside in the next few weeks.

My Helper

We held our practice triathlon today. Because I'm a training captain, I helped with a water stop and with directions on the bike and run. But I couldn't have done it without my helper!