Summary of Mel's June Rides

Hello everyone. It has been quite some time since I last posted anything. Talk about disorganization, I had been writing the stats down after each ride on scraps of paper but didn't always date them. Needless to say when I went to write them in my training calendar and get ready to blog, there was a ride I didn't know exactly when or where it took place so I had to guess based on miles and climbing. Also, I must admit I am still having issues with the cyclometer, the altitudes are definitely off compared toGreg's GPS readings and Jerry's cyclometer. For the rides over 2000 feet I am off at least 200-300 feet. I have asked Chain Reaction about this but they haven't gotten back to me. Also, a couple of times the max MPH is off, likely due to interference from something. I decided to put all of June's rides (doesn't include rides Joyce did without me) in a table for ease of reading. This is not as easy as I thought it would be. I tried converting the table into jpg, gif, bmp, and png files (the only types of files you can import into the blog) but the resolution was horrible and the table was blurry. I spent way too much time trying to improve the resolution without success. Then I tried to cut and paste the tables directly, again without success. Finally, I printed the table, scanned it in on someone else's computer and emailed it to myself. I hope that worked- lets see:

UUGGHH, it still isn't readable!!! But if you click on the table it is fine. So please, click on the table to see how hard we worked in June. FYI the exclamation marks in the max MPH row indicate the reading was off (not that you would believe we could reach 143 MPH!). Also, I am not certain which day I actually rode for the ride listed June 18. For the max grade, the ones without a +/- are positive.

I think Joyce may have some pictures from these rides and I don't have too much else to say except that I was very excited to change my cassette to a 12-27 (whatever that means). I did this on June 16 (the same day Joyce got her clipless pedals). The next couple of rides my chain was making strange noises and on June 23 my chain fell off, my pedals got stuck and I fell. We were riding up to Huddard Park and I fell over onto some brush and ROCKS!! It wouldn't have been a big deal if my knee and elbow hadn't been impailed by the rocks. I sat there in severe pain for a few minutes before getting up to inspect the damage. My bike was fine, my knee not so much. I had a large abrasion with dirt ground into it and blood dripping down my leg. Joyce proceeded to rinse my wounds with water and I was using a not-so wet "wet-wipe" when a man in a truck stopped to ask if we needed help. He offered to bring us a bandage and we wondered if he was really some psycho about to throw us in his truck and keep us captive for life. Then Joyce realized he had a dog with him so he must be ok :) He brought back some bandage and tape, and we were back on our way. We continued our ride up Huddard and while it was tough, it was easier than the last time. In fact, we got to the entrance of the park and were surprised to be done already. My knee was quite swollen and I couldn't ride for a few days (I could barely walk the next day). Then I got poison oak again! What is it with me and poison oak? I even looked when I fell and didn't notice any. Oh well, at least it wasn't as bad as the last time, although I still took some prednisone for a few days. It turns out part of the knee wound was pretty deep and will likely leave an ugly scar. It continued to ooze for more than a week and took a couple of weeks to stop being painful to touch. Now it is just itchy! Fortunately I had a flesh-colored bandaid to cover it for my nephew's wedding on June 30.

The month of June was tough for training because I was gone 14 days and my niece was here for 3 days. I tried to get some cross-training in, mostly using the elliptical at hotel gyms. There was a fire at the Stanford Dish and it has been closed since then so we can't walk the dish for now. Hopefully July will be a better month for rides. I promise more stats for our July rides soon.