Big Coast Loop

One of my knees told me to skip going for a big run this weekend. I suspect IT band syndrome caused by cranking up my weekday mileage and intensity. It's nothing bad (yet), just being careful. As soon as I noticed it I cut back my running miles to be safe. Biking doesn't hurt at all.

So instead of going out to run the second section of the Ohlone trail I went for a monster road ride instead. Some people call this ride the "Big Coast Loop." It takes you over the Santa Cruz mountains, along the coast for a bit and then back over. From where I live it was 78 miles with 7800 feet of climbing.

Once again I tried to remain focused on my HR (130-140) and cadence (over 80 rpm, if possible). On the flats I find myself putting much more effort into it to keep my HR up, but the hills really slow me down. On this ride I was 30 minutes slower than I have been in the past. I don't want to trash my body, and I don't think reducing the intensity on a ride this long costs me any more than time.

No pictures (yet) - I am in techno-hell right now. I bought a new camera (Olympus Stylus 790 SW) thinking that a waterproof and shockproof camera would be good for me. However, it is utterly incompatible with my home computer that runs Ubuntu 6.06. I was spoiled by my previous camera (a $99 Canon model) that worked flawlessly. I did manage to get the images off my camera to another laptop I own (freebie from work running Vista), but I can't edit them successfully using gThumb on my main machine either.