AIDS Life Cycle - 2012
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What were we thinking...?Well, Margaret heard about the ride a while ago and was interested even before she had taken up biking. Then a good friend did the ride a few years ago and we heard all of his stories about it. Margaret then got her bike and started riding more seriously (a 27-mile ride for Diabetes in 2009, then a 100km in 2010, and then a ride for Multiple Sclerosis over two days in 2011 with Margaret's brother Peter that covered 100 miles on day one and 50 miles on day two.) Finally, we found out recently that a good friend was HIV-positive. We ultimately decided to go ahead with the ride this year.For those not familiar with this, AIDS Life Cycle (ALC) is a ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles (a distance of 545 miles) over a week. Riders and the roadies who supported us all raised funds to support care for HIV patients who wouldn't have any other access to treatment. So it was time for a big challenge. This meant a commitment not only to raise funds but to train. Basically, every weekend from February on or so that we didn't have another commitment, we spent our time on the bikes -- increasing distance. By April and May, we were trying to run 50-60 miles on one day and 70-80 miles on the next. (But because we do have other things that we needed to do on weekends, we only got to do that kind of mileage a few times.) We didn't have as much training is as I ideally wanted, but were riding well. From here, I'll switch over to some of my Google+ posts: June 2 AIDS Lifecycle checkin. So it begins...  This post just showed the line at the Cow Palace in San Francisco for checkin. We'd already dropped off our bikes and watched the safety video and were now getting our packets and wristbands. Then we headed home for an early evening since we had to be at the Cow Palace early in the morning. June 3 - San Francisco to Santa Cruz Day one: 84 miles, just about nine hours including rest stops and the one flat. (Margaret's rear let go just as we were leaving a rest stop. Which was lucky since one of the mechanics at the rest stop was able to change it out for us instead of us needing to do a roadside repair.) We started from the Cow Palace at 6:30 and arrived before four. That meant the hills on Skyline coming out of SF and then highway 92. So far, so good. But tomorrow's the longest day at around 109 miles. At least it's supposed to be pretty flat... Here's some pictures to give a sense of the scale of this ride.      And here's the profile for the day. (Ignore the cadence monitor. Margaret gave me the GPS as an early birthday present and I installed at at the Cow Palace -- but it couldn't pair with my cadence monitor since there were just a few other Garmin 500s with monitors close by and it seemed to grab one at random -- so I only had a couple times I was close to whoever had that monitor!) Little did we know what Day Two had in store for us... This page by , using KompoZer. Last updated on 23 June 2012. |