Vacation Part 2 – Cycling in Sonoma

Roads near Sonoma

We spent the next 2 days in Sonoma, CA. This is an area best known for its lush vineyards and pleasant climate, and was featured in the movie “Sideways” a few years ago. I’m not a wine buff at all,so the main reason I know this area is because I nearly ran the Napa Valley Marathon earlier this year. Its funny how that as a marathoner, I tend to primarily identify locales by the local marathon staged there. Thus, for me, Sonoma = Napa Valley marathon, Sacramento = California International Marathon, and so on. (Come on, you know you do that too!)

Sonoma, CA in the early AM. Yes, I was out running at this hour.

We spent 2 nights in the Sonoma Hotel, which is a historic old hotel from the late 1800s in the commercial center of Sonoma. This is a pleasant old hotel, but as a result, it's definitely short on any sort of modern amenities. In retrospect, I’d rather stay just outside Sonoma, and get a much cheaper room rate with more amenties. Lots of weddings go on here, so if you’re invited to one, keep this in mind, as this hotel and the others nearby are usually on the “A-list”, whereas the B-List hotels a few miles out are probably a better overall deal.

I got up early and put in a good 9 mile run on some local bike paths. I felt pretty good at first, and cranked up the pace to 7:05-7:10 per mile, but I definitely started to feel leg fatigue after 3-4 miles. There’s no doubt that for me at least, I decondition endurance-wise extremely rapidly, losing my top-end endurance in a matter of days with no training. My speed seemed intact for the most part, but my quads felt as if they were on mile 18 when I was only on mile 8. I’ll be putting in some serious long runs before San Fran in the next 6 weeks for sure!

Lovely roads and vineyards

We rented some hybrid bikes in the neaby town of Healsburg(sp?), and headed out on a 24 mile round trip bike ride along a vineyard road. My GF isn’t a cyclist, but she did run a marathon last year, so I was pretty sure she’d have no problems. I’m not a road cyclist, but I do a fair amount of recreational mountain biking on my non-running days, so I’m very comfortable on a bicycle. Temps were scorchingly hot, exceeding 85F with full sun, but we kept it mellow and slow, making for a pleasant, leisurely ride. If anything, this cycling experience has whetted my appetite to acquire a FAST road-bike so I can participate in some tris and duathlons in the future – I think my large quads will be particularly helpful on the bike (they definitely don’t help on the run.)

Yup, I rode the girls bike on this one - the GF took my bike since it had better gearing

Dinner was at the Girl and the Fig restaurant, which is a well-known French-influenced restaurant in the heart of Sonoma, right downstairs from our hotel, and probably the most famous of the restaurants in Sonoma. I had a lovely meal there, of a brilliantly prepared corn soup (who ever knew corn could taste so heavenly!) and exquisitely prepared quail. A lovely cap to a leisurely 2 days of civilized vacationing.

The Girl and the Fig / Sonoma Hotel

With the weekend still ahead, I planned to get in some good miles. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be a scorchingly hot weekend, with continuous temps of 85F at NIGHT, and 95-100F during the day here in Palo Alto. Ouch. I set out this morning for my long run at 5:50AM, right before the sun came up, and was greeted with 75F right from the get-go. I was intending to take it easier today and go longer in terms of time, so I was dragging from the start. Add on top a completely full Camelbak, and conservative pacing due to a crushing 2-mile final climb of over 1100 feet at miles 19-20, and I was running by far the slowest paced long run I've done in the past 4 months, averaging no better than 8:50/mile on average. Quite an impressive dropoff compared to my premarathon 7:20s-7:40s. The good part however, was that my run ended up being 3hrs 10minutes long, or a good 20-30 minutes longer than my speedy long runs from the last Pfitz cycle.

For me at least, those 20+ milers seem to be the make or break factor, as my leg speed better than the marathon times I’ve been running. I’d characterize my Pfitz training as workouts aimed at allowing me to run a solid, brisk weekend long run which produces the bulk of my endurance benefits. I’ve tried cutting those 20 milers back to 15-17 on a higher mileage regimen in the past, with very unsuccessful results. I suspect that those with more natural endurance would do fine on such a plan, but I definitely need those long runs to offset my predominantly fast twitch muscle fiber composition. I'm planning some "overmileage" long runs where I'll shoot for 24 and 26 mile distances to help build that important endurance for the final few miles on race day and see how it pans out. Unfortunately for me, the better plan of doing more weekly miles (80-90+) on a more distributed schedule will be very difficult, as I'm back to my peak on-call radiology schedule, where I've got heavy weekend and overnight responsibilities so getting in Pfitz 18/70 again will be really tough on its own.

I'm still up in the air as to what my training plan will be for the next 6 weeks. After this vacation week is over, I'll give it more thought, although I'll likely combine 3 weeks of the lactate mesocycle with 2-3 weeks of the race prep mesocycle as a buildup to SF. We'll see!