Traveling, traveling, and more traveling

I'm normally the last person to do a lot of traveling. I try and pick locales where I will be happily ensconced with my own activities, and I really enjoy settling down into a good routine of fitness, friends, and education. Sometimes though, a combination of good luck, bad planning, and other factors combine to make for a busy stretch on the road. This past 6 weeks and the upcoming month are chock-full of travel for me, to my chagrin.

I returned from my 4-week long radiology conference at Washington DC about 2 weeks ago. It went very well both educationally and trainingwise, particularly with swimming, where I really spent a lot of time hammering out basic techniques in the pool for 1-2hrs per day. Running was also good, albeit reduced volume.

I was back in glorious LA for one week after DC, and it really was good to be back. There's nothing like leaving town for a good stretch to remember how amazing your home territory can be. Everyone raves about the mild climate, dry conditions, spectacular sun, becahfront views, and stunning mountains in LA, and let me tell you - it's all true!

I had a notable near-bonk weekend bike ride. After 4 weeks off the bike, I was chomping at the bit to get back on my Cervelo into the Santa Monica moutains with the LA Tri Club, for a 30-40 mile bike ride (a bit over 2 hrs for that distance.) I met up with them Saturday morning, and it was a fairly large crew of 30 ready to roll, so I was fairly excited. Unfortunately, right off the get-go, I had a mechanical problem with my cleats, which dropped me off the group even before we even started! I fixed the cleat problem, and started hammering to catch up if possible, and next thing I know, my left contact lens ejects from my eye. I hammered at race-pace for 40 minutes, and only managed to catch the rearmost group, but was still way off the main pack. After that, I noticed that my rear cage water bottle had drooped through the cage and was melting due to friction with the tire. More stoppage. I finally caught up at the regroup near Trancas, and then only 5 diehard riders were left attempting the real mountain climbs. 60 miles later and nearly 4 hours later, I was completely toasted. The temps rose to 80F, and even 90F in the San Fernando valley, so we were glad to make it back by noon. Definitely a tough ride.

I just came back from a week of vacation which I spent in NorCal with my fiance, but she was on a workweek, so I did a lot of cycling with some local groups. I had another noteable ride there near San Jose, where I joined the Western Wheelers cycling group on Wednesday morning for a climb of one of the steepest and biggest local climbs. This ride started not to hard, but the final 3 miles were the steepest grade road biking I have ever done. 20% (!!) incline, for most of the final 2 miles, and at least 12% incline for the remaining miles. If you've never been on a 20% incline, let me say that it's so steep that you can barely walk up it. I gave it all I had, but I was forced to dismount and walk the final 200m of the climb because it was simply so steep that I couldn't even go forward. Of course, climbing is far from easy on an aggressively geared triathlon-geometry bike that I ride, so I am using that as my excuse for not making it to the top! Definitely a humbling one, though - I don't think I'll be attempting similarly crushing climbs any time soon.

Right now, I'm sitting in the Hynes Convention Center before the start of another weeklong radiology conference. The weather here has shaped up to summerlike conditions in the past day, and I plan to get some solid running as well as swimming (very nice hotel pool here) to keep things in shape.