I’m in Delmar, having a coffee, already with 60 miles under my belt. Pretty weird. At least for me. I’m not an early morning rider type. Sue and Don are heading back to La Jolla. I called a old team mate from Wheaties/Schwinn, Shaun Wallace, and I’m going up to Solana Beach to ride awhile longer.

Shaun kind of started the whole altitude tent thing a decade ago. He’s moved on to whole branches of houses for NBA players and chambers for NASA and the FAA now.

It is near perfect weather again. Already in the mid 60’s. Okay, done hanging. Better get moving.

Heading back to the coast at 8 am in Southern California is not good. It is amazing, one person in each car, not moving. I couldn’t do it on a life basis.

But, getting to the coast, on a bike, pretty great

That was my total mileage today. Pretty weird. 11:11. I met up with Shaun in Encinitas and we rode for an hour and a half. Then I headed back South to La Jolla. Other than my ass being pretty sore, I felt pretty great at the end. Only took me 95 miles or so. I climbed back up Hillside to the top of Mt. Soledad in a 39 x 19. Pretty big gear for the grade. I had no intention of riding that far. It is not optimal training for a 40-60 minute cyclo-x. I’m not sure why I ended up with so many miles. I guess it is for two reasons.

1) I don’t really want to go out and do some intensity. I don’t feel that great and don’t want to have to do a systems check without having it turn out good. I rarely, virtually never do any structured training. I use racing for that normally. But, in the winter when the races might not be the best training for racing, then structured training sometimes comes to thought.

2) I guess the 2nd reason is that I just like riding my bike. The weather was great. I had nothing else to do all day. So, I rode for 6 1/2 hours. You know you have it pretty good when you’re in San Diego, among all the rich and beautiful, and you don’t once see someone else that you’d trade places with that very moment. That was the case for me today. I couldn’t think much of anything I’d rather be doing than what I was doing. And really, reason #2 is reason #1.

Shaun and I came upon this girl in Carlsbad. She was going pretty good uphill. Good enough I had enough time to pull out my phone and take a picture. Someone should sign her up for a team.

This house is near the top of Mt. Soledad, looking North.

Here' the view from it.