The Best Laid Plans.....

Well, it's been a long time since my last post because it's pretty funky few months in a couple stupid ways.  I had grand plans to take on a couple organized rides and to keep the conditioning (such as it is) up for the run up to the last few centuries of the year.  Then I rode the metric route on the Giro Bello Classic out of Sebastopol on June 25th.  Actually, it turned into the Twelve Miles of the Giro Bello Classic, for I ran into a chain link gate and racked myself up.  The day started off beautifully, with great weather, a good looking route ahead, and I felt strong.  I rode the first few miles of the route with Mrs. SockMonkey, who was doing the short route.  Then, six miles in, I was going to swing into a driveway and wait for the Mrs. and I hit the gate at about 12 mph.  Frakked up my right hand in a big way (think I sprained the hand and maybe broke the little finger), and then broke my left leg brace as I spun off the bike and into the ground.  I limped back into the start on one legpower, my cycling day done.  My first DNF.  (I wear carbon fiber leg braces as the result of a back injury when I was fifteen; I've been planning to post a bit on that, and I guess I'll have to do so soon.) 

The photo shows my hand a couple hours later, as I treated my very swollen and hurty hand and bathed my bruised ego in a glass of Napa Valley Red at the Paraduxx winery just outside Yountville.  So that knocked me off the bike for a couple weeks while my hand recovered and the new leg brace was built. 

I did ride the metric route at the Windmill Century in Santa Maria on July 16.  It was a good, fun and relatively easy route that provided some seat time and a chance to work through the injury.  It was a bit of a pain to shift, but not too big a deal to contend with. 

I also bought a new mountain bike, a 2010 Specialized XC FSR (my first full-suspension mountain bike), which has taken me a way from time on the road bike.  We took a short vacation trip to Mammoth Mountain for four days in July to do some offroad riding.  I'm a beginner and easy intermediate rider, and got in a seventy miles on the sweet trails at Mammoth.  The photo below shows the new ride at the upper terminus of the lift on Mammoth (elevation 11,000', as I recall)--a dramatic vista that complemented the great riding.  The wet winter kept quite a few trails closed, but there were still plenty of places to play.  When I started riding as an adult two and a half years ago, I initially thought mountain biking was what I wanted to do.  So I bought a hardtail and found out that, as much as I enjoyed the beauty and the challenge of offroad riding, the technical skill and the level of concentration that it took to ride--and the hurts that learning to ride the mountain bike inflicted--were just too much to handle on a regular basis, so I bought a road bike and am convinced that that is the avenue that I want to focus on.  I am a weenie, then, but I do enjoy riding cross-country and also smooth and swoopy downhill trails, and some of my best days on two wheels happened on the mountain bike.  But the mountain bike is a special kind of challenge, for healing at 40+ years is waaaay different that healing at 20+ years.

Then, a few days later, I went mountain biking with my boss at China Peak, at Huntington Lake.  A lot of the trails are new and a bit sketchy, with lots of sand, rocks, and other stuff that pushes most trails to the intermediate level, which is challenging for me.  I went down hard, going over the bars, and ended up with a sprained left wrist and also a massive bruise on my right thigh where one of the ends of my handlebars tried to skewer me.  The result was the biggest bruise I've ever had--it went from my crotch to my knee, and wrapped more than halfway around my leg.  So I gimped around for a week until it started to heal up. 

Right now, the thigh is mostly healed up, the hand and the wrist hurt intermittently, I've lost a load of seat time, and my conditioning isn't anywhere near what I hoped or expected it to be.  But time marches on....

I've gotten in some road miles over the past few weekends, and have started to get back to form.  I'm planning on riding the Tour of Napa Valley this weekend.  This is a great ride, and I'm signed up for the century, but will probably ride the metric.  Mrs. SockMonkey is doing the 30 mile route, and it's one of her favorite rides.  I rode the metric last year and conquered Ink Grade, and I've been over Mt. Veeder a couple times--both gorgeous and challenging rides--so I'm familiar with the century route, but not sure that I'm up for all the climbing in one ride.  Nonetheless, the thought of trying to do the full century keeps hanging around the back of my mind.  So we'll see.

I'm signed up for the Amtrak Century (Irvine to San Diego) in September, and also the Lighthouse Century out of San Luis Obispo.  With a bit of work and no funky luck, I should be in good shape for those rides, and am very much looking forward to completing my goal of five centuries.  In May, I would have bet that I'd complete the five easily, and maybe even get to six or seven centuries, but

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley

We'll see how the weekend goes in Napa.