Simi Shuffle… Backwards?
I haven’t ridden for 2 weeks! First day back and I rode with the BBKings this morning. I was once again the last one in the group. But unlike the other group, this group waited for me! A couple of the guys even pushed me up the hill! Too nice… I gotta get in shape so that I wouldn’t need them to push me up the hill… Maybe I should join RL’s gym.. or the 24 hr Fitness across the street… J said that I should ride at least 3x/week to get faster. :-\
We rode through Simi Valley - SUCH A BEAUTIFUL RIDE! There were some hills but I was able to make it. I swapped out the rear cassette to 12/27 from 12/25. The mechanic told me that I would need a new rear derailer if I switched to a compact crank set, so I left the crank set as is. But Dino told me today during the ride that I don’t need to switch it! GRRR…. I think the rear cassette helped. But I may still want to switch to a 50/34 crank set. I will do Mulholland again tomorrow to see if I’ll be able to climb the same hill quicker, spin up faster rather than pushing my knees through it.
We started at Commons in Calabassas, and rode to Kanan-Avenida De Los Arboles-Olsen-then I don’t remember any of the turns after that. We somehow got to Simi, rode on Los Angeles Avenue, up the hill past Box Canyon (man, that looked steep! no, we didn’t ride it), then down Plummer Street (at which point I wondered whether I could actually ride my bike to work on Plummer) to Valley Circle then back to Commons. I even saw a woodpecker for the first time at the top of the hill before the Box Canyon turn-off! Red head. Cute little bugger. hahaha! My left calf cramped up at one point in the ride, then the right calf, then my quad when I tried to stand up and pedal. Everyone said that I SHOULD HAVE EATEN BREAKFAST… yes yes…. I learned my lesson again today. I felt better during the 2nd half of the ride after I ate some food, so the breakfast advice, although obvious, hit home especially today. Egh…
Beautiful ride, but we must have made about 50 turns during the ride. :-\ I won’t be able to find the route again even if I wanted to…
Must get better…
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