Vince Chan's 2007 TEAM IN TRAINING Page
Cycling to Save Lives
Welcome to my TEAM IN TRAINING home page.
I am training to participate in a cycling endurance event as a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team In Training. All of us on Team In Training are raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives. I'm completing this event in honor of all individuals who are battling blood cancers. These people are the real heroes on our team, and we need your support to cross the ultimate finish line - a cure!
Please make a donation to support my participation in Team In Training and help advance the Society's mission.
I hope you'll visit my web site often. Be sure to check back frequently to see my progress. I will be posting frequent updates to describe how my training is going. Thanks for your support!
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10Feb2007. First day of training for me. I was surpised at how many people were in the parking lot of Alpine Inn at Menlo Park because it was raining. The coaches informed us that it wasn't going to be a mandatory ride because of the rain but a good number of people stayed on to ride the 12 miles in the rain, I being one of them. Menlo Park, west of 280, is a great area full of shade from trees and good hills to climb. We did a loop of 12 miles west of Alpine Inn back toward Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and around to finish the loop. The most fun in the ride was the downhill towards the freeway entrance. I didn't bring my GPS so I didn't know how fast I was going. Oh well, at least my bike got some mud on her for the first time :-)
14Feb2007. So far, training has been good but wet because of the rain here in northern California but it's nothing compared to what people with leukemia go through on a daily basis. Happy Valentine's day & see you all on the road <3
20Feb2007. Last Saturday was our time trial to get us individually into riding groups by how "fast" we ride. We all did the same 12-mile route in Portola Valley again. According to my stopwatch, I did it in 36 minutes, but I was drafting a lot of fast people and not really pulling the group of riders that I was pacing with :-) It was very sunny but still a bit chilly in the morning of the ride. There was a guy on the last climb of the time trial, not part of the Team in Training group, that was pulling a chariot with his child in tow. He was passing people going up the hill! Amazing. I know because I was one of the people he passed. I was just imagining how fast he would be without his chariot+kid in tow. After I got my time into the time-keeper, I rode backwards around the loop to ride with Mike as he was a ways behind me. He was doing a pretty good pace and he told me that he didn't stop at all during the climbs, WAY TO GO MIKE! I still need to focus on trying to lose some weight to enhance my endurance if I'm going to enjoy this hundred-miler. Will post more later ;-)
26Feb2007. Went on my first paceline ride with my team last saturday and it was a blast. The road was wet and it was sprinkling a bit but that didn't stop us from riding. The team went ahead of me at about mile 16 because I was bonking. I didn't eat any breakfast that morning and Coach Matt Keil gave me a clif bar that helped during the ride. We talked a little bit about nutrition after the ride and I for one am not going to miss out on breakfast anymore :-D Our pace was pretty fast at first and I know that we could have gone faster. Thanks to Rob, Tony, and Mike for keeping it slow for me (a.k.a. the slow guy in the group) :-). I am looking forward to our next team ride this saturday and hopefully doing better than last week. I'm really excited in trying new things with my nutrition as well as riding. Coach Matt Keil is a wealth of knowledge and is such a great help to novice riders like myself. Thank goodness for quick wits and that police officer for chasing down that honda accord that almost ran myself and Coach Matt down at the last intersection. But aside from that incident, our ride was without casualty---save for my bonking :-)
2March2007. Friday before the 35-mile team ride. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. All week I've tried to convince my digestive system to eat breakfast at 4:30/5:00 in the morning to get some sort of nutritional plan laid-out for my riding.I have also gone to eating fruits and granola bars for lunch instead of the usual cafeteria offerings at Moffet Field. I hope all this works. I did two rides around San Bruno mountain this week. The first one was horrible, the thoughts of being dropped on the hills still on my mind. But after checking my timer after I got home I actually had a better time than last week's outing around the mountain. The second ride was even more horrible to me. Again, this mental frustration was nulled by the time being again faster than the previous outing (albeit just by a minute). Maybe this training thing is working. Things to remember before tomorrow's team ride: 1) eat breakfast! 2) pace the team slowly when I'm in the lead :-)
7March2007. Wednesday into the training week and I've only ridden monday. Mike Young's bike is in the shop and he is seriously thinking of finding a solution to get a triple front chainring to get over the hills better to conserve his energy. Last Saturday was a great ride for me and our team was looking pretty good. We did 36.2 miles in 2 hours! That's 18mph average! As I've said in my last posts all the guys in our team are great and we added three guys to our team: Mike, Todd, & Paul. We all had a long stretch of road on Foothill that everyone got a chance to pull the lead for and we were pulling a pretty good clip with no one really taxing themselves. I ate my clif bar 30 minutes into the ride and 45 minutes after that, providing my legs with enough energy to power through the last uphill to the Foothill College parking lot. It was sunny and really bright out with a slight cold breeze early on in the morning. I really enjoyed riding last Saturday and again, it was a blast to ride with the team. Next week is a non-team ride and the team talked about riding together on our non-team ride just to get more paceline practice in. I think my nutrition training is falling into place.
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14March2007. Wednesday into the training week and I can feel my legs trying to cope with the continued strain of riding "strenuously" everyday. Yesterday Mike Young and I rode around Moffet Field and he paced our ride at an average of 14.5mph! Mike is making great progress. Last Saturday Team in Training rode in Gilroy by the outlet malls and I have an update about this ride on my blog http://hydroz1.blogspot.com/ <---copy this address to a new window to see it :-) I would like to thank Lauren and Shelley for being my team for the day last Saturday. Looking forward to hanging out with you guys again next Saturday.
21March2007. Last Saturday was another team paceline ride for our team. We rode around Lake Almaden in San Jose for about 45 miles. It was sunny and not at all chilly that morning with the day turning out to be sunny. It was a great day for a ride. The first part of the ride towards the resorvoir was all rollers and I didn't really get a good warm-up during this part because the team dropped me up the first climb. Thanks to Rob Jones for coming back down the hill and pacing me back to rejoin the team. That's two beers I owe Rob ;-) After the first climb I felt great. We stopped at the first rest area for a bathroom break and continued on with the ride. We met up with another team and ended up being one big massive paceline/peloton-ish group and I even got to lead this hodge-podge group of riders. At about mile-30 my stomach started to turn and I was reminded of why not to eat spicy foods the night before a big ride. I stopped at the last rest stop with the rest of the team but Coach Matt told them to go ahead of us while he paced me back to the start. I felt ok after the last stop but at about mile-35 my left calf started to cramp. Coach Matt gave me some on-bike stretching techniques which helped on the descents. The last stretch of Almaden Expressway was good for my legs just spinning my cranks and getting blood to my cramping calves :-) This ride was really good because I learned a lot about nutrition as well as warming up and stretching. I can't wait for the next team ride in two weeks. Yesterday, I put the kid trailer on my specialized and rode 13 miles here at Moffet Field. The trailer doesn't weigh much but the wind drag is a big difference on the flats. The trek is still in the shop to change out the chain and for maintenance on the drivetrain. It will be great to ride the trek again as the specialized just isn't as comfortable than the trek, in my opinion. Of course, the specialized is an older model with geometries of older-more non-relaxed angles compared to newer designs with comfort=longer stretches of bieng fast theory. The specialized is a good training bike as it is a lot heavier than my 5200. No pictures from this weekend's ride because I left my camera and phone at home. I will have to remember to bring my phone so I can get video on my site :-D
Vince
