Endurance Turtle A journey through this turtles triathlon adventures

It has been a while since I have had a good solid Saturday ride. One where my lungs feel like they are going to be ripped out and my legs are heavy walking up the stairs when I get home. I also enjoyed it because I slept in till 10, then casually got ready for my ride. I ate breakfast and grabbed some coffee and even cleaned my water bottles. I read in Bicycling that if you drop a denture cleaner into your water bottle that it does a really good job at cleaning it, so I tried it…and it totally worked! Here are my bottles being magically cleaned:

The bowl has the lids in it….The denture cleaner says to drop in the tablet and then wait 15 minutes until the blue turns clear. Now, I have a serious problem with leaving fluids in my water bottles…and then they become a science project. Then I can never quite get them as clean as I would like. Both of these bottles were in pretty good condition, and the denture cleaner did a GREAT job. Now I have to put it to the test with my bottles that need serious help. By the way, denture cleaner is super cheap and comes in a huge box for like $2 at Target. Great solution to a bad habit!

Having all that extra time was really nice and I was able to remember all the things I would need for the ride. It was also nicer getting started later in the day because I knew that it would only get warmer. By the time I actually got on the bike it was about 65 degrees and it was perfect riding weather. Here is the data from my ride:

If you click on it, you can see it larger.

Basically, I headed out from my house and headed up toward Montrose which is about a 3 mile steady climb. Then had a nice decent past Descanso Gardens and over to Pasadena. I did a 3/4 lap around the Rose Bowl and then headed up for my second climb. I went up Lida, which is a pretty difficult climb, and I swear it got steeper from the last time I rode it. I had to power talk myself up to the top, here is a quick photo I took when I got there:

As you can see, a very sunny day….just a little hazy (we haven’t had much wind lately)…

Across the street was a little park, so I stopped and took a little break. I drank some water, ate a Luna bar and stretched a bit. Going up that hill had really killed my legs, I definitely need to climb some more hills!

I layered up to go down the hill, the thing about winter riding here is that you can feel nice and warm in the sun, but once you drop down into the canyons it gets REALLY cold. So down Chevy Chase I went and got home, and my legs were pooped. All in all I rode about 20 miles and felt like I kept a good pace. I think if I can get out on my bike more like this, and do more hills, I might see some improvements….maybe…

I think I will try to clean some more of my bottles now!