cardiac (arrest?)

I’ve been kinda lazy this month.

It’s pretty obvious how lazy I’ve been from my workout calendar on MapMyRide. It was very sparse for the month. Aside from a few hikes and one short run I haven’t really gotten any exercise. That’s definitely not a good thing when I have a century ride in a few weeks. So today I went and got my only bike ride in for the month of July.

Since Ray’s doing the century as well, and since his schedule is more flexible nowadays, we were able to go for a training ride on a Monday. We ended up riding out towards Lake Berryessa, since we don’t usually ride it on weekends because of the heavy boat trailer traffic.

From the bridge in the previous picture there’s a nice view of Monticello Dam.

Our route took us to the top of the dam. From there you can get a nice view of Lake Berryessa.

The climb to Lake Berryessa is known to local bikers as ‘Cardiac.’ CARDIAC, as in CARDIAC ARREST. After not biking for a month, I could see why. I was feeling really sluggish, I was getting really winded, and my heart was racing out of control. In truth, it’s actually not even a hard climb, I’m just ridiculously out of shape. Cardiac’s actually the smaller of the two bumps on the elevation chart above– the taller one is Cantelow, the climb that we normally train on. After descending from Cardiac I felt a little bit better, but felt super sluggish and winded again as I started to climb the steep backside of Cantelow.

It’s amazing how out of shape I am. You would think that hiking would keep me in some sort of shape. But NOPE. It’s almost as if it’s a completely different set of muscles. Looks like I have my work cut out for me. There are two weekends left to train before the Crater Lake Century– I guess I have to get a lot of riding in so I don’t suffer from a cardiac arrest during the century…