SF2LA Final day report

I made it.

Trust me people If I tell you that today was THE challenge .... day after day you think the major problems are biking and recovering...well not completely. Not getting lost... or getting lost and desperately find your way through the bloody jungle.... that is the real challenge.

Small recap of this final day.

I wake up with an unusual ache all over... legs, butt, head, back, triceps... the only thing that does not hurt are my family jewels :-). The spirit and knowing that I am only 90 miles from destination are good enough to get me out of the door for this last day.

The day started with a big climb right after 5 miles

See little video

on top of that my map told me to turn right in this little ugly and hidden dirt path.... I trusted it and went for it. I was in the middle of the mountains, with a tight schedule, a sore throat and feverish symptoms and that was the only way home.

Well, after about a mile the dirt path was so uphill ( 30% prob ) that my bike could not take it... my legs either... I had to walk and push the bike....THAT was the beginning of the horrors!

After so much climbing and dirt... I am stuck!

See the video!!!!

I literally threw my bike to the other side, take my shoes off and avoid the fence protections.

On the other side the path is flat but that is not the real problem... I need to deal with the pressure of being where I am not supposed to and find my way out before anyone sees me.

The next miles are dirty and muddy, something that my bike and myself were not prepared AT ALL. Few times I had to clean up the mud from the wheels when the bike was not moving at all!

Still beautiful:

Look at this pics after some clean up.... an experience road biker would puke looking at this... I almost did:

A couple of miles and after 2-3 more small fences.... I can see the official road... but... look at this monster final fence ( sounds like a videogame ):

It took me 10 minutes to figure out a strategy to cross this. Finally on the top right you can see an area where I could go thru.... try to imagine the hustle to carry the bike up there without destroying it (HER :-))!

After this, I was still 60 miles from LA..... I was tired, moody, dirty, smelly, 430miles on my legs and just a huge will to get an hot shower.... I went back on my lady and pushed as hard as I could for this last loooong stretch...

see video of last climb

Got to the hotel around 4pm, the DIRT detour costed me 2 more hours but I am so glad I made it... no matter what happened I made it :-).

490 miles, 4 days.... few stupid detours, no flats, average pace 17mph... next time I hope I will have some other crazy dude or dudette with me and hopefully EARPLUGS.... cannot believe I did this without music..... no wonder why I started speaking by myself!

Thanks everybody for the support on FB, Twitter, emails, SMSs, phone calls, Skype, Msn, YIM, damn....

Love ya!

Virgilio

SF2LA 3rd day report

I cannot write much... simply because I am totally exhausted. One day I will find more time to describe everything in details.... in few words. Left on time, biked 40-50 miles with very painful legs...started to feel super hungry around the 60th... and when I thought that lunch break was close... I found out I took the ONE going north... climbed and crashed myself for 15 miles... to discover it was the wrong direction... this super detour costed me to ride 1 and a half hours in the dark and totaling 148 miles. No comments.

Here they come few videos in order:

after 50 miles or so
after 100....

after 112... talking crazy
in the dark after 145

This was after 50 miles... showing a murales that explains it all

My face after 148 miles and a shower :-)

My desk ready for tomorrow :-)))

Overall I am almost there.

One more ride to go.... 90 more miles ... If I do not wake up with the fever tomorrow... I will sprint my last ride and make sure I will get a good sleep before going to the engagement party I was invited to!

Good night world.

V.

SF2LA 2nd day report ( HAPPY TG )

Second day was love and hate. Probably the best route ever with the best views and worst hills coming from no where.. right when you think you are over the "climbing area"

Almost 10000feet... 120 miles

Here is a bunch of videos I made while riding.... if anybody in the world wanted to feel what I felt (pain, music and stress included ) go ahead and click to see the videos on Youtube.

On the ride 1

On the ride 2

On the ride 3

Close to the end 4

For the lazy or fellas without poor bandwidth ( like my parents in Italy ) here is the a decent list of pics for the day, starting from the early climbs, then awesome views... then the arrival and a final thanksgiving dinner by myself by the water.

What can I say... today was a great day after all... just a lot of pain to go through. I went past sea lions lying on the sandy beaches when I was riding at sea level.... 20 miles after I was in decently high mountains with cows looking at me weirdly ( maybe my gatorade burps where a little too noisy :) ).... 20 miles and you are back to sea level.... and well.. you can imagine my face after about 80 miles and you still see a huge hill in front of you....

Thank god the last 30 miles where flat and a good wind helped my heavy legs to keep rollin.

What did I learn today:

- Never trust a bike mapping website, elevation graphs.... are not everything u need to know.

- It is much better to not stop for lunch but keep going and have small breaks here and there but no heavy food before the end of the monster ride

- Wind can be a b*tch

- If butt hurts after 10 miles..... the whole day will be a b*tch :-)

Good night now... ( 8.30pm lol )

Happy thanksgiving!

V.

SF2LA 1st day report

Wow, 132 miles.... never done so much in my life and tomorrow I will have to repeat...and again ... and again.... umh.... I really hope tonight my legs will restore all the good stuff there where full of this past morning :-P.

Quick recap in pics/video:

Woke up at 6.00 am to get as much daylight as possible... and like my brother would say... I got to wear the "parcheggiatore" style clothes.

After 40 miles I had to stop for a bathroom in the wild break, drink and eat some disgusting GU candies. But the view was phenomenal

No comment on this one.

After 30 miles... I started pushing a little, needed lunch and Santa Cruz was close:

Too bad I felt a little anxious about not making in time ( before the sunset ) I ate this big fella in few seconds and jumped back on the bike.... realized after that I needed some digestion time and took me the next coffee break to help my body metabolize all that.

Now this pic has it all.... from left... my lady, my leg, my small hyper compressed backpack ( heavy as hell ), my helmet and all the other gay accessories with it, a massive slice of banana bread, vitamin water and my immensely hot yet enjoyable coffee. ( This was after 108 miles... and from there I thought I was CLOSE.

this was one of the non very nice sight of my last 30 miles.... understanding that I am still 330 from LA it is a hit at the end of a day like this

Made at 4.30pm after 8 hours on the bike ( 7h20 effective ). 132 miles, enough joy to keep myself alive and willing to walk around Carmen.... too bad I had to walk 3 miles to get to see the best sunset ever on the Carmel sand beach... and I would say ... to bad my only partner is a carbon evil machine ... this could have been a romantic one!

thank god I found a good sushi place and indulged into what I hope it is going to be my fuel for tomorrow!

Before leaving... 3 things I learned today:

- Never play with the iphone when riding.... I almost hit a car that was parked on the side of the road....

- Never walk on mudd with biking shoes..... you might end up wasting 10 minutes to free the cleats from all that and be able to clip them back... ( I was going uphill... i hated myself for few minutes )

- Going 100+ hurts.... no matter how fast you go

Good night

V.

p.s. checkout my MO and donate for the Movember initative... cancer research seems alwasy to be a good cause!

San Francisco to Los Angeles in 3.5 days

Well, a long time without posting something. Quick update before going into the description of this crazy project that.... will start tomorrow at 6.30am.

Training weeks are proceeding well, roomie is very supportive and helps keeping my training schedule full, I keep losing 1 pound per week, GGTri-club people are awesome, just met a potential Tri-coach, got partially waxed...lol, spent few nights without sleeping for the most random reasons, got invited to an Armenian engagement in LA.



.... so what happened.... I thought, yes I should go to LA... It is chilly out here and I got 4 days of unplanned vacations...... FINE... I am biking down to LA.

Bad part on all this is that I did not spend too much time on the numbers and set my mind before looking at the details... now I am less than 13 hours from my departure and realized I will have to go for 120-130 miles a day with just 7.5 hours of daylight... SOLO mode... no drafting.

My mind was already set when I looked at the numbers... so no going back. I am doing this.

1st day: SF to CARMEL
2nd day: CARMEL to MORRO BAY
3rd day: MORRO BAY to CARPINTERIA
4th day sprint to LA


I am going home from work ( 7pm right now ), I will pack everything in the smallest backpack ever, prep my bike... have a huge dinner...and try to sleep at least 9 hours.
Let see if this time I made a step longer than my leg ( :-P Italian say ).

I will try to use FB, Twitter, Blog, SMSs to stay in touch .... SOLO mode can be really SOLO and need to know that some virtual partner is drafting from my virtual wheel!

Big hug

V.

November - Movember

November... this is a month that saw me traveling the most.

November 2006 I had just left Rome for the first time for my first internship in California.
November 2007, after spending the summer in Italy to write the fastest master thesis in the history of computer science I was moving back to San Francisco this time for a year at least.
November 2008, I had to relocate to Switzerland headquarters... damn ... still remember trying to fit everything I accumulated in almost 2 years of US life into 3 big bags+Bike heavy duty box, plus X amount of full backpacks...
November 2009, I was finally ready to move back to California, this time for good.

November 2010 ... one year far from Italy..... 4 years far from my italian life.

Christmas in Italy, this year, IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN... and I would try to make my stay long enough to be able to meet up but also enjoy my family, friends and my country. More quality time I hope.

I will be flying on Dec 23rd and stay at least till the 3rd of January.

3-10Jan will be in Switzerland for work/fun/bureaucracy stuff.

Training week:

My first PREP week went great. 3 running session, 3 swimming, 3 biking. Timing was good considering the low intensity level and the "less than 160bpm" rule

Awesome surprise is to discover a roommate that swims fast... ( potentially faster than me if she gets to business ); I will try to return the favor by on the biking/running side.

Second week of PREP is on track so far.

A long way before I will get to PEAK for Ironman 70.3 Italy in June!

To mention my brother... NICEEE .... I LIKE...

Baci... ( ce ne ho una cifra che me ne avanzano ultimamente )

p.s. MOVEMBER stands for http://us.movember.com/mospace/1189586/ I will post my pics at the end of this month! Please donate if you care about helping Prostate cancer research!

Let's go Giants....

I like this new trend of mind.... the title of the blog is totally not related to what I write on the post and I force people to go thru the whole reading before realizing that there is nothing about advertised on the title/link :-).

Anyway, yes SF Giants won the World Series ... huge deal apparently over here, considering the amount of people partying... I d say rioting on the street. I would say the importance of an event in SF can be measured by the amount of broken bottles and sneaky bastard piece of glasses left on the road for me to dribble with my bike the morning after.

Yes there were A LOT.

Now back to news... finally found a flat-mate. Her name is Nicole and she seems pretty cool, relaxed, easy going and not weird at all. She got the apartment the moment she walked in running clothes after posting her workout stats on FB :-).

She works at Nasa ( based in Mountain View ) and might be able to convince to commute with me one day.

Training updates.... well after spending the worst Halloween week end ever.... including a terrible fever+stomachache super combo, I was able to watch a bunch of netflix documentaries, read a book and mostly create my Training plan for 2010-2011.

First time in my life I will be meticulous about Triathlon and make sure the randomness will not prevail.

Almost all my A and B races are set. My main goal will be to go to Italy in June and be as competitive as possible for the first official IRONMAN event in Pescara. I will probably fly to Rome a week earlier to acclimatize and get the last training tapering in my city!

Few more updates, raw food/unprocessed food diet... is kinda working for now. Goal is simply to have 60% of food coming from this category... for now awesome feeling ... probably just too many pitstops at the bathroom :-).

Baci ai pupi ( come un certo Fabio diceva una volta! )

p.s. Missing Italy.... Missing brothers.... Missing old friends ( including the ones that hate me for being .."absent"... in their lives )

p.s.s. working at Google's office is kinda cool