Cezanne tried "priceline" and we got a room at the Hyatt in Newport Beach. We drove up the coast, drove and walked around Newport Beach (Balboa Island) and Laguna Beach, and ate a couple of really good meals. Laguna Beach was really nice. It reminded us of Carmel a little bit.
We relaxed, we got massages, we watched the U.S. Open...it was perfect. The only thing to make it more perfect would be to involve cycling some how...
Same picture as above, except we got out of the way.
I knew I needed to get in a long ride this weekend if I was going to complete the LiveStrong Challenge 100-mile ride in July in a good state. So, I decided to ride back from Newport Beach to La Jolla. The total distance was just shy of 75 miles.
I have my Garmin 705, so I thought I would use it's navigation capability, but this wound up making me more frustrated. First, in Garmin's User Manual, it says to create a new course on www.garminconnect.com or through the Garmin Training Center (free software).
For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to do that! I emailed Garmin, but knew they wouldn't get back to me before we left for Newport Beach, so I did some more research.
I found a forum where someone suggested creating a course in bikeroutetoaster.com and then transferring it onto the Garmin. I did that and it worked!
So, I set out around 7:45am on Sunday to head back to La Jolla. Cezanne stayed back to catch a little more sleep then drive back. The GPS worked great and was beeping and displaying which way I needed to turn and the road name when I was coming up on the turn. It even estimated my time until the turn based on my speed.
Unfortunately, it didn't work perfectly. It said I was off course at one point then tried to recalculate and it froze for about 3 minutes. I thought I was going to lose all the data from the riding I had just done. I managed to somehow turn off the navigation and everything worked fine after that.
On my way down I happened to meet up with 5-6 guys riding down to Encinitas for some pizza and beers and then taking the train back. It would up perfect for me since it was my first time working through Old Highway 101 and Camp Pendleton.
They were some serious cyclists. There were 2 Cervelo SLC-SLs, an R3-SL, a few all carbon seats (no padding). They were "serious" because they had the fitness to go along with the bikes. I guess one of the guys was a former pro and the owner of Laguna Beach Cyclery, Patrick Fetzer?
He's the one sporting the dreads in the below picture.
What was funny is that a few of these guys came into the ride having done 140 miles the day before.
They helped keep the pace high. I wound up averaging 19.1mph for the first 68 miles. I wanted to ride for about 4 and a half hours, but the high pace meant that I was getting home too soon. So I climbed Torrey Pines 3 times to burn the extra time, first on the inside then twice on the outside.
Torrey Pines is not crazy steep or long, but it's a nice hill to train on, mostly 6%, a few spots of 7% for about a mile and a half. The inside is steep in the beginning, 11-12% (thank you Garmin 705), but then levels out at the top.
Stats for my ride: 80.57 miles, 4 hours 27 minutes, 4,869 calories burned, Avg Heart rate: 141 bpm, Max Heart rate: 172 bpm, 4,176 feet climbed.
Oh yeah, I got an email back from Garmin (quick turn-around) and it said they were working on those features and that I could "create" a course by selecting a course I've already done and then send it to the device.
My comments to Garmin would be (1) don't put something in the User's Manual if it's not true and (2) sending a course you've already ridden to your device isn't "creating" a course and kind of defeats the purpose because that doesn't help you when you REALLY need to know where you're going, like where you've NEVER ridden before!
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