08-08-2025 Ride/Hike

Woke up just before 5:00, when my alarm was supposed to go off. Got all my gear together for the ride and packed it into the RAV4, then I drove down to the Carlsbad Costco parking lot to meet Paula. It took a couple of minutes for her to find me in the lot, but we connected. My Wahoo was low on power, so I charged it up for 5-10 minutes while we were getting ready. We started out heading east on Palomar Airport Rd, turning right onto Aviara Pkwy and encountering the first of a number of climbs on this ride. Initially, I was tracking the route on my Wahoo but was worried that it would drain the battery faster, so I ended up relying on Paula's navigation, which worked out just fine. To Poinsettia Ln, turning left there and then right onto Black Rail Rd, cutting through a neighborhood to get back to Aviara Pkwy, where we turned left. This took us up to El Camino Real, where we turned right and rode up to Calle Barcelona. Then we took a series of surface streets through a neighborhood (I think Paula was following her own internal map rather than the route) that got us to Camino Alvaro, which turned into RSF Rd at a major intersection. We kept going up this familiar road until we turned onto Lone Jack Rd, which I hadn't been on in quite a while. This road winds through a really nice neighborhood, then we turned right onto Fortuna Ranch Rd, and it quickly got really steep. I powered through it and rode to the end of this road, called Canyon de Oro by this time, then turned around and rode back to where Paula was. We retraced the route and then turned left onto Rancho Summit Dr, followed by an immediate right onto Canyon de Oro. This was kinda steep up to its intersection with Seaquest Trail, where we turned left and continued climbing. Road quality was good until just near the top, when it quickly became not so good. This road generally wound down, with a couple little climbing sections, through horse properties, turning into Fortuna del Sur at some point, which took us over to Elfin Forest Rd. We headed into San Elijo Hills village from there, just a gentle last climb, then rode down San Elijo Rd until turning right onto Melrose Dr. We'd been on this road recently, it has several descents and climbs. On the last descent, we were going pretty fast and Paula was in front when she started slowing rapidly without signaling. I guess I wasn't paying enough attention, but I laid onto the brakes hard and skidded my rear tire as I swerved to avoid her. That got my adrenaline pumping, and she was also a little shaken up by it. All was fine, although it probably ruined my rear tire by creating a flat spot where I skidded so hard. Better that than crashing, for sure. We continued on up to Palomar Airport Rd and across, riding down the hill and turning left onto Faraday Dr. This road is more downhill, fairly gentle grade, than I remembered, it has just one sharp little climb that we navigated before eventually turning left onto College Blvd. We took this back to Palomar Airport Rd and turned right to get back to the starting point in the Costco parking lot.

Avg speed = 13.7 mph. Total mileage = 25.7 mi

Avg power = 121 W. Weighted avg power = 167 W

Total elevation gain = 2210'

Avg heartrate = 110 bpm (Coospo)

Relative Effort = 30

Training Load = 127

Intensity = 76%

https://www.strava.com/activities/15390697959

With the ride successfully completed, Paula brought out some strawberry tarts that Catalin had made (he was on his way up to Mt Shasta for a backpacking hike, with some friends, of 8 miles and 8000' ft of elevation gain). They were tasty. Paula is going to Havasupai with her family around Labor Day weekend, I think they will really love it. I drove home, got into a little bit of traffic on I-15 in Escondido, but it wasn't horrible. Had some toast when I got home, and I also ordered a new set of tires, along with a couple of spare flat-top chains, which were on sale. I wasn't sure how much walking we would do to get to the baseball game, so in the afternoon I went for a hike with my weighted backpack, on the trails in the nearby park. It was definitely hot, near 90 deg for the most part and in direct sunlight. I ended up walking about 4 miles in my all-terrain running shoes, and my shoulders were feeling it by the end. Got home and had a shower and a small break before Caleb showed up. Ann had packed the car for the tailgate, so we were off as soon as he got there. Ran into annoying traffic on the 163 after we visited Emily's new office and picked her up from there. On the highway, I wasn't watching traffic closely enough and had to slam on the brakes to keep from rear-ending a Tesla, so that wasn't good on my part. I just need to be better tuned in and less distracted by what's going on around me. We were going to park in the Petco Tailgate Park, but it was $50 to park there. Insane! The others probably weren't happy with me, but I balked and asked Ann to find a cheaper place. She did, but it ended up being about a mile away from the ballpark, and no tailgate area. Luckily, there was a WeWork building nearby, and the security guard was cool with us using one of the tables out in front. Tailgate was fine, Emily was quiet during the meal and probably not feeling great about the arrangements. We dropped our stuff back off in the car and walked to the ballpark. It was definitely a sellout, and the lines were super long when we got there. We went to a gate by home plate, and for some reason I couldn't get a cell signal, even though I clearly had bars. It was very frustrating. Caleb ended up logging onto my TicketMaster account on his phone and pulling up the tickets, so we got in, delayed and missing most of the first inning. The evening was fine, the game was not. Padres just couldn't capitalize on the many runners left on base, and Nick Pivetta made a couple of crucial mistake pitches. They ended up losing, we stayed until they avoided the shutout and then left to make sure we got back to the parking lot before our time had expired. We got back there, and of course the scanner wouldn't read our barcode to let us into the building. Luckily, a couple of others had the same problem and had called the security guard, who let us in. Home from there, a little traffic to get out of town and onto the freeway, not too bad. I ended up with lots of steps on this day.