Woke up before 4:00, not much sleep after a somewhat late night seeing a play the previous evening. I went down and had some cereal for breakfast before getting ready to head out to La Jolla Trading Post for a ride up South Grade Rd toward Mt Palomar. Had packed most of my stuff in the car, so all I had to do was get dressed and pack some drinks and snacks for the ride. I saw some very light mist on my windshield on the drive there, arrived a little earlier than anticipated (about 40 minutes in the car, arrived around 5:35), but it worked out okay, since I needed to use the Porta Potty a couple of times before Paula showed up around 6:00. I was mostly ready by the time she arrived, and we were rolling a little after 6:10. We headed west on the 76, it has some modest climbing sections in the 3.5 miles to South Grade Rd. We stayed pretty much together for this portion of the ride, stopped for some pictures at the bottom of the climb, then we were off. I rode with her, at her pace, for a while, not wanting to get too far ahead of her. Then I decided to ride ahead for a little over a mile (it turned out to be about 1.4 mi), then turn around, ride back down to where she was, and start climbing again. I did this four or five times throughout the climb. It actually helped me as well, since it broke the climb down into smaller segments, even though I ended up climbing more (about 400') and riding a greater distance (about 2.4 mi). I was fresh all the way to the top, even though this is always a challenging climb. We rode through a cloud bank to clear skies above. Up to Mother's Kitchen, where we stopped and took a break, chatting for a bit and deciding what to do next. We ended up riding on the S7 out past the entrance of Palomar Mountain SP, getting to the bottom of the road up to Boucher Lookout before turning around. Then we rode back, staying on the S7 as it turned into East Grade Rd, which we used for the descent. Near the top of the hill, before we got to seriously descending, there were a lot of cars zooming up and down this section of the road. It turned out that there was a photographer at one of the bends in the road, taking pictures of the cars as they roared by. Just past this point was an overlook with a pit toilet, so I stopped there before continuing the descent. Went down pretty fast this time, taking more speed around the turns and using my brakes less. The descent was chilly, particularly so when we rode back down through the cloud layer. I had a jacket but had packed it into my rear pocket, so I gritted it out and rode through. Down to the bottom, the descent seemed a little easier than when I had done it recently. I waited about 4-5 min for Paula to get to the intersection with the 76, then we both rode together, Paula in the lead, for the six miles back to our starting point at La Jolla Trading Post. She got colder than me on the descent, stopped to put her jacket on, but still her hands were really cold at the turn and stayed that way for the rest of the ride . We were both glad to see the parking lot.
Avg speed = 13.1 mph (13.1 mph). Total mileage = 36.4 mph
Avg power = 145 W. Weighted avg power = 169 W
Total elevation gain = 4260' (4190')
Avg heartrate = 124 bpm (Coospo)
Relative Effort = 79 (81)
Training Load = 180
Intensity = 77%
Put our gear up, then we went into the store and got something hot to drink. The coffee was pretty good for a $1.50 20-oz cup. We chatted for a while at one of the tables while we drank our drinks, then headed out after that. I was concerned that we might have to detour around Valley Center due to a parade for the holiday, but the signs I'd seen earlier were gone, and it was smooth sailing on Valley Center Rd. A little bit of traffic coming into Escondido, but nothing to really slow me down. I got home a little before 11:30. Had some lunch, then in the afternoon and evening I did a couple of tasks. Went out in the back yard and fixed a number of bubbler leaks, replacing the bubblers that had gotten clogged and blown off the spaghetti line. I also measured the water flow rate up to station 6, which has quite a high flow, even though I couldn't see any leaks. So I came in and placed an order for new spray heads with adjustable flow. Next, I tackled the cycling analysis code display issue for showing selected segments. Had thought about what must be causing the incorrect display, and it turns out that I was correct. But it took me a while to figure out how to solve the problem, it was rewarding when I got the display to work properly. Then I tackled some blog updating, including the data from my own cycling analysis program in comparison with data reported by Strava. I changed the window average size for smoothing out the elevation data, then re-ran the batch program to recalculate the values and put them in the database. At some point, when I was making modifications and trying to clean up the batch program, it started throwing off errors when I tried to run it. I eventually worked through those errors, but that took a while too. Then I started entering my cycling analysis numbers into the blog entries,beginning with 2026. These entries will take quite a bit of time to input. Watched TV in the evening before calling it a night.
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