Before today I had not yet made it to the top of Mt. Baldy “the hard way.”   From bottom to top it is 13 miles and averages 7.4%, ending with a half mile of 15% incline at the top.  Click here for a description of the climb with pictures.

I tried it twice before but did not feel strong enough to make it to the top.  It was weighing on my mind and today I was determined to get that monkey off of my back.  Plus, Jonathan had already done it twice and I couldn’t let him have that over me any longer!  🙂

Although we both had sore legs, we (translation: me) wanted to climb Baldy today, then finish with one of our favorite climbs, Glendora Mountain Road. Despite significant heat, we did it!  Below is a picture of me finishing at 15% (I even added an arrow for the sign that shows the gradient), and a second one of Jonathan and me at the top.  I’ve never been happier to see the top of a climb!  It was pretty brutal.  Jonathan is still working on videos of our descent and our ride back on Glendora Mountain Road, so I’ll post those later.

Because apparently the Mt. Baldy climb wasn’t enough, we climbed back on Glendora Mountain Road and once we reached the bottom we had the pleasure of riding 12 more miles mostly uphill to the car.  On the day, we climbed a total of 6608 feet in about 4 and a half hours and felt good doing it (or as good as you can feel after climbing that much in the heat!).

We agreed that we are finally feeling really confident doing these types of rides while on a ketogenic diet.  Neither of us ate much at all on the bike today but had plenty of energy, and our muscles are recovering very quickly after each tough ride.  We  are committed to maintaining this way of eating, even in France – home of irresistible baked goods!  However, we may have a trick or two up our sleeves to try and have the best of both worlds for a few days…stay tuned for our upcoming experiments with ketone esters!

My stats are below, and after an early morning and long day of riding I am ready for bed!

Jonathan and I were cruising down Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) this morning when we rode up on 2 men ahead of us who were going quite a bit slower than we were.  Jonathan let them know we were passing by stating, “On your left” and the one closes to us moves over, then turns to look at Jonathan and completely loses control of his bike.  I have no idea how he managed to do this, but Jonathan had to use his shoulder to keep the guy from falling over and pushing Jonathan in to traffic.  I was on Jonathan’s wheel and ended up touching wheels and bending one of my spokes when I hit his derailleur.  Thankfully, neither of us went down.

We finished our ride and took my wheel in for repair.  But of course, it can’t be repaired, it has to be rebuilt.  All because some guy couldn’t control his bike!!

I’m grateful no one was injured, but come on, people – use your head when riding along the highway.  And when you do nearly take someone out, at least say you’re sorry.  These two acted like they were from another planet and offered nothing in the way of an apology.  OK, I’m truly done now.

The rest of the ride was great – it was a beautiful day but pretty warm inland so we stayed along the coast, then did some short, but steep climbs.  Tomorrow we will do more climbing (I have a borrowed wheel) that will be much more challenging than today.  Only 6 weeks before we are in France climbing some very beautiful (and difficult) mountains so it’s time to get serious about multiple day, tough rides!  Oh, and we recently bought a GoPro so stay tuned for some great videos!

Thanks to Victory Jon, whose website is http://www.highwayphotos.net/, for the great photos he took during the Breathless Agony ride.

These pictures were taken during a fairly long climb with sustained grades between 9% and 11%. It was a beautiful climb, but steep!!  In the second picture you can see my Slim Jim in my jersey pocket!  Yep, got some comments about that from other riders!

Jonathan and I participated in the Breathless Agony ride (you’ll find the link in my prior post on the subject) yesterday.  You have the option of doing 2 passes (around 50 miles), 3 passes (75 miles) or 4 passes (114 miles).  Unfortunately, Jonathan started having back spasms early in the ride so we ended up going just under 60 miles with 5500 feet of climbing.

The first pass was on a very rough road no longer open to cars.  The scenery was beautiful, but dodging potholes was not!  The second pass was pretty steep, with sustained sections ranging from 8-10%.  The third pass involved a 10 mile climb that averaged between 5-6% and was very hot!  The fourth pass was about 19 more miles on the same road, and would have been about 5-6% the entire way, but not as hot.

We were able to see a part of the third pass before we had to turn around.  And yes, it was very hot!  We agreed that we definitely want to come back and do the final two passes once we get Jonathan’s back feeling better.

I tried something new to help with cramping, as I woke up in the night Wednesday with calf cramps.  With all of the travel I’ve done recently, I wasn’t surprised.  A friend told me to try chicken broth before working out, so I made some broth Saturday morning and added coconut oil to it.  I sipped that on the hour drive to the ride.  We left the house at 5:00 am so I had to ignore the fact that I was drinking broth that early!  (I couldn’t convince Jonathan to do it, even after pointing out there are many things we do on or in preparation for a long ride that we wouldn’t normally do – I’ll save you those details!)  I felt great on the ride and had no cramping, so I’ll credit the broth and coconut oil for that and will try it again before a long ride.

I was also concerned about whether I would be in ketosis because Friday afternoon I registered low ketone levels again.  I avoided carbs for dinner and only ate good fat the rest of the evening (tea with coconut oil and heavy cream) and trusted I’d be fine for Saturday.  And I was!  I had a Super Starch bar at the beginning of the ride, a Slim Jim after the very steep climb on the second pass, and half of a Super Starch drink at the second rest stop.  I’m hoping that my low ketone readings are now over, but I’m waiting until this evening to test again.

Now we wait to hear if we were accepted into the Lotoja double century (May 13th we will hear), and continue preparing for our France trip in August!

Saturday was a great day on the bike.  We road Glendora Mountain Road again (with a little extra climbing after).  I had a little score to settle since I had such a horrible time that same road a few weeks ago.  But first, we had to make sure the bikes were clean!

The “before” picture.

And, getting my bike shined up (I have to do all I can to compete with Jonathan’s S Works with American Classic wheels!):

It was a gorgeous day on Glendora Mountain Road.  We had planned to try and make it up to Mt. Baldy, but about 1/3 of the way up Jonathan’s hamstring was really bothering him so I made us stop.  Not worth an injury when we still have plenty of time to train.

The good news is, we went further, climbed more, and did it faster than our ride a few weeks ago.  I climbed Glendora Mountain Road 21 minutes faster than I did it March 28th.  Stats below.

Seems like this nutritional ketosis thing is working out ok for us!

“Because it will a good training ride,” says my husband.

“Because I’m an idiot,” says the voice in my head – and my mom.   Yes, she has said this after some of my rides.

At any rate, it’s done: 

The Breathless Agony ride is 114 miles with 12,000 feet of climbing.  If you complete all 4 passes, you are eligible to purchase a Breathless Agony jersey.  You can also do the 75 mile option with 3 passes and 7,500 feet of climbing (I’m lobbying for that option).  Oh, and the Grim Reaper makes an appearance.  Seems fitting.

After developing a bleeding saddle sore on Sunday, I decided to try my luck today on the bike to see how I felt.  (Today I had very little energy so I was hoping the ride would help.) The weather wasn’t good and daylight was quickly disappearing, so I decided to ride my TDF stationary bike.

Thankfully, the sore seems to have healed.  Did a short but intense ride with some climbing, then finished my Lotoja Registration.  Now there’s nothing to do but train and wait for May 13th when I’ll be notified whether I “won” the lottery and will be riding 200+ miles in September!

Yesterday involved a few firsts for me.  It was my first time riding over 4 hours while in ketosis,  the first time using SuperStarch both before and during a ride, and the last “first” you’ll see at the end of this post.

Jonathan and I decided to do a long training ride – 95 miles with about 3500 feet of climbing.  I was excited to test how well SuperStarch would work on a ride this long.  I’m happy to say it worked phenomenally well.

We stuck to the instructions, and had 1 energy drink 30 minutes before we left.  (This was after our normal breakfast of coffee with butter and MCT oil, followed by bacon and eggs.)

There is one thing I may not have told you about SuperStarch:   It does not taste good.  At all.  Yes, it looks like milk.  But, as I told my husband, “Just trust me and drink it.  All of it.”

About 3 hours and 45 minutes in, we’d done most of our climbing but had a 30 mile ride home with mostly headwinds.  We took our second dose of SuperStarch at that time, along with a handful of cashews, peanuts and almonds.  Prior to this, we had one stop where we filled bottles and ate a SlimJim.  That is all the food we ate during our 6 hour ride, and neither of us came even close to bonking.  Tired legs, yes.

Our total riding time was just over 6 hours.  My energy level throughout the ride was the best it has ever been.  My husband didn’t feel as good as I did, but I think that was because he had been sick earlier in the week.

I’ll post separately about the psychology of trusting this new way of eating, but yesterday was a huge boost mentally for me.

Now for the bad part:  bleeding saddle sores.  Another first for me, but probably not the last.  If any of you have advice for treating them, I’m all ears.  For now it’s just Neosporin…