Today I ran 26.2 miles!

Most of you know I am training with the AIDS Marathon training program, to run the San Francisco marathon on Sunday, July 29th. You DIDN'T know? Well, heck if you'd still like to make a donation to my run you can do so HERE

In order to participate, I am required to raise funds for the SF AIDS Foundation... sound familiar? I have been training with a regular pace group of about 13 runners. We meet each Saturday and run in Golden Gate park and beyond.

Today was our "celebration run", or rather our "practice marathon". Yep that's right... today I RAN 26.2 miles!! (although according to Daniel's Garmin, it was actually 27.04 miles)

We actually got to run across the Golden Gate bridge, which was very fun and different for everyone. There are actually some folks in our group who have lived in SF forever and had never walked/run across the bridge ever!

Congratulations to us all: Jose, Robert, Jesse, Daniel, Ashley, Cheryl, Alison, Marie, Tammie, Damon, Raj, & Ryan- WE SO ROCK!!

I think this photo pretty much sums up my ALC week...

I rode, I crashed (ran over someone's head), I wore devil horns,
I put on a red dress and I ate lots of fruit!

ALC Recap- Day Seven... The final day

Day Seven- A day of gladness and sadness...glad to be done riding, but sad to see it all end.

Day Seven always has some sort of excitement happening, and this year was no different. While it was fun to come upon this sign along the PCH, at the same time ( a few miles past this sign), Daniel got a blow-out.

(I have no idea who put this sign up but I think it was someone from the Discussion Forum
- and by the way I did hit 21,000 miles this week!)

And speaking of Discussion Forum- Day 7 I also got to meet Ken Berg who is from Maryland and came out to SF to do the ride. Ken was a regular contributor to the Discussion Forum, especially through the winter-- where he had to train indoors often because of the snow outside!

Ken, Me and Daniel RS2, Day 7

Ok, so back to Daniel's tire drama....his tube basically exploded, and at the same time some of the tread on his tire blew, however no hole showed up in the tire. (He was so pissed too because they were brand new tires he had just purchased for the ride!) I booted it with a dollar bill, and later when we told Mark Smith about it he gave us a nice piece of duct tape (remember the duct tape dresses?) so that we could really patch it in case it blew again.

Which of course it did- right in front of the Starbucks on San Vincente. This time we found a small staple wire in the tire and pulled it out, put on a new tube, put duct tape on the inside of the tire and rode on to Peets (our preferred coffee bar), a whole 3 or so miles.

Chaos at Peets...

We spent the rest of the afternoon outside at Peets, cheering riders in to closing ceremonies as they rode by...

Daniel, me, Shawna & Michael clanging cowbells.

Then there was closing ceremonies....

Mike sat in a tree and caught this photo of
me riding into closing ceremonies...

After closing ceremonies, 4 of us hopped into a rented Suburban and headed over to our hotel in Santa Monica. On the way to dinner , or maybe it was lunch the next day we found this great store:

Julie Brown

ALC Recap- Day Six: Lompoc to Ventura

Day Six not always the easiest route, it's long but what's nice is that the scenery is beautiful.

Michael along the coast...

What's also nice is that Paradise Pit is just past downtown Santa Barbara and every year the ice cream just gets yummier!

I rode most of the day with myself. I don't say "by myself" because on this ride you really are never "by yourself". I took my time getting to lunch- talking with a few newbies and drinking a diet coke with lunch. (this is a luxury, you know.... I got to the coke machine at the lunch stop before it all sold out!) My friend Edna was getting that gnarly "camp cough" so I encouraged her to sag to camp so that she'd be well enough to ride on Day 7. She took my advice.

After lunch I felt pretty good so I booked it through Santa Barbara to the Paradise Pit.

Ginger supervising the massage therapy..

I hung out there for close to an hour, helping to move the steadily lengthening line so that people split into 4 separate lines once they got to the ice cream table. After that I booked on over to RS4 where I ran into Daniel who was also having a "day to ride by yourself". It was a healthy day for both of us, and we were looking forward to checking out the Marriott in Ventura for the evening...

Daniel and I at Pit 4, Day 6

Day Six is also the evening of the annual Candelight Vigil. We stood in silence against a dark sky with our candles lit, remembering those we had lost to AIDS. Every year I think about my friends Chris and Dwight who died of AIDS in the early 90's. Every year I resolve to come back and ride until there is a cure.

ALC Recap- Day Five: Red Dress Day...

Michael and I hiked back to camp in our red dress outfits, along with about 6 other guys in their red dresses- so it reallly wasn't too weird to be out and about on the streets of Santa Maria at 6:30 in the morning, wearing red dresses. Here is a sample of all that we saw:

don't ask me how Antonio rode in this outfit!

lovely Bob & John

part of the Red Duct Tape Dress crew
more red duct tape dresses...

the rest of my "homolicious posse", Chris makes a great cranky old lady...

The day was hilarious--- the best story being about Daniel (fancy hat, far left in above pic) meeting a group of kids. One of the little boys who was about 6 years old said to him ".... hello Mr. Lady...."

Day Five is a short day, only about 45 miles but pretty much all hills. So you spend the day sweating in a red dress, and stopping at every chance you have to eat sugar so you can make it up the hills and into Lompoc.

Oh.... me? I was dressed as the "Anti- Minnie". Here's a pic of me with the "Minnie Brigade"
My dress was exactly opposite in color from that of the Minnie's, and I wore devil horns on my helmet instead of cutsie Minnie Mouse ears.... appropriate huh?

Chris, Kimball and I rode into the town of Lompoc (y'know on a bike riding through, the town is NOT THAT small...) until we found the famous taqueria that all the riders ride to before heading in to camp. It was yummy.

Day, or rather Night five is also the day we take our group pictures. Mostly, its teams and clubs but also its a group picture of all of the Training Ride Leaders from Northern and Southern California. Here are a few of mine:

East Bay Cat 2 TRL's

And of course the Friday TRL's:

along with Chris who somehow got his head in there....

ALC Recap - Day Four: Evil Twins, that long assed downhill and cinnamon rolls in Pismo

Day Four is always my favorite day. Not only are those climbs my favorite because they are all pretty gradual, but at the top of those climbs is the halfway to L.A. point.

I rode to RS1 and ran into Lillian. Since people had been stopping her all week, mistaking her for me we decided we'd take a picture together to show you all that we look nothing alike!

see!? well, ok we do look like we could be related...

After RS1 I basically made my way up to the Halfway Point where our group of Kozy Korner (aka Krazy Korner) members decided we'd take a picture...

Hell there were so many of us you couldn't even see the "Half the Way to L.A." sign. Afterward we travelled down that looooong downhill which eventually put us on Hwy 1 on the way to Cayucos. Unfortunately that looooong downhill had a nice headwind on it, which meant paying more attention to the sway factor of my bike, and not getting as much speed on my downhill as I would have liked! Ah well, there's always next year.

I stopped briefly at RS2 to say hello to Ruben, then rode on into the town of Cayucos and ate my lunch there....yum, burger and fries!! Then on eventually through Pismo with a stop at the famous Cinnamon Roll place. Each year we stop here for cinnamon rolls and iced coffee- most importantly I stop there because right after is a gnarly climb on a two lane road on the way to Santa Maria. It's usually pretty windy through Guadalupe, our last rest stop before making a turn and getting an awesome tailwind into Santa Maria. And this year was no different.

My ride husband Michael and I stayed at the Holiday Inn, Santa Maria- which is walking distance from camp. It was nice to get all the dirt and grit out of my hair for awhile..ooh it was also nice to have a drink at the bar! :-)

ALC Recap - Day Three... Quadbuster, Hwy 101 and Bradley

Day Three- Having taken a nice spill the day before, I was a little nervous about over taxing my knee. Although the joint felt fine, falling on it made it swell and bruise a bit so I consciously made an effort to take it easy on the rolling hills that lead up to the ever infamous "Quadbuster".

The road out of King City is especially bumpy, but to tell you the truth it was much better than last year. I don't think the rough roads lasted as long as before, and the city had actually paved some of them. I'm sure last years rains made the roads horrible, and since the weather was entirely different this spring- the roads were easier to maintain. Every year newbies freak out about how bad they are, and I still say "WHAT?-- they have been far far worse in previous years!"

Daniel and I made our way out of town (after a nice stay at the local King City Inn), over the bumpy roads and on to rest stop one where I ran into many a nervous newbie. Here are a few of them (they all kicked my butt on Quadbuster, so I don't know what they were nervous about!)

miguel & mike

Brian

Antonio

Eventually we all made our way up to the top of Quadbuster with no problems... and I proceeded to cheer as many people up to the top with my very loud cowbell. As you can see I had a lot of fun!

Kimball and Daniel thought I was crazy...

Everytime I saw someone I knew making their way slowly to the top, I'd ring the bell extra hard to let them know I was egging them on to the top.... good ol' John Hershey caught a photo of me in action: (okay, not really my best side...)
That's me egging newbie Geoff Gillette up to the top of Quadbuster. Geoff, by the way wrote a great article for the Danville weekly and it made the cover story!! You can read it HERE.

I pretty much stayed at the top of Quadbuster until my friend Ken Gaskins got to the top on his recumbent tricycle... then waited to see if anyone else I knew was on their way up. Eventually I rode on to rest stop 2 and met up with Ken. I decided I'd ride with him for the rest of the day, on to Paso Robles. You probably saw Ken on his recumbent... sitting low to the ground with a cool pinkish/purpley flag sticking up from it.

Ken on a ride New Year's Day 07...

It was great riding with Ken. Although the recumbent is a heavy trike, he kicks along on it at a pretty good pace and since I really didn't need to be screwing with my knee the pace was good enough for me! We rode from RS2 down that long boring road on the way to RS3. You know, the one that has a single little post office and store where we all stopped for ice cream and stood outside tempting you to stop too? Yeah, that one.

And yes I rode with Ken on Highway 101... you think that's a freaky ride for you on your road bike?? Imagine riding it on a recumbent!! I think mostly I rode behind Ken to make sure he got to Bradley and then on to RS 4 safely. Unlike most of us, Ken was not able to "ride the white line" on the freeway because of the width of this trike. SO... we rode every single one of those bumps, and I think it was right about then that Ken decided that next year he would go back to being a Roadie on the Sweep Team! (I don't blame him!)

After RS4, the Dreamgirls rest stop- we headed on to camp. On the way we stopped a couple of times to rest. Although the rolling road was great for both of us, being so low to the ground I think Ken has to work a little bit harder than I do. It was a fun ride, I started singing songs from the Sound of Music (that comes from riding with Gay men so much). At one point, Ken and I had stopped to rest and a group of 4 guys came riding past. All I had to do was sing out to them".... doe a dear a female dear...." and they all chimed in and sang that song all the way back to camp! Ken was so amazed, I think he also vowed to learn the song so that he could sing along next year.... ah, but I digress.

The day was fun, pretty effortless because I chose to ride and be social instead of racing back to camp to sit and eat pizza... oh yea that's what else we did that night, we ordered pizza and had it delivered to the fairgrounds in Paso Robles- which was where we camped night three.

ALC Recap - Day Two.. Crash Day

Day Two- No, it wasn't planned to be crash day, it started innocently enough with Michael and I awaking at 4:30 for our fresh pressed Peets wearing our matching "horny flames" hats! The morning catering guys were so impressed they had to take our picture, as did Dave.

Peets and Oatmeal... breakfast of champions

The morning was fabulous with the annual stop for artichokes: Hey was I right? Hella long line for the fried ones (which came back to visit you as you rode) and no line for the steamed ones-- which were great fiber!

Jeff and Me with steamed artichokes

From the artichoke stand we rode on to rest stop two where Ruben was their greeting us as Ernie with Bert and Big Bird. Of course, Ruben had to show us his yellow finger.... ugh...LOL!

From rest stop two we headed to lunch. Right before the turn to lunch, on the local neighborhood street I ran over some gal's head.

That's right. Julie Brown ran over someone's head- yes literally. Good thing she was wearing a helmet!! So let me explain...

This woman and her sister were riding in front of us. Yes I was about TWO BIKE LENGTHS behind her (and I have witnesses to confirm it), and we were all going at a good clip, probably about 16-17mph. She was apparently riding too close to her sister's wheel, because her sister slowed suddenly without calling out and she clipped her sisters wheel, sending her down and sliding backwards on her frontside as I rolled up quickly towards her. In order to avoid running over her neck, I turned my bars hard right and ended up running over her helmet instead. Thus, I can now say I ran over someone's head on the AIDS Ride.

Yes, she took me down but I didn't even notice that I went down because as I rolled over her helmet I thought- damn she's gonna be hurting! I went down, popped back up (so they tell me) and looked at her and said "are you ok? are you ok?" No response. Not even a moan. She was unconscious and looked like a little rag doll on the pavement. I immediately scream "call 911! call 911!!" Then realize, if we call 911 we are not going to get the local emergency services so I looked at the emergency 800 number for the Ride on my wrist bracelet and called that, got an answer immediately and got the ambulance there pronto. As I'm giving all the info to dispatch, she and her sister decide that she should stand up!! Ay yiyi!! by this time there is a Salinas Policeman on the scene and they and the EMT's are taking care of her....

Well she turned out to be ok, they did take her to the hospital at my insistance because I said "hello? I RAN OVER HER HEAD". Turns out she was fine to ride for the rest of the week. I had a nice big gash on my left knee (maybe you saw I rode with one knee warmer over the bandage all week?) and a gnarly bruise on my right thigh. When I told my cycle buddy about it that evening, she said... "and when's the marathon?" Oh damn, I thought - I forgot all about that!!

Anyhow we can joke about it now (and we do constantly) because she was fine with no major injuries--- so it has now been said that you'd better be safe around Julie Brown or she'll run over your head.

On another note- I GOT TO SAG for the first time ever!! yippeee for me! Since my knee swelled up pretty nicely at lunch, I decided I would take it easy and ice it for the rest of the day, since I really wanted to ride tomorrow as it was Quadbuster Day. This meant that I got to SAG to King City from lunch. It also meant I missed the skinny dipping bridge, Cookie Lady, the Otter Pop stop and the DMV at rest stop 4. It was a bummer because I found that riding the SAG bus is boring... but I did get to meet people on the Bus, which was nice too! I met Rebecca who is a TRL from L.A. and said she remembered me as her tent neighbor last year. (damn, and I though MY memory was good!) and I also got to ride with two of my newbies- Annette and New Nicole.

So all in all, it was a good day- except for the crashing part.

ALC Recap- Day One.. a foggy start.

First of all I've got to say- thanks for reading the blog! I guess I didn't realize how many ALC'ers read what I have to write (ooh I'd better start paying more attention to how I express my opinion, huh?). I met so many people on the Ride this year who told me that they read my blog all season. Way cool, so thanks!

Here's a recap of my AIDS Lifecycle week:

Day One- Chris, Daniel, Michael and I were privledged to be invited to ride out on Day 1 with the Positive Pedalers. This is quite an honor, as we got to be one of the first 100 or so riders that rode out that day.

Chris and I up front with the Pos Peds

This was nice because we were then "ahead of the pack" for most of the day. The day was much like my first ALC ride (2) because we rode up Hwy 92 then over Skyline and then down Old La Honda to the coast. My sister Cyndy met me and my "homolicious posse" at San Gregorio beach. From highway 1 down to Santa Cruz it was a helaciously lovely tailwind blowing us all the way to camp!

Somewhere along the way on Day One.... my cycle computer rolled over 21,000 miles! So that means that I have ridden 21,000 miles since I first started riding my bike in prep for my first AIDS Ride ( ALC 2) in 2003. I forgot to keep track that day so I could take a picture and by the time I remember to look, we were already almost to camp in Santa Cruz!

Me & Cyn in our U-2 pose...

We stopped in Davenport to have coffee (and a little caffeine spike) for the ride to camp. I spent the week with a cowbell in my back pocket just in case I came upon certain occasions (like this one) to make a little noise!

I gotta tell ya, I've seen lots of pictures of myself on the ride this year--- I hate spandex. Talk about showing every single bulge that you try to hide all the other weeks of the year!! Ack!!

Michael and I were part of "Kozy Korner" with a total of 27 tents! Marybeth made sure everyone had their own sign- to make sure we got back to the correct tent at night...


Between that sign and Rowdy & Bob's magic butterfly, we never got lost when returning back to the tent after a porta-pottie trip!

Rowdy & Bob's solar powered butterfly light.

This trip I vowed to Princess every other night... and it was perfect! On nights 2, 4, and 6 I stayed a local hotel. I made sure it was walking distance so that I didn't have to worry about hitching a ride to and from the hotel... it worked out great and I still felt a part of camp on the other 3 nights so I wasn't missing out on all the fun entirely!

Pre-Ride last minute thoughts...

So I plan to be asleep in about an hour and 15 minutes (with the help of 1 Tylenol pm) so I thought I'd put some last thoughts out there before we ride out....

1. Don't change anything now!!
-if you got a new pair of sunglasses, great! Bring 'em along but ride out tomorrow with your old faithful ones. Don't try out a new brand or style of shorts tomorrow either! Stick with what you know, at least for Day One. It will make you feel a whole lot more confident if you do!

2. Eat breakfast, and bring a snack to have right before ride-out. I'm packing a chicken salad sandwich. Hey- you are gonna eat breakfast at 4am and we ride out around 7... you're gonna be hungry and the ride away from the Cow Palace is UPHILL... mind you!

3. Don't forget your helmet, shoes and water bottles (you should have your cycling shoes ON)

4. Take lots and lots of pictures! This is one morning ride out that you do not want to miss getting photos of.

5. Take your time, at least up to Rest Stop 1. The last 2 years, we've had 2 people crash -badly-within the first 25 miles of Day 1. Take your time, enjoy the moment!
It will literally be a "Cattle Call" out of the Cow Palace- there will be a lot of people, and many who still don't know how to handle their bike in a crowd so WATCH WHAT YOU ARE DOING!

6. Don't forget to drink!! It may be cold and foggy, but you still need to hydrate.

7. What to do first? (be there by 5:30am) Roll your bag over to the gear truck with the letter that matches the letter on your tent/bag tags (the ones that should be around your neck at this very moment). Then go over to your bike and put your water bottles on it, put anything on your bike that you need to put on- computer, bento box, etc. Then you and your helmet and gloves should go over close to the stage where they will have morning stretching before Opening Ceremonies.

8. Take a moment to remember why we are riding.

9. Introduce yourself to 3 new people each day. If you can, find out their reasons for riding...

10. Have a GREAT WEEK!! And remember YOU ARE READY FOR ALL THIS!

YOU ARE ALL HEROES AND I AM EXTREMELY PROUD TO KNOW YOU!!

see you on the road,
dtjb

Word of the Week....

My sis sent me an email last night after I told her what I thought the route would be for Day 1's ride out. (She always comes to lunch at San Gregorio, so if you see her say, "helloooo juliebrown's sister!")

"Hey, sounds like a lot of fun....NOT! But I'll get goin' around 10 and meet you there at San Gregorio with your homolicious posse to wish you a safe and sane trip. I'll have my cell on."

So this week's Ride word is:

"HOMOLICIOUS!"

(think: "SUPer SONic!")

Day -0 what I did today...

Checked out my seat bag to make sure I had:

2- tubes
3-CO2 cartridges
1- bike multi tool
extendable tire iron
motrin
eye drops (gonna be hella windy this ride!)
shower cap for the seat
band aids/rubber gloves
handy wipes

A tube of sunscreen hangs from my seat rail.

In my collapsible tote bag (available at Sports basement) at home is my helmet, my bento box with a little bottle of purell and handy wipes, a cowbell (of course!) and my cycling gloves. I'll bring that tote bag with me on Sunday morning, along with water bottles and my gear bag.

The tote bag folds down and zips into itself and has a keychain hook that will attach to my seat! I'll use it each day after parking the bike, to put my helmet and water bottles and whatever else I need to take from my bike to my tent area without dropping...

I think I'm ready! Are you??