Grizzly Peak and forays back in to swimming

Okay, so first post since I have started training!

To start I have already NOT stayed true to my June calendar that I created- but that wasn't completely my fault. Andrew's, my boyfriend, flight from the East coast was delayed a day- causing the already very short period of time that I could see him before he goes back to Thailand for 10 weeks even shorter. Consequently as a surprise he decided to stay til Saturday! YAY! But that also means that I didn't start training until Saturday mid-day. Oh well, that's life.


So Saturday I went to a public pool near my house (the Mission Pool- see above- is quite the San Francisco type of public pool!) to do a 30 minute swim, which was difficult. This was the first lap that I had done in a pool in a year and a half. UGG! It was hard getting back into the swing of things especially with all of those people at the public pool swimming all over the place. Finding my "swimming zone" was nearly impossible.

Any ways, after that I felt pretty down and out- thinking that I was way more out of shape that I had previously thought. Luckily, I had a moderate ride coming up the next day with my Hapa training partner Erica! And she was going to show me the ropes on how to cycle.



Sunday we decided to do a moderate ride up to Grizzly Peak in Berkeley. It is a good beginner ride because while it is constantly up hill til the top the grade isn't constant and averages around 4%. What was great was that I was able to use Erica's boyfriend's bike, a MUCH nicer road bike than I have, and she taught me all about gear changing and the concepts behind it. I am very fortunately to have someone so knowledgeable willing to train with me- or else I would be floating out in cycling never-neverland not knowing what the hell to do!

The ride was also very very beautiful and at the top we were rewarded with some incredible views of the whole bay area.


Here we are enjoying finally making it to the top- Erica (who has done this ride a few times) said that we made pretty good time in getting to the top in 1 hour.

Neither of us felt very depleted after wards either, so that gives me hope that not only are we in a better place than I thought we were, but we are pretty even as far as athletic ability goes.


Here is Erica on the way up :) We are still looking feisty and this was only ten minutes from the top! It was nice to know that the ride didn't kill me and that I wasn't sore after wards.

The way down was a pretty crazy ride. I don't think that I am any where near as comfortable with speed as Erica is- but maybe that will come with time... I took it a bit slow coming down. And scarily enough was almost cremated by a car backing out of their drive way! Ekk!

But to end on a good note we did see a whole hillside populated by goats on the way down and that was a pretty cool way to end the ride!