Faster

Today was the "fast" ride, and I was doing really well untill somehow I ended up in the second spot and then pulling. I think we were a little over thirty consistently for at least a minute or two. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, (and to these guys, its not) but a minute can be a very long time depending on what you are doing. So we hit a light and then I cracked, and then I was chasing with some other people, going 25 for what seemed to be forever. I kept thinking in terms of Loxahatchee. I don't know.

What I do know is that I need to put on a little more muscle in order to keep up with these guys. Their season is winding down though, so I may have a chance to do what most cyclists around the world do all winter. No, not eat a lot of cheese. I mean, get into the gym!

So we finally caught up, but I got dropped on the incline to the finish again. It's cool though. I have long term goals in mind here.

Griffith Park vs the Card Sound Bridge

I've been very curious about this for some time now. How does what I'm doing out here compare to stuff we did in Florida? What's the index of toughness? Here is a chart illustrating how the toughest climb in Florida measures up to the standard climb here. In Florida, our only measure of a tough climb would be bridges and/or overpasses. The toughest of which is arguably the Card Sound Road Bridge connecting mainland Florida with the Keys. The climb up one side of that bridge is 65 feet in .25 miles.

In contrast the Griffith Park climb (up to the observatory) in LA is about 630 feet in 2.25 miles. It's average rate of climb is 70 feet every .25 miles. (I go up to the observatory, down the other side and then turn around and go back up again, but i'm only counting the firt part here.)

In conclusion, the first part of my Griffith Park ride is roughly equal to climbing up the Card Sound Bridge 9 times.

Oh, and please let me add that I'm getting schooled out here on a regular basis, mostly for lack of muscle power. More on that later...

Ouch

Slept in today, and decided to do the Griffith Park ride. Just got the bike back from the shop so it was humming nicely. The climb gets shorter and shorter every time I do it, but today I could teel the week had taken it's toll on me. Just getting into the park hurt me. Once I started climbing though, everything seemed okay again. My heart rate was visibly lower, by about 5 to 7 beats than the first two times I had done the climb, so that was quite promising.

Descended the other side, and was turning around at the bottom to go back up again when the bike slide out from underneath me. I have no idea what happened. A little water, a little loose dirt, and there you have it. I've got two very nice reminders, one on my upper back thigh, and the other on the outside of my calf. Left leg, thank God.

Bike's fine, with the exception of one little scar on the shifter. And then we did the climb again.

I kept thinking about the whole wire-brush thing. (Racers commonly have to scrub out their wounds with a wire brush after a fall, in order for the wound to heal right, especially during a multi-stage race.) Luckily I don't own a wire brush. But showering hurt pretty bad just the same.

Momentum

In addition to doing monster rides this week, I've also had a lot of things happening on the job front. Today marks two and a half weeks of freelancing at JWT, and I just finished a big project for Dreyer's Ice Cream for them. Nice people. (Although can you imagine mean people making ice cream?) The good news is that the job seems to be indefinite, and they have me working on other stuff as well now.

In other news, I had two seperate requests for salary needs today, one from a recruiter in NY who is helping me with Ignited Minds, and another from the in-house recruiter at Deutsch. I told them that I wouldn't work for less than a million a year plus bonus and severence.

And of course, Chiat still lingers...

All of these opportunities (including the freelance) have been made directly possible by former collegues. Right on, collegues, right on.

Smoked...

Actually, smoldering might be more appropriate.

I did my second race ride this week, this time up a canyon in Brentwood called Mandeville. A name that will be forever burned into my head as a synonym for "pure evil". The ride starts out with ever-so-gentle "warm up lap" and then starts the 5 mile climb up a rather secluded street. The ride is very deceiving. It starts out gentle. It's beautiful, picturesque, a nice street in a nice neighborhood with tall trees. You might even think you are in a park. But then it gets a little steeper. And then a little steeper. Meanwhile the pace is getting faster and faster. People are attacking. Think Mike's ride but uphill. I lasted with the lead group about a third of the way. Then slipped to group 2. Then to some guy's wheel. At two thirds, it was all I could do to hang on. But I did. There was a guy from my office in the lead group, and I wasn't going to let him pass me, still struggling, on his way down.

At the last two hundred meters do you want to know what happened? It got steeper. Stand-up-or-fall-down steep. And there's everyone up at the top of this cul-de-sac, waiting.

Yeah.

So I get up there, with a little bit of pride left, rest a moment, and then we all take off back down the canyon. When we got to the bottom, do you want to know what happened?

We turned around and did it again.

Now I think I know pain, but wait... it's not over. I follow my friend back down, and he and another guy and a girl turn off to do a different canyon. When the girl ask my friend the name of this one, he said, "pray". "And don't look up."

I'd like to tell you that I made this one. But from the outset it was so steep that I couldn't stay in the saddle. And I was going so slow out of the saddle that I thought I was going to fall over. I gave up shortly after I started to zip-zag across the road. I have more dignity than that. The others just floated on up...

Here's the best part:

I see my friend, Matthias, at work, and he asks what happened to me. I said, "I ran out of gears", and we got to talking about gear selection. I was convinced he and the others had compacts or something. Nope. I was incredulous. He laughed and said "maybe you need to get more fit!" I was crushed.

I think he sensed this from my heavy stare off into space, and he followed up by saying that it was my first time and that I did really well, especially for having very little hill training. "Now you have a goal!" he said cheerily.

Yes, now I have goal.

Take one guess...

La Grange

I did the LaGrange bike club's "fast" ride this morning. About 30 riders, 26 miles. Nice warm up, 3 sprint points, but pretty tricky course. No a lot of room to wiggle. Speed greatly depended. I think the Fla rides were tougher, because they were more consistently straight. This ride did a lot of starting and stopping and turning. But I will say there's nothing like going from being stopped at a light to 33.5 mph in 10 or 25 seconds. We spent a lot of time at 25, 28, and 30. The sprints get going at 33 and I think the guys who are winning must be topping out at least at 35-36.

They really bad part is the end, where the last two miles are on a gentle incline. "Gentle" means you are now going 22-24 uphill, as opposed to 30 flat. Not what I call fun exactly. Which makes me very curious about tomorrow, being that the same group rides up a mountain.

Stay tuned...

Friday Night, sponsored by a Major International Corporation

Last night I got to hang out with some very good friends who were in town editing. We ate at a super cool restaurant that has apparently recieved some celeb recommendations. It was pretty darn good, I must admit, and the best part of all was that the client picked up the whole tab. Not only did the client pick up the tab for dinner, but the client also bought us a drink afterwards. I thought it was very nice of them.

Just in case you are reading this and bemoaning the fact that agency people (and their lucky friends) have dinner and drinks and expense it, you should try living on location for two or three weeks sometime. You live the client and the idea 20 hours a day. And that's just once you get there. There's pre-production, and post-production as well. Look, there are a lot of people out there that abuse it, absolutely. But we're not talking about people who throw parties on the clients tab. We're talking about very hard-working people that give up a lot of their time in order to make multi-national brands grow and flourish. I think the occasional dinner and drink with a friend is pretty fair compensation. Especially if that friend is me.

Griffith Park

Thursday after work, I had the pleasure of riding up to the Griffith Park observatory. Beautiful climb, nice road, and at sunset it was extra special. I think its about 7 or 800 feet in two miles and a half miles. In one of the photos, if you look closely, you can see downtown.

My alter-ego

I'm really not this cool in real life.

Tour of California

Where do I start?

I again joined my new friends at the San Fernando Valley Bike Club this morning, and went with the intermediate fast group this time. Much better. But definitely harder. Lets start at the end of the ride, where I am going 13 miles and hour, have nothing in my legs, nothing in my water bottles, and pretty much want to die. (Okay the ride really ends about 10 miles from our cars, so it wasn’t critic that I go fast at that point, but still...)

From the start, things we a little quicker today. About 18-20 miles an hour to the base of our first climb. Climbing with these guys definitely didn’t feel like levitation. Not when they were passing me. 1000 feet over two miles again, and I finished about in the middle. As I began to descend, I remembered from last week how bad the road was, but still somehow I managed to hit a pothole going forty miles and hour. My front tire exploded, and my bike seemed to explode beneath me. I always wondered what this would be like, and now I knew. Not fun.

The important thing to remember when your front tire explodes is not to slam on the brakes. I ever-so-gently slowed the bike down and pulled off, and then changed what seems to be my fourth or fifth tire in a week. (Different story.) By this time everyone had passed me and gone down the hill, so I proceeded to try to catch up. At the bottom I started hauling, in the upper twenties, and close to thirty a few times. I seem to be hitting that number more and more. I remember when 30 was this “magical” threshold. I ended up catching them, and we continued on – through the rolling hills of Thousand Oaks, Hidden Valley, and Westlake. There were breakaways up hills, and sprints on the flats, and everything you could ask for, including stops for water every 30 miles or so.

At the first of these stops, we pull up to a Carl’s Jr. (Like Wendy’s) We get our water, and go outside and we are all laughing because the was a girl inside with her two little kids, and one of them had a t-shirt on that read, “my mom’s hot”. And she was, but come on... So we’re laughing about that when some guy opens the door of the Carl’s with plastic bag full of pills and asks, “did someone drop this?”. Obviously it was some guys vitamins, but the significance and awkwardness of the situation was too much for us. We all died laughing and dubbed the episode “Operation Carl’s Jr.”.

Now were rolling through Hidden Valley (which is full of ranches incidentally) and Blaze and I have found ourselves up front after a small climb. All of a sudden four guys fly by, and I join them. We are pulling 28-30 through this flat area, with wind. Guy peels off, I’m up next and I go... 32...33...34...34.5... I hit the wall there and came back down, and was saved by a traffic light. But I think everyone thought I could keep going. That was nice.

We stopped for Jamba Juice at 55 or so. I got lots of questions about florida. I talk about you guys a lot. The guys here can’t understand how I got so good without any hills. In fact they can’t really understand what we do down there... Maybe one day we can educate them.

Next up was the same ride up into the Santa Monica mountains/Mullholland area, this time four of us, Blaze included. I did worse today. I think by this time I was really drained. I think difference may be sleep. Last weekend I was still wasn’t working. I also did about 75 miles total this week, riding to work and with a group Friday morning. Lesson learned.

I got dropped on the last climb again, this time a bit sooner I think. I almost got dropped earlier, but in true Zmotion fashion, I saw myself cracking and falling behind, and decided to sprint instead.

At the end, riding back into the valley, I had consumed three 24 ounce bottles of Accelerade, I bottle of water, two gels, I clif bar, and a medium Jamba Juice. And I was still dehydrated. Crazy.

I was invited to do a a double metric century next weekend, but I have to find a ticket, which may be tough. I have a funny feeling I’m going to be riding a lot here. I found another club that does race rides during the week, so I’m going to try for Tuesdays and Wednesdays with them. Plus a Friday recovery ride... Puts me back at 170, 180 per week.

Wish me luck.

Warming up

This week concludes my first week back at a full time job since I left Zimmerman in March. I'm freelancing, true, but this time I'm actually working in an office with other people, not out of my apartment in my underwear. (You may say too much info, but those who freelance out of their home, know what I'm talking about...) I have say a few things about my latest job, because it may be relevant for those of you looking to move on to bigger and better things.

I'm freelancing at a small, specialized department of a big agency. It's not necessarily the type of work I want to make a career out of, but it's advertising, and its a paycheck. I had some apprehension about going in on Monday, but I didn't have anything to lose, so I went.

First thing monday morning, they show me to my seat. Everyone in the office sits in Herman Miller Aeron chairs, and works on 23 inch Cinema Displays. I check to see what the tower is packing. Dual 2.5 Gig. Nice. IT and HR contact me and help me set up, all remotely. Immediately, I have email, extranet, etc. The office buys lunch the first day. There are doughnuts on Tuesday. Thursday the entire office complex has lunch catered. Friday there are bagels.

Everyone comes to work at 9am. I came in early on Friday at 8, and found the office suite locked.

Everyone leaves at 5.

No one yells. No one cries. Everyone is happy. Friday morning, one of the Sr. VP's had a small tantrum because some client hadn't been taken care of. I thought, "Finally! Some action!"

Two days ago I presented some work to the creative director, and told him that I thought a line I had might make for a good tagline. His eyes got really big, and you know what? He got excited! I've never been happier. Over a silly little tagline.

It really is a very different world out there. I remember Bree telling me about this but I couldn't quite grasp it. I came to this place to freelance and get re-introduced to the mainstream advertising world.

I ended up finding a little piece of unexpected heaven. Regardless of how long this lasts I'm really thankful to have the opportunity to get warmed up. To do a little advertising exercise. Some light spinning if you will.

Good people, good atmosphere, respect for employees and professional work. It sure doesn't get the respect it deserves.