The wine country is beautiful and the Bay Area is lucky to be so close to Napa and Sonoma. I biked to Napa and back this past weekend and had a stellar ride. I’m working to get up and out of the house early to get used to riding in the dark and being tired when I start riding. The dark hours on the 30for30th are going to be the toughest and I don’t want to be surprised by them.  Not to mention I like to get home early to spend a little more time with my family on the weekend. That said I was on the road at 5:30 on my way to Napa. The ride from southern Marin County to Napa is good but not great, unfortunately I had to ride for a section on the dreaded route 37, aka Blood Alley (don’t tell my wife). The shoulder is huge on this section of 37 and if you can deal with cars passing you five feet away at 70+ miles an hour it’s not that bad. Although, there is one bridge that completely bugs me out with no shoulder and a tiny maybe foot and a half wide curb. I’ve encountered this brief section before and was ready.  If you time it right with the traffic it’s not that bad, but needless to say, it ain’t fun. The biggest challenge of the day was finding coffee! I got to Napa about 9AM, rode through town quickly, scarfed some snacks and turned right back around. Napa was dead quiet on a Sunday morning, I guess everyone’s sleeping off their wine hangovers. On my training rides I’ve been pushing it hard to get my heart rate up and give my legs a seriously solid work out. I think this hard approach to training rides will help a lot for the actual event. Just so we’re clear, I’m not trying to break any speed or mileage records, I just want to bike for 30 hours, that’s all. So, the idea is to conserve, manage my body and exersion levels for 30 hours. That is the goal.  On the ride to Napa I downed quite a bit of food and drink. Eating is the key, I have to eat eat eat in order to make this happen. Literally every 15 minutes I need some form of caloric intake, preferably carb based to sustain my energy for that long period of time. Eating and riding is an art and the food tastes so good while you ride.


All in all it was an excellent ride to Napa, right at 90 miles roundtrip, I felt strong, saw some beautiful scenery in perfect weather and got more excited about the 30for30th ride. Let’s do this!

Turning 30 feels kinda weird. I guess I'm trying to do something to deflect or minimize the weird. I turn 30 on April 3rd 2010 and instead of going on a bender and wonder what happened to my 20's I'm going to get on my bike and wonder what happened to my 20's. To ring in the 3rd decade of life I plan on biking for 30 hours straight. Stupid? Possibly. Possible? I don't know. I won't know until I get on my bike. Right now I know the hardest thing will be dealing with the saddle, it's going to be a battle with my brain and the spot that connects me with the bike. I've done long, challenging rides before, in the summer of 2007 I biked with my college roommate Brent Maddog Thomas across the country from the Outer Banks in my birth state of North Carolina to San Francisco where I currently live, overall we biked 68 days and almost 4,000 miles, raising $11,500 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation in the process. That said, the longest day while riding across the country was probably 14-15 hours and those were some monster days, one of them was in Kansas, ahh Kansas... Add 15-16 more hours to that and biking through the night and now we're talking serious challenge. I don't really know exactly "why" I'm doing it, I guess the best answer is because I want to. I know I'll learn something that's for sure and I figure that's the most important thing anyone can take from anything, is learning something you didn't know before. I have no idea what to expect, how I'll feel, what I'll hallucinate, but I think I can do it, so I'm gonna try. 

My buddies Brent and Micah ran 30 miles together on their 30th's this past October, which is pretty awesome. Brent is going to accompany me through the night which will be super helpful because that's when I'll be digging deep.I'm excited, nervous and really ready for the rainy season to be over...I plan to raise a bit of money for charity leading up to the ride, I'll have more details on that soon. 

Check in here to see what's going on, I'll be posting stories, gear, thoughts and insight as I prep for this gnarly adventure. 6 weeks to go. I can't wait.  

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