The Epic Coast Ride

Contributed by Silver Sage Sponsored Reno WheelWoman and O2fitness athlete, Lucie Oren.

A couple of weekends ago, I was on the Calif. coast riding with six of my teammates. We were participating in the Coast Ride and riding our bikes from San Francisco to Santa Barbara in 3 days. This meant an average of 128mi. per day.  Living in Reno with the epic snow we’ve been getting meant most of us have been limited to riding indoor trainers.  Therefore, we all went into this ride with low mileage in the saddle.  But, everyone did so great!  We had two of our own sag vehicles and split the riding days. Three of the girls were rockstars and rode one of the full days!  Despite the near-constant rain and headwinds we had an epic time!

 In addition to minimal mileage, I was still dealing with occasional residual low-back pain. Julie had been carefully leading me through a modified training schedule the weeks prior to the ride due to throwing my back out twice!  I must say, listening to your wise coach is a wise decision!  Julie was concerned about me tackling the mileage; therefore I took full advantage of our sag vehicles by riding half days and sagging the other half.  At the end of the second day, I reluctantly decided to jump in my car with only 18mi. to go, but I could feel the inflammation flaring in my back.  I was so upset at my body and majorly bummed out!  But more importantly, I really didn’t want to mess things up!  Julie had helped me to continue training through the back issues, got me to where I was, and I wanted and needed to come out of this adventure stronger.

 

Now that I’m back in Reno, I’m happy to be back in the gym and continuing the strength training. I even got to ride outside once this past week!  It sure was a nice change from the trainer!