95 mile bike ride and training status

I got my bike tuned up this Wednesday and it is nice. The gears were all degreased, the brakes aligned, the tires trued, and my computer fixed. So this Saturday it was a joy to ride.

Went off and did crazy 95 mile bike ride, here's the route (kinda) via Google Maps.

We started at the Sports Basement in the Presidio, over the Golden Gate Bridge, down into Sausalito, up Camino Alto into Fairfax. We went up White Hill? and then up some other hill into Nicasio Square. At that point it was 28 miles.

I went with Kamal to do a 30 mile loop which started with this one hill, up and over till we got to Marshall Wall. Now Marshall Wall is a bitch of a hill and there's even chalk marks of "Go Tyler" for Tyler Hamilton on the road. It's just long and steep but with very beautiful views at the top.

So down the other side of Marshall Wall, passed by Hog Island Oyster company, over to Point Reyes Station and then back to Nicasio and back to San Francisco. 95 miles is a long way to go and wasn't really up for it but I felt pretty good. I guess there was about 8,000 feet of climbing involved too, possibly more. Kamal says 10,000 but that doesn't really matter to me.

I have 2 1/2 hour run tomorrow and then recovery week in Cancun, Mexico! Haven't been able to train much during the week because of work but it sure is nice to be able to know I have a good enough base to take on a 95 mile bike ride on a whim.

open source as a consumer product attribute

Should "open source" be a consumer product attribute? It would apply to Firefox, Thunderbird, Linux desktop, other software on the Linux desktop like Evolution.

What would "open source" imply? How about:
– quality/stability (tested by hundred of thousands of people)
– secure (still dependent on management of security issues)
– innovative (collective brain-power tackling new concepts)
– collaboration
– standards
– community based AND commercial support options

I feel like "open source" already means all of the above so let's get it to stick!

What should "open source" not imply? How about:
– free (as in the software is free, lots of confusion here)
– anti-business or capitalism
– IP nightmare
– "volunteers" (people who are unpaid), this essentially becomes unreliable, unsustainable

Well, given that quick little exercise it sounds like "open source" is something we do want to use as an attribute. Other companies like Yahoo and Google and such who do use open source products/solutions on the server-side should do it too. Just about everyone uses bugzilla and lots of companies are on the LAMP server-stack. That screams we're spending money on the right things.

Also, speaking more about the testing community and that process, will hopefully establish "open source" as the more reliable solution.

healthy again

Well my foot feels like it's back. If you bike for four hours one day and run for 2 hours the next day, then one can assume your foot's healthy. I had stubbed my toe in the pool plus ran in some new shoes a little too long. That screwed me up for a bit and I haven't been running.

Anyhow, last Saturday's bike ride was pretty brutal. Up Claremont ave, a 40-45 minute climb, over to 3 Bears (1.5 hours), up Wildcat Canyon (25 minute climb), and up the nasty South Park Drive (20 minute climb). My 2 hour run on Sunday wasn't all that except that I almost wimped out in doing it at all. Ironman Canada is five months away (in August) so still plenty of time.