UnfilteredDregs

At least cats are predictably unpredictable. I'm very clear with my rides. I don't like riding with clowns who have their heads rectally-inserted. ride leader calls the shots when it comes to the unpredictables. We're no drop but you can leave if you like. All the expectations are listed in "The Club's" email.

Safety is #1 .

Know the route. Good paceline skills are expected when called upon. Climb as a group if we can, separate as need be, regroup at the top. In the urban environ we ride what I call a cycling version of loose-deuce or a Finger-4, and variations thereof, and whomever is positioned signals & takes/controls the lane dependent upon what the next move is going to be...that takes a bit of familiarity.

It's all about have a good time but keep your SA up.


...and I ran around to a whole bunch of bicycle stores all friggin' day, no ride!!! To try and find the damn stems I need only to come to the conclustion that I need larger than 46mm...So I ordered some 60mm stems which will arrive late this week.

It sucks having new wheels and not being able to ride them!

I had a gnarly burger too:

FLvector

Obviously, LoP needs to work on that area to get rid of that weirdly feeling. Nice report.

2manybikes

I watched a couple of other videos of that lodge too. Looks awesome. Have you been there?

3alarmer

...I have never run away and joined the circus. #buttheresstilltime

Heathpack 

Done. OMG.

I wanted 7:15, I predicted I'd get 7:25.

Wound up with 7:33ish for 73 miles and 10,000ish feet of climbing. The entire ride is something like 114 mi/12000 ft.

Very happy with it, for various reasons, despite not making my goal time. More later or tomorrow.

LAJ

Odd question. Why do you ask?

LAJ

Sweet!

Nice work, @Heathpack!

rjones28 

I was stuck at work too, but I got to build a kid's bike including training wheels for a little guy that was REALLY happy with his new bike.

LAJ

rjones28 

FLvector

Lovin the OMG quote. Good job!

mvnsnd

Great job and strong work!

Rowan

No?

You're here aren't you?

3alarmer

...#wellplayedsir

Ramona_W

Kids who get new bikes, whether they're really new or "gently used", are the best.

Heathpack 

Well that was a tough ride. But everyone says it is easier than the Mulholland Challenge and they are right, it was a bit easier, way less steep stuff.

The ride basically rides around the Redlands area in the San Gabriel Valley for 40ish miles, with two significant climbs. Then it heads 30 miles up hwy 38 to Onyx Summit, which is just south of Big Bear, CA. The climb to Onyx Summit itself had 3 parts, the first 11 miles up to time check 3 which is steady uphill. Then 10ish miles of generally up hill, but with some descents, some steepish climbs and some flats; this area is called Barton Flats. Then the final 10ish mile climb to Onyx Summit, which is pretty much all constant up. That first 11 miles of the climb to Onyx can be notoriously hot, especially the first 6 miles, and this comes right after time check 2. So my basic game plan for the ride was to ride like hell up until time check 2, to get to the beginning of the Onyx Climb by 9:30am, to beat the heat.

We started at 5:55 am, four of us. Me, Steady Steve, a friend of ours, and a friend of our friend. Some short hills, but a lot of flat stuff in the first 20 miles. Tried to set up a paceline but it only worked marginally well. The roads were very bad, it was hard to ride steady with avoiding all the cracked pavement and then the friend of a friend guy didn't fully understand what was happening when I would come off the front, he'd just slow his pace and ride next to me and chat. Lol. Whatever, we were making good time.

The first climb is kind of easy in a way and also kind of hard. Jackrabbit Trail is an unmaintained road, think a mixture of cobblestones and dirt and you'll get the picture. Four mile climb on this stuff but other than the road surface, its not a hard climb, I'd say something like 4.5% average. Mostly people seemed very hesitant on this surface, Steady Steve and I powered along and lost our two friends right at the beginning of JRT, and we pretty much passed everybody we encountered.

A few miles after JRT, we rolled into time check 1 at 7:43am. It opened at 7:45, but they checked us in anyway. Lol, everyone always expects me to figure out pacing on these rides and at the last minute I convinced everyone to start at 5:55 instead of 6am. Whew, that was a lot of pressure, glad I got it right.

After time check 1, we had a pretty good climb coming- Oak Glen, which is 3 miles of gradual stuff, followed by 4 miles of gnarly stuff, ave something like 8% with max 15ish%. False summits and false inclines, its a good one to pre-ride because it kind of messes with your head. I dropped Steady Steve on this climb, was riding pretty strong. But strong people started to pass me here, I'm really a pretty slow climber. Finally we get to the top of Oak Glen and it has a great descent- a few miles of nice technical stuff, then miles of an extended straight or swoopy 7-10% descent. I pass a few people going down this and then get passed by this guy who catches my eye- aero wheels, aero-ish helmet, 10% body fat and only a little bigger than me, maybe has 15 pounds on me. Seems to know what he's doing, so I decide to learn something, I'm going to follow him down the hill and just do what he does.

I do that and its kind of great, he actually does know what he's doing. We get to the straightish bit, he starts coasting and goes full aero, sitting down on the top tube. So I go my version of full aero (which doesn't include sitting on the top tube), I just fold in my wings and tuck in my knees and chin goes on bars. And I'll be damned if I don't start gaining on the guy. Eventually he gets back in his seat and starts pedaling but I'm still gaining on him coasting, so I don't. Then I fly by him, haha that was so awesome to leave that guy in the dust, me coasting and him pedaling. @Hermes is right, behold the power of aerodynamics.

Almost to time check 2, I'm feeling great, even pull some cramping guy a few miles into the time check, there is no stopping me. When I roll out of that time check, I've been riding for 3 hours and 15 min at a normalized power of 85% FTP. That's a really long time for me to hold that kind of power. And only 12 minutes of stopped time. Ahead of my best conceivable pace by 15 minutes. Everything is going way better than planned.

So I start the long climb up Hwy 38. Its 9:30 am and temps are flirting with 85F. I intentionally power down, I have a little time to give and 85F is about my tipping point for heat-related meltdowns when climbing. Still moving along nicely, though, no issues. Then after the first 6 miles, we make a hairpin turn, it gets cooler immediately and only 5 miles to time check 3 at this point. I go to power things back up and I've got nothing. HR fine, not short of breath, but my legs won't produce power. Total ack.

I eventually get to time check 3 and spend 15 minutes there, drink a coke, eat a little something, cool down a bit. And then start the final 20 miles up to Onyx. No more legs for the rest of the day. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought once I got home and looked at the power data, the final 2 hour climb was a NP of 67% FTP. For me, that's not terrible on a big endurance ride like this, although I'd be happier to see 70-73% FTP. But its a long slog, I'm kind of zombie-like in the last hour but just keep on pedaling. I start to see a 7:40 time for this ride and I'm kind of bummed out about it. As much as I'd like that to motivate me, I just can't push the pedals any harder than I am. When I need to stand out of the saddle (to change position because of the extended climb), I get a little light-headed, I have to be careful and only stand for very brief times. In retrospect, I think this was insufficient calories, I think I wasn't eating enough because of the nausea last time. I ate around 2000 calories on a ride that burned over 4000. I could not come up with any good ideas while I was on the bike, my brain wasn't at its sharpest. But thinking about it afterwards, if I were dehydrated or fatigued, I would have expected HR to be elevated and it wasn't- in the 140s all while this was going on. I'll have to see coach's take on it.

Anyway, after expecting 7:40, I get to the top in 7:33 and start to immediately feel better. You are greeted at the top by the Grim Reaper, a role which happened to be played this year by an Adobo Velo member who I know. So he starts shouting "WooHoo, Heathpack, great job!" and everyone I know at the top hears this and starts shouting my name too. Sweet. There is this huge corral of people lounging around on blankets, chatting, everyone tends to hang out at the summit for awhile to recover. The people I know are bad ass people and I get introduced to more people, names I recognize. I realize that I am in some very awesome cycling company, these are really strong riders and I am up here at the summit at the same time as them (admittedly many of them likely started an hour after me). I want to wait for my friends to make it to the top and I wait about an hour for the last one to arrive. Many less bad ass people roll in during this time (still all of them good cyclists, though, they just finished a 30 mile climb after all) and I kind of realize that I have managed to finish at the back of the good pack for once, instead of the front of the bad pack. Nice feeling. So my time wasn't what I wanted and I may not place where I want to. But when I look at these people I'm competing with I can now recognize what kind of depth of experience and endurance some of these women have and how that does not happen in one year or two years. I ran into one friend of mine at the summit, he's 36 years old, good strong double rider and he was telling me that he got a 7:40 time, almost beat his time from a few years ago. Duh, it dawns on me that people do this for years and wind up with essentially the same time I got. I've expecting too much too soon, need to be a little more patient.

So then I zip down the hill, 40 mile descent back to the start. Well, except for that climbing in Barton Flats, which makes me very angry. And a big fat headwind for the last 15ish miles, which wasn't so swell either but not as bad as more climbing was. However when I'm in the non-adverse-condition portion of the descent, I'm just happy and thinking how lucky I am to have bought a bike and to have the opportunity to ride it in these kind of epic event rides. If I could manage to get better at it, that would be total icing on the cake. But just then, flying down that hill, in a beautiful landscape on a bike that moves so nicely, everything just seemed kind of amazingly perfect. Haha, so I guess it was kind of a good ride in the end, despite the zombie-like parts.

Dannihilator

85 miles on Saturday.

datlas 

Well done @Heathpack.

FLvector

Great ride report @Heathpack, really enjoyed the read. You're getting more badass every month. Good stuff.

RollCNY

Nice report, HP.

Trsnrtr

@Heathpack - Chapeau!

LAJ

@Heathpack.

Doing it right.

If your enthusiasm for the bike is waning, you just need to read that ride report.

Velo Vol 

Seek help.

Velo Vol 

You just happen to have baby food?

I noticed some a friend had at church. I don't recall the flavor but it sounded pretty nasty.

Oh?

I've hiked up to it twice but never stayed overnight.

I'm not much of an outdoors person. I don't think I have tent camped this millennium.

It's kind of expensive (in my opinion, compared to camping) and you have to reserve well in advance. So the weather is going to be a wildcard unless you go June-September, and even then you might get a wet, cold day.

Great views, though, if you get a clear day.

Velo Vol 

He has an unusual and diverse job history.

Epic.