mvnsnd

I see more trees than boulders

Nice picture! And nice ride!

Bunyanderman

Count to be sure.

Heathpack 

2015 Grand Tour Double Century, Mixed Highland Lowland Route, which turned out to be 209 miles actually and 8000 ft climbing


15.8 mph moving pace, pedaling time 13:12, around 2.5 hours of stopped time, 5500 calories burned, way less than that consumed, TSS 813, IF 0.74 (translation this kind of means I rode this mostly at a tempo pace and racked up approx an entire week's worth of training stress in one day)

As I posted, previously, that was a very interesting experience. I have been ambivalent about continuing with double riding because a lot of the people are against being competitive, riding hard, and riding in a smart, strategic way. I've talked to my totally bad-ass endurance friend David aka 600k about this and he says my problem right now is that my brain- the way in which I think about these rides, the way in which I prepare, what I want to happen on them- is currently ahead of my physical abilities. So I'm getting frustrated with the people I'm riding with because they have my physical abilities as me but are not thinking about the rides in the same way as I am. But he says to hang in there because I'm improving at a rapid clip and so close to being able to ride with like-minded people. Then I will love it and he thinks do very well.

Anyway, last week I scouted a TT course with my friend Ed, a guy I met on the Dead of Winter Double, and have kept in touch with. He talked me into riding the Grand Tour, which goes from Malibu, north along the PCH, then inland for some climbing finishing on the coast in Carpenteria and then back down the PCH to the Malibu start. Its an ok route, I've ridden 90% of it before in various rides. Anyway, Ed said it would be fun to ride together. I got up with some mutual friends and we put together a group that was a re-union of the four of us who rode the DOW together- me, Ed, Jerold and Gee. Plus some newbies they were mentoring. I figured it would be a slow and easy day, fine by me. I was talked into it, these are all Adobo Velo peeps.

We meet up at the start, roll time is 5am. Everyone is ready to go except Gee, he and his two newbies are late, just arrived. Ed doesn't want to wait and we roll. We are thinking they'll just be a little behind us but Gee in particular is very strong and fast, we figure we'll dawdle at rest stops and they'll catch us.

We start on the PCH, rollers but easy with fresh legs. Ed brought an experienced double friend, this guy named Jim, and we are riding well. Then we turn inland and hit the first climb, the Portero Wall, nasty thing. Its long, around 7 or 8 miles. The length is not the issue because it starts very gradually- maybe a 2 or 3% grade. But is just keeps getting steeper and steeper, until you get to the Wall, which is around 15-17% for about 1/3 mile. Brutal. It was really hard and I was really slow up this. But this was the first time I went up something this steep and my legs didn't hurt. Sure I couldn't really breath that well, but my legs were fine. Nice, just feels like all this hard work is getting me somewhere.

Beyond that, a couple of rest stops and lots of ups and downs but generally up until the next climb around mile 80, Grimes Cyn. Theres a few miles of steady climbing to get to that, not steep, and Grimes is pretty easy at 5% for maybe 1.5 miles. Then a very fun long technical descent. Its hot going up that and shadeless, but I beat the boys to the top. They both pass me on the descent and then we have about 15 miles of rollers until the next climb up to the town of Ojai (pronounced "Oh hi," with the accent on Oh. This comment is added for @RollCNY's benefit). The headwinds are bleak in this section, around 10 mph. And its hot, like riding through a blow dryer. The boys are a little ahead of me, working together in the wind. I'm working hard to try to catch them, but unless they slow down a bit to let me catch a wheel, this will be impossible. I see them merge with a larger paceline and I'm convinced any minute they'll realize they've left me alone out in the wind, so I'm working really hard to try to stay close enough that I'll be able to get back to them once they figure it out. This goes on for 10 miles and they are just getting farther and farther away. I finally realize that Ed has dropped me and doesn't give a $hit and I am angry. (Lol, winds always make me angry too.) Now, I know that I talk about dropping people all the time. But the truth is I don't drop people who will wind up solo when I do. I don't drop people in adverse weather conditions. And I don't drop people illogically, I drop them when what is happening means that can't hang for the duration. But the issue wasn't that I couldn't hang, if they had slowed for just a few minutes and allowed me on, we would have all benefited from the paceline and made a better overall speed. This is the stupid stuff on these endurance rides that I can't stand, it just makes no sense.

Eventually I catch them because Ed left his water bottle at the previous rest stop and needed to stop at a store for water before the climb to Ojai. They are just finishing at the stop when I roll up and say, "Hey, if you guys had slowed down briefly, I could have caught a wheel and contributed to your paceline instead of being out there battling the winds by myself for 15 miles." I'm fully expecting a sincere apology and a disclaimer that he didn't realize that I was off the back. Nope, he says, "Well, I'm ready to roll now". OMG, seriously? Decision made, I can probably find better random people to ride with out on this course than Ed. Lol, the only exception being that he knows the course better than I, I didn't really study it that hard because I was riding with Mr Experience.

Next climb is 8-9 miles, but not hard, I think 4% ave grade. Its just long and hot, but some clouds have rolled in and there is merciful cover plus a bit of shade on this one. I easily beat both the boys up that climb, was pretty determined to chick the hell out of them at this point. I roll into the lunch stop around 1pm and I'm starving. There's a zillion Adobo Velos there and I'm trying to assess the crowd to see if there's anyone it makes sense to ride with. I grab a bite to eat and chat some people up, but no one really makes sense. Then I see 600k's friend, one of the guys he was supposed to be riding with, but no 600k. I go ask him, "Hey, where's David, why are you here without him?" It turns out, he crashed at mile 10, stood to pedal and his chain slipped, he went down and then got run over by one of his friends. Briefly lost consciousness, plus jacked up his right shoulder and ribs, and a little road rash. He refused the ambulance though and is riding, their other friend is with him. Wut? He actually rolls into this stop while I am still there, despite starting an hour later than me and crashing. I try to talk him into SAGing out and going to an ER. He refuses though and is very stubborn, the more people push him, the more adamant he will become about finishing, so I drop it. I do see him again at the end and he is driving himself over to the ER. After 190 miles of riding with whatever injuries he has.

Also at the lunch stop, I find out Jerold and Gee's group had a crash too. Just a guy pulling off the road into a driveway to take off his vest. Wheel hit the curb funny, he went down and badly broke his wrist, badly enough that he had surgery on it yesterday. So they are way way behind too.

I finally take off after lunch, solo. I figure I'll look for people to ride with out on the course. I spot a guy in a CTC (California Triple Crown) Hall of Fame Jersey, which means he's ridden 50 doubles. He's not too fast and not viable to continue to ride with too long. But interesting to talk to for 20 minutes of post-lunch digestion riding. They we get swept up into a fastish paceline of what I at first think are Brazilans, because there's a logo on their jerseys that says Vivo Brazil. I ask one of the guys about it and he says Nope, we're Mexican, out of Chula Vista, we're just sponsored by a Brazilian beer company. They are very organized and reasonably fast, communicating well, behaving like a rational paceline. I try to be polite and just grab the back, but there's a guy in the rear who's obviously a sweeper, he puts me in second from the end. Eventually, I'm a fully functional member of their paceline and its really fun, sometimes we're in a double paceline and I can chat with the group, everyone is super nice. They have their own private SAG van too, I have latched on to a serious gravy train. It turns out they are from this group: Ride With Javi - Home And it is Javi himself who is riding SAG. They eventually make what seems to be a wrong turn, I ask about it, but they pull out their route sheets, they're sure its right. I continue 7ish miles slightly down hill before I think to ask, 'Hey you guys are on the Highland Double, right?' Nope they are on the Lowland version of the event. Now I'm off course, no route sheet for the lowland course. My options are to stick with the Mexicans or turn around and climb back up to my route. I decide to stick with the Mexicans, we are having fun.

Eventually we miss a turn, so we stop, and they are all talking about it in Spanish. I know the area, so I try to help. There is a bit of a language barrier with a few people who are convinced that I am 'helping' based on my highland route sheet, they don't realize that I'm now looking at their route sheet. I get the group rolling and we go four blocks when we stop again. Some of the group are still convinced I'm leading them astray. So now there's a 20 minute discussion about it is Spanish, with me occasionally interjecting, 'We're two more blocks from your course, I can take you there.' One of the guys is particularly adamant that we back track and find the correct route. FINALLY, the group convinces the unbeliever to just trust me and roll. So we do. And then someone gets a flat. Ay, Chihuahua.

But I'm sticking with them because in order for me to get at least 200 miles, I have to complete the lowland route and the next phase of that course is to head about 10 miles north up the PCH before turning around and heading for home, a direction that usually has pretty good headwinds. Nice pacelining up the next rest stop and good thing I waited, its very windy, from the northwest. We roll into the rest stop and I'm hanging with the Mexicans eating a Cup o Noodles when Gee rolls in. I am SO glad to see him. It turns out he took the stronger newby and Jerold kept the slower ones and waited for the ambulance. They picked up two guys from the Vegas chapter, so they have a nice little group. I tell my Mexicans that I found my Adobos and am going to ride with them, thank them for including me and let them compliment their pacelining skills. They ask me to tell Javi that, so they introduce me to the boss and I give them some props. He tells me they're going to actually be having a little meeting, he saw too many gaps opening up in their paceline and needs to discuss it with them, lol. I'm kind of glad I'm leaving at this point.

Gee and the Vegas guys are super-strong, and the newby and I are barely holding on. But we're pacelining at 20-22 mph making good time. About 15 miles from the final rest stop, we pick up a man and a woman, Paul and Margaret, riding together. They grab our wheels but are not total wheel suckers, they are good riders and useful too. Once, I fell off the back, and the guy, Paul, rides in front of me and tells me that he's going to pull me back up to my guys, its imperative that I hold on because they are very strong and once I'm off, there's no getting back on. Very helpful for him to get all three of back to the group and I do hang on until the rest stop.

This is the final stop, about 40 miles from the finish. Paul and Margaret sit down with us at the stop and we're chatting. It turns out they're two of a four-man relay team (team Moab) that just finished Race Across the West last week, which is 800 miles from Oceanside CA to Durango CO, with 40000+ feet of climbing. They did very well, finished second overall and first in their division. They are drafting off us because they're still very, very tired. Margaret is actually an Adobo Velo member and she rides mostly doubles with the serious Adobos and we actually have a few mutual friends. Their crew chief from RAW is riding the 400 mile version of the Grand Tour and they are going to finish the double, then stay up the rest of the night crewing for him and a friend of his for their mile 300-400 leg. Their former crew chief, Tony, is a very bad-ass AV who is riding the 400 on his single speed, BTW.

While at the rest stop, Margaret and I head to the ladies room, they are getting ready to roll. I'm thinking I might just roll with them, I was having trouble hanging with Gee. They say I am most welcome and when I get out of the restroom I can't find Gee anyway. Jeez, ditched again? So Paul and Margaret and I head out to the bikes and Gee rolls up, he had just ridden out to find a lost Adobo and bring him into the rest stop. I tell Gee that I'm going to head out with Team Moab but when the Adobos breeze past us, I'm going to try to catch their wheel again. He's fine with that.

But they never catch us, because one block out of the rest stop, we get passed by a fast trio. There's a bunch of stop lights in this section and Team Moab is discussing trying to catch the wheel of this group. The trio seemed a little too strong but we decide to go for it. Great decision. This group is led by some dude in an orange jersey, I never even got his name. His first double and the guy pulls the rest of us the entire 40 miles to the finish. He is just completely solid, holds a perfectly straight line and a perfectly steady pace, a thing of real beauty. Towards the end, there's a succession of short steepish hills and I'm tired, I'm assuming I'm going to be dropped at some point. But nope, I hang on. I even pull a little, not on purpose but just because I almost always pass people on long straight descents and we have a few of those, I wind up at the front a few times and figure I might as well give Mr Orange a bit of a break since I'm there anyway, just a couple of minutes.

Really awesome and fun ride. When I get home, I google Team Moab and get Margaret's last name, which I recognize from the Queen of the Mountain series. I actually finished one place ahead of her in that series and beat her in all three events. I am shocked by this. Who, me? She has tons more experience than me and much more depth of endurance riding, she knows how to get it done, she is definitely a stronger and more complete endurance cyclist than me. But still, its amazing to me that someone riding those QOM events in essentially the same time as me was able to compete in the RAW and do well. Haha, makes it seem like there is hope for me yet.

rjones28 

Good stuff @Heathpack.

Trsnrtr

Is that euphemism for some weird bike thing?

LesterOfPuppets

Ramona and I did the nekkid bike ride last night. It took a while to get underway since I'd earlier trimmed about 5" of front shifter housing off the tandem, but when I was hooking the cable back up, I had it snagged under one of the tensioner pulley bolts, so we had to get that sorted out first. I figured we were leaving way early so no biggie.

This was my first time piloting the tandem across the I-5 bridge and it has some tight S-curves with high concrete walls on both sides, so I adviced Ramona to keep her arms and legs inside the vehicle. It went well, though, no scraped elbows or anything. Ramona seems a little bothered that I won't tell her how we're gonna get there. When she asks which way we're going, I just say "generally due south". Really need to get a tablet mounted on the stoker bar so she can navigate (even though I'd likely ignore most route suggestions ).

We only get a couple miles into Portland before we see our first nude cyclist. I think some people just celebrate the whole day that way, not just the organized rides!

I start to get a little concerned about time when I realize it's sundown (which is a little after supposed ride start time) and we're still about 3 miles from the park where the event starts.


Pic by Ramona.

Then we get stuck at a crossing waiting on a SLOWWW train. The only solution is for me to portage the Hi-Ten wonder tandem up a couple flights of stairs to get up to the Hawthorne bridge deck which passes over the tracks. No big deal, though, since I portage the tandem up and down our apartment stairs for every ride.

As we're headed up off the river towards the start location a buncha kids wearing wings ask us which way to the NBR and I just say I dunno, it's up here some where. They decide "We're gonna follow the tandem!!!"

We get up near the park and it looks like people are already staging up behind an intersection on the way in, so we do the same. I was kinda curious what the park scene was like but I didn't really feel like pushing the tandem through that zoo. We're sitting there for what seemed like about an hour before the ride actually launched. That allowed time for Ramona to hit up a gaggle of ladies for some gold glitter, though!

Eventually we started moving but it was just inching along, I was riding skateboard style, left foot on a pedal, right foot pushing us down the road. After a few minutes of that we were finally rolling.

(to be continued) (whew, typing up a Heathpackian ride report is exhausting!)

LesterOfPuppets

Egads, I gotta go get some halfnhalf. Almond coconut milk in coffee is the stupidest thing ever!

BillyD

@Heathpack Nice report.

Yes, that's pretty long for you, Les. Nice report. Love the photo.

WhyFi

I'm so glad that this:

only went here:

LesterOfPuppets

Hahaha. I was lamenting having unshaven legs for such a serious cycling event as we were leaving the apartment.

And was also implying lack of other manscaping...

Doug28450

Mr. datlas

I apologize for my comment about you leaving patients sitting in the waiting while you post on the interweb.

rjones28 

Ew.

Trsnrtr

Did a very relaxing trike ride with 4 friends this morning. Of all my machines, the trike is without a doubt the most relaxing thing on wheels.

Trsnrtr

Looking out the window at the rain and wondering if we will ever see 24 hours straight without rain.

rjones28 

I think it's supposed to stop raining for a little while on Thursday.

mvnsnd

Excellent ride report HP!

LAJ

I agree with @mvnsnd, @Heathpack. Awesome read, and a great job!

datlas 

No need to apologize. It's all ok.

datlas 

Did my club's annual Cancer benefit ride. Was with a medium size group (15ish riders) most of the ride. About mile number 45 of 65, we hit some choppy and rocky pavement and I hear a loud snap! And my front tire is flat. I got to work fixing it. Only two guys waited for me, the rest kept rolling. No shard in the tire so put in new tube and inflate. SNAP! Now I see, there is a 1cm sidewall cut. One of the other guys has a rubber boot so tube #2 plus boot and we are rolling. We took turns, the 3 of us, the last 20 miles and rolled into the finish around 5 minutes after the bigger group.

Still, an excellent rude.

datlas 

It's good for the corn, yes?

Heathpack 

Thanks @rjones28, @mvnsnd, and @LAJ.

I have a question for @LesterOfPuppets about the nekkid bike ride. How does that work, vis a vis contact points with the saddle? Because what I'm imagining doesn't actually sound that fun.

rjones28 

Epic

FLvector

Good to hear you were able to roll in to finish. At least you had a few hold back to assist and not leave you on your own.

I had a flat on Saturday's wet ride. As I rolled into the break point I had trouble making a hard turn and thought I was going to lose traction. Didn't realize until time to remount that the tire was soft at that point and now flat. A quick tube replacement and good to go. Wasn't able to see what caused it until closer inspection later, but luckily made it back fine.

Trsnrtr

Not if the field looks like a lake.

LesterOfPuppets

I kept my briefs on, so no problemo. I think full monty would be easy too, as long as you don't have massive saddle to bar drop.

Next year I might go full nude, even shoeless. Well, probably keep the helmet on - Seems like there's about 10% sketchy riders compared to maybe 2% sketchy riders on other group rides. Gotta have a lid when navigating some of that nonsense!