Bike Forums - TdF Reports

Here's my full report, syndicated from the CAM thread...

Recommended this ride by "Big John", I met up with several BF'ers at Lake Castaic for this ride put on by the Adobo velo club. The ride started with a casual descent from the parking area to the lake entrance, followed by a longish climb up Lake Hughes Road into the Angeles National Forest. The pace started out casual enough with Keith getting ahead on the descent and I moved up to ride with him at the front. We started the climb at a nice easy tempo but then two Cynergy guys came up to the front and increased the pace to a high tempo (for me anyway). Keith said he wasn't going to ride hard and I decided to try to stay with the front so I went ahead with them, and when we got to the top of the climb nobody was around except 5 of us, the two Cynergies, a guy in a Jittery Joe's kit, and a little guy from Mira Mesa Cycling. I still wasn't sure how hard I wanted to go all day and the Cynergy guys were more than happy to push the pace for a while; they traded pulls and the three of us sat on. After we descended into the canyon we had a 12 mile gradual climb up to Lake Elizabeth where we all traded pulls more evenly, although the Cynergy guys took slightly longer pulls than the rest of us. At the rest stop I learned that the Mira Mesa guy was Rafael and the other three were all Johns.

After we checked in we quickly left the stop and that's where the ride got interesting, we took a wrong turn out of the stop and after a few minutes I was concerned we were going the wrong way. We passed the route sheet around but were not convinced until the road changed to the wrong name. So we stopped turned around and headed back. As we passed the rest stop again, the next group of riders were just about leave. We eased off the pace a little bit for a while but one of the Johns got a little bit ahead and the rest of us (well me anyway) were pushing hard to close the gap. Eventually we got to a long descent and Rafael "attacked". We were screaming down the descent and almost missed the next turn, but fortunately one of the volunteers yelled at us :thumb:

After the second stop we had a bunch more climbing with a few rollers at the top and then a descent to Quail Lake where the lunch stop was. We stopped there for maybe 10 minutes and left right as the next group was coming in. Rafael decided to wait for his friends and didn't leave with us, so it was just me and the Johns. I was chatting with one of the Cynergy Johns on the climb out of the lake and we didn't notice that we had gapped the other two. We got to the top and soft-pedaled for a while to let them catch up but eventually we just resumed a normal albeit somewhat casual pace, where we coasted/soft-pedaled down the descents and did tempo up. On the long climb after the "three points" stop (where Rafael had "attacked" on the way down), the John I was riding with was starting to have some difficulty so we eased up a bit. On the descent down toward Lake Hughes road he was bonking and I gave him a bar. Once on Lake Hughes road we had that 12 miles of descent which was nice, but I decided I wanted to try to get back in 6 hours so I pushed the gradual descent, going upwards of 30 for much of it. There were still several climbs and rollers after the descent, but from that corner back to the lake entrance I averaged nearly 23mph with over a thousand feet of climbing :)

Unfortunately the finish was back up the hill that we came down at the start so there was one more climb to finsh things off. I tempo'd up it and rolled into the parking alone. There were a few people that must have abandoned and one of the vounteers at his truck. "Oh you're back" he said :p

Over the next 20 minutes or so the other John's trickled in, then Vance and Keith and others. I cleaned up, enjoyed the food and stuck around for about 2 and half hours to watch others come in until I had to leave to head back to Santa Barbara for my company holiday party. Overall a fun day :D