Matthew’s ALC8 Blog

Just wanted to thank everyone who has donated.  Today I just reached the minimum required for riding (and a bit past too).  Don’t let it stop you from donating if you haven’t already, more is better for the cause, but now I have reached the amount needed to get on my bicycle and do this ride.

The ride is almost here, I’m leaving for San Francisco with my parents tomorrow (Thursday, May 28), and after a short visit in the area, orientation is on Saturday, and ride out is on Sunday, after which I will be riding back to Los Angeles.  If you want to see the route this year, you can view it here.

Also, I plan on Twittering during the ride, assuming it goes as planned, you can view my Twitter updates here.

I’m excited, it’s almost here… 🙂

This was a nasty, not inherently from the distance or the amount of climbing, but from the heat…  More on that later, but first, the ride.

The ride started in the usual Santa Monica Bike Attack starting point, although instead of riding out to the starting point from home, I had to drive over.  There was a planned power outage due to fire system testing, and while I likely wouldn’t have to (and didn’t) go in, I might have had to at the last minute, so I needed the car nearby.  So after parking on 5th St and heading over, the ride went out down Neilson to Ocean Ave and down to Pacific Coast Highway, where we continued into Malibu and to the Cross Creek Shopping Center in Malibu.  From there we took off a few more miles and turned onto Latigo Canyon.

Latigo Canyon is basically a 10 mile climb…  There was a short break on the way from about mile 25-26 (which was indeed nice), where immediately afterwards I had to climb that distance again, and then some.  About 5-6 miles into the climb, I really, really didn’t like Latigo Canyon (wondering both why anyone thought it was a good idea to put a street there, and why anyone thought it was a good idea to bicycle on it).  There was also a section of Latigo the support for the road had collapsed, and it is only one lane…  In hindsight (with comments from someone who has done Latigo before), I realize it may have had as much to do with the weather as it did the climb itself.

Now about the weather – along the coast it was nice, a bit on the cool side and overcast, at least in the morning, which wasn’t the problem.  Once we got about a mile or two inland, the temperature quickly started warming, and was in the 90s for quite a bit  (ie basically all of the time spent in the mountains) of the ride.  That heat plus that much continuous climbing basically exhausted me.  I could tell that my muscles weren’t all that tired, but that my energy had basically been zapped.

So now I have reached the top of Latigo, and I had two choices – continue along the route map turning right onto Kanan, then Mulholland (with a stop for lunch), and the continuing to Old Topanga Canyon, the Topanga Canyon, and back to the coast to return to Santa Monica, or turn left on Kanan to return to PCH and ride back to Santa Monica, which I was highly tempted to do, and in hindsight should have (and would’ve been able to finish just fine).  Instead I decided to continue on the route map and went over to lunch in Agoura Hills, where I had a nice pulled pork sandwich.

On top of the heat and climbing, I discovered that one other item was making the ride a bit harder…  My rear wheel was out of true (which I actually didn’t know the term before), which basically means that the rear wheel wasn’t straight, so as it rolled it was hitting the brake on alternate sides while I was rolling, adding that much more resistance to an already difficult ride.

After lunch was rolling hills on Mulholland, which is when I realized just how exhausted the combination of heat and that much climbing was getting to me.  I did continue, but taking frequent breaks to rest, deciding to keep going until the SAG car caught up to me.  When it didn’t, I didn’t feel so bad about needing it as the SAG driver was a ride leader, and two of the other three ride leaders were in the car.  I then rode in the car to Topanga Canyon (skipping the rest of the hills, and getting closer to the coast where it was cooler), and then got back on my bike.

From there I finished the ride down Topanga Canyon, and back onto PCH to finish the ride into Santa Monica, making good time on the return part of the trip.

One good thing that I’ve learned on the last couple of training rides: There is nothing like these climbs on the actual ride, although it is good to train with these kinds of climbs in order to be prepared for the length of the ride.

Just to note: On Monday (May 18), I got my bike tuned up at i.Martin, and now the rear wheel is fixed, and the brakes are new.

 

Latigo Canyon (click to view detail)

For the day before Mother’s Day (which I can’t ride on since both my mother and my grandmother live in the Los Angeles area and there wouldn’t be enough time to do a serious training ride and visit with family), I did a ride called Climb Every Canyon, which involved riding up one canyon, and then two climbs up to Mulholland.

This ride started in Santa Monica at Bike Attack, which I rode out to for the start.  From there we went up over to San Vicente and Ocean, and then headed over to 26th, then over to Sunset, and headed up a street called Mandeville Canyon.  If the name is at all familiar to you, it’s probably due to a somewhat highly publicized event where a driver was pissed at some bicyclist and caused them to crash into his car…

Anyways, we did the 5 miles up Mandeville Canyon, which has a short steep climb at the top but if otherwise reasonably gradual, followed by a quick rest and a  fast trip back down.  After getting to the bottom we went back to San Vicente and over to Montana for the usual rest stop at Noah’s/Jamba.  From there we followed the same route over through the VA and over to Brentwood/UCLA, where there was two cars who had gotten into an accident, blocking the right lane of Sunset, and neither of them had their 4-way blinkers on… After waiting for the light to change in our favor, we continued into Bel Air, following the same route to Stradella as last week.  We did the same route up to Mulholland, over to Beverly Glen, and finally to the Starbucks.  Fortunately we did the easier back to Mulholland (back up Beverly Glen), and continued over to Benedict Canyon, heading down to Santa Monica Blvd.

From there we continued along Santa Monica Blvd into West Hollywood, going right by my condo.  Some of my instincts were telling me to veer right to go home, but I continued on the route to Laurel Ave, up to Franklin, and then to Gennessee.  The route then took me up Gennessee up past Hollywood Blvd, and onto the final major climb of the day, Nichols Canyon.  Nichols Canyon was a fairly nice (albeit hot) trip up most of the way Mulholland, followed by a nasty little grind up Woodrow Wilson Drive to actually reach Mulholland.  Once back on Mulholland, I went back over to Beverly Glen, during which a couple of other riders joined me along the way to our final pit stop at the Starbucks, again…

After taking a break there, everyone was pretty much deciding the best way to get back to where they started, and since 2 of us came from home (me in West Hollywood and the other guy in Korea town), we went down Beverly Glen to Santa Monica Blvd, and traveled through Beverly Hills on South Santa Monica Blvd, and then took a little detour.  The other person I was riding with was going to head to i.Martin on Beverly Blvd to pick up some biking gear, and I rode with him over to the Beverly Center before veering left at La Cienega to head back home.

This was a nice ride with a lot of climbing.  From what most people have been saying, the climbing I have been doing in my training far exceeds anything on the actual ride, which makes me feel better about my readiness for the actual ride.  It’s coming down the line to the actual ride (one more weekend of serious training, one weekend of light riding, and finally the actual ride), and I’m excited about the final approach.  I’m also looking forward to getting my weekends back after I finish 😉 …

Climb Every Canyon (click to see detail)

Yesterday was the Otis Fashion Show, an event that I volunteer at every year (and generally the only time of the year that I wear a tuxedo), which made riding before the show impractical.  So after working a good part of the day, and seeing the show, I went and did a nasty 80 mile ride called Tour of the Lakes…  One interesting thing about this ride is that it combined a lot of rides that I have done as training rides or independently (including Toluca Lake well before), although this is the first time it has been all at once.

This ride started in West Hollywood, which made for a nice quick ride from home to the start point at West Hollywood Park.  The idea behind this ride is passing by a bunch of water features, all while staying in the Los Angeles area.  We rode out with 26 people, initially heading down to Culver City and then heading west on Culver Blvd, until we reached Tanner’s Coffee in Playa Del Rey, passing by Playa Vista area wetland preserve.  From Playa Del Rey we headed north by the Del Rey lagoon and up through Marina Del Rey (including of course the Marina area), then heading up Washington Blvd and down Dell Ave to pass through the Venice Canals.  From there we headed up through Santa Monica and we were supposed to head up to San Vicente and Ocean, but there was an Walk/Run event, so we instead turned early but later went over to San Vicente, and made our way over to the 2nd pitstop at San Vicente/Montana, a Noah’s/Jamba Juice/other.

From there we continued over to Brentwood/UCLA, and headed up into the Bel Air area, and up to a street called Stradella (which includes a view of the Stone Canyon Reservoir).  It was good to finally do Stradella, since last time I was supposed to do it, a couple of people and I ended up going on Rosscomore instead, and now that I have done both, I prefer Stradella as the steep sections are shorter, and it rolls more.  Finally we worked our way up to Mulholland and over to Beverly Glen for a pit stop at a Starbucks in that area (a common stop while up on Mulholland).  That was followed by a trip back to Mulholland the hard way (up a steeper hill to a higher height), and the continued on Mulholland all the way east to the 101 freeway.

After heading up a few more hills, and then down, we ended up at the next water feature, Lake Hollywood.  After Lake Hollywood, we went down to Franklin, and continued east over into Silverlake.  Unfortunately along the way, I got a bit of a cramp in my right leg, but I was able to stretch it out on some downhills.  Being out drinking the night before with a lot of work, then combined with a heavy bicycle ride, and running out of electrolyte tabs (Nuun), is a bad combination.  Next we had our Lunch stop at Say Cheese/Trader Joe’s/Whole Foods, where I had a nice sandwich and cheese samples from Say Cheese.  After finishing that up, it was time for a trip over to the actual lake in Silverlake as well as the Ivanhoe Reservoir, which we basically completely circled.  After leaving that water feature, the 2 other people I was riding with (for the rest of the ride) and I mis-read the directions, and had our first extra loop.  After realizing that and correcting the path we headed up to Griffith Park, over the hill that is Griffith Park Drive, and headed into the San Fernando Valley.

As we got over to the Warner Brothers Studios, we missed out second turn.  In this case we missed that the small sign for turning left said the street name, but the big name on the street sign said a different name, combined with 2 of us being used to continuing a loop around the studios.  After a bit of extra riding into Burbank, we went back and continued to the area near the next water feature, Toluca Lake.  Unfortunately, you can’t actually see Toluca Lake, as all of the land around it is privately owned (so unless you know someone on the lake or have access to that country club, too bad).  From there we went over to Vineland, across Ventura, over to Cahuenga, and up to a street called Multi View.  At this point, we had already done a ton of climbing, and I just wasn’t up to another climb to Mulholland at that point.  Fortunately we did have a SAG vehicle, so I took that up the hill, and then joined the two other back along Mulholland.

Now back on Mulholland the three of us continued over to Franklin Canyon, which had our final water feature of the day, the Franklin Canyon Reservoir.  We took Franklin Canyon down into Beverly Hills, which I gained a nice final wind along that part of the ride.  We made good time down into Beverly Hills and back along Sunset into West Hollywood and then onto San Vicente for the final and nice downhill to West Hollywood Park.

After getting to the end, we found out that only about half actually managed to complete the ride.  It was a nice ride, although a very difficult one with a lot of hills.

Tour of the Lakes (click to view full detail)