Matthew’s ALC8 Blog

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)

For this ride we met up on Sunset near Holloway in West Hollywood (which I bicycled to, which meant an immediate climb for the first 3/4 of a mile or so).  We met in front of a restaurant, and then rode off down Sunset and climbed up to Mulholland via Franklin Canyon (with some very steep sections).  After reaching Mulholland we had a beautiful ride along rollers along Mulholland over to the Skirball Center/Sepulveda Blvd, where we decended down back into the Westside, through the VA, before taking a break over near the VA.  Following a short break, we started climbing back up Sepulveda (which was a lot more fun going down), back along Mulholland to Benedict Canyon (which I was VERY happy to see), with a nice decent back down to Sunset and over into West Hollywood.

This was a challenging but fun ride (especially after a 77 mile ride to PV yesterday), with some great views both into the Valley and the Westside.  At the end point lunch was eaten, and a bunch of people got tattoos (not me though), for which the labor time was being donated to ALC.  After resting for a bit, I had a nice decent back home. 🙂

Day of PRIX (click to view detail)