Ojai Century 2008 Ride Report

Saturday was number 7 out of 15 of this years 15 rides. Number 7 was the Ojai century, starting and ending in no other place than, Ojai California. I wish I had a little more time this weekend, as I would have loved to make a weekend trip out of this century ride. Ojai is a beautiful little city. It's located about 15 miles up highway 33 from Ventura. The main town square, which seems to surround Libby park, is absolutely beautiful. It's lined with little shops, cozy hotels and beautiful tree lined streets. The area that surrounds that are beautiful residential areas. There are no large corporations, no strip malls with GAP or Abercrombie & Fitch, no starbucks or other big city crap...



This little city couldn't have been a more perfect host city to one of the best Centuries I've ridden this year. I teamed up with Ed from PAA for this ride, which was cool, as I rarely get to ride with people from my own club. The Ojai century takes you through some beautiful parts of the Central Valley. The first 20 miles rolls through Lake Casitas and Casitas pass. It's a beautiful stretch of road with large winding bends that gradually climb up over the pass. The road then goes down, giving you a nice easily winding descent where speeds of 40 mph are easily obtainable. After the first rest stop we made our way through the Montecito hills, which is similar to the Coolbreeze route with the addition of Torito Canyon. It also took us through Summerland and down into Ventura. We skipped the rest stop at 40 miles, and went straight through to the 60 mile lunch stop on Main st. in Ventura.



The next 20 miles was relatively flat roads with a significant tailwind through Suburban streets and farm roads. This is the only section of the ride that I didn't like, because of all the stopping and turning through the suburbs. But all in all this was 10 miles out of 100 that I didn't like. The last of the Rest stops was in Santa Paula, It was at a cool old train station. The last section of the ride was awesome as it was up and up and then down to the finish. The climb wasn't difficult at all, mostly between 4 and 8% grades with a couple little steep sections. When the summit was reached there was a long section of flat, a little step up and then a nice long winding descent. This led to a section of false flats the took us down to the finish.

You couldn't have really asked for a better day for the ride. The temperature never broke 80 degrees. There was only a light wind, that turned into an awesome tail wind that pushed us up to Santa Paula. The organization of this Century was also top notch. The route was well marked, with road labels that would repeat at close proximity when awkward or hard to see turns where approaching. The rest stops were in nice places with clean bathrooms and more than enough help at each one. Now, this ride didn't have the Jr. High Band playing Styx covers at the rest stop, but this ride did only have 700 or so people. Considering the size of this ride it was the best organized ride I've ridden so far. Libby Park is a beautiful start/Finish, and the town of Ojai seemed very accommodating.