That was hard... L.A. Wheelman Double Metric Ride Report

Sorry for this being a bit late, but, well...

On Saturday the L.A. Wheelman held their Grand Tour, 4 rides that varied in length from 125 miles to 400 miles. All rides were to be completed in a day, needless to say I did the shortest of the 4...

I woke up Saturday morning at 4:30. My plan was to get up at 4:30, eat breakfast, get dressed and hit the road. Show up to the ride early, have some time to chill and get ready and then roll out right at 6:30 when the ride starts. Instead I rolled out of bed at 5:15, ate a couple bonk breaker bars, threw on my kit, some shorts and rolled out. I got there a lot earlier than I thought I would...6:15. I got ready, ate a little more, grabbed my rider number and rolled out.

The first challenge of the ride came much sooner than I would have liked. The ride started right by Pepperdine, and the first climb of the Day was Latigo Canyon. Latigo is about 10 miles of moderate to advanced climbing. There are a couple steep sections, but nothing too bad. The bad part is the climb was 5 miles from the start, not nearly enough time in the saddle to get really warmed up. So I hit the climb a little cold, but once I got past the first section I started feeling really good. I mean really, really good. I think I did the whole climb in about 50 minutes, which from what I hear is pretty good. I felt super strong on the climb, so I just kept going and going, not really worrying about trying to team up with any other riders.

I rode pretty much alone until the 55 mile rest stop. When I was on Santa Rosa, I was already thinking of titles for this write up "One is the Lonliest..." so on and so on... and that's the way it was for a good portion of the ride. After that rest stop I teamed up with another rider... who I managed to get lost with. I know, it's crazy, me getting lost. "That NEVER happens" you must be thinking, I know I know. but I got us lost. Fortunately we managed to hook up with a couple Double Century riders who knew how to get us back on track. So we turned right on Balcom Canyon. Though it was what we needed to do to get back on track, it was torture. If you've ridden Balcom before you know, If you haven't, well go ride it. It's tough...

Once we got back on track we teamed up with a couple guys from La Grange. So now it was me, Cash, Alfred (I think) and Paul. We gave it hard work, picked another guy up in the Camarillo/Oxnard valley and banged it out all the way to the 88 mile sag. Though getting lost, Cash and I had managed to miss two of the rest stops, so we were ready for this one. I seriously ate 10 strawberries, a whole orange and drank a bunch of water. The rest of the ride was coming, and even though I was at mile 93 we still had 35-40 miles to go.

35 miles. This was basically a quick jump through Camarillo to PCH. Then we just hammered it down PCH averaging something faster than 20 mph for that stretch. We rolled up to the stop I looked at my mileage and it read 128.44. I definitely earned that patch...

Now it's on to the Death Ride!!!