Chevy Chase Kicked our Butts

Up until now, Sam and I have mostly ridden with an official training ride group with the exception of the weekend before when we went out riding with just Cindy. We had a really awesome ride with Cindy and we thought we would try going solo again, especially since we had missed the official training rides on the Presidents’ Day long weekend. So we ventured out on Monday by ourselves.

Sam relied on me to pick a route and I opted to explore another old route that I had done with the Chain Gang years before. It’s a ride from Griffith Park through Glendale to Pasadena via Chevy Chase Drive, which is a climb. The planned route was a long ride, roughly 38 miles. I vaguely recalled that Chevy Chase was a pretty intense ride, but Cindy assured me in an e-mail that “it’s not that bad…much shorter than La Tuna.” Okay, that sounded doable. Chevy Chase it would be.

We started at the Los Angeles Zoo, which is actually a great place to start a ride since parking is free. And, as it had been on every other ride, it was an extremely cold morning. I can’t wait till the weather warms up and it doesn’t feel like an ice box outside. So off we went, we headed south to exit out of Griffith Park (where the Los Angeles Zoo is) and then east toward Glendale. We quickly came to the base of Chevy Chase at about four and a half miles into the ride. The start of Chevy Chase was in the busier part of Glendale, so it was relatively flat for the first three miles. I was feeling great, even once we started getting into the quieter and more mountain-y part where the houses are nice and expensive. Soon the road got steeper and there were fewer houses; still I thought it was a manageable climb. And then we passed the intersection of Chevy Chase and Linda Vista Road and that’s when the real climb started. The last mile and a half was on a ridiculously steep windy two-lane mountain road with a hillside to the right and a mountain cliff to the left. It was then that I remembered Chevy Chase. I must have blocked out the horrible memories but as I was climbing the last mile to the top, I then recalled this crazy road. All I could think about was Sam and how he was gonna kill me when we get to the top. Argh!

Sam was behind me during the climb and we separated for a little while. He must have pulled over to rest at some point, because I got a text from him saying that he was going to be a little while. I pulled over to a safe spot and texted back, “You Okay?”. He responded, “Yep.” Ouch! I could only imagine how exhausted and mad he must’ve been. Soon, we both reached the top and Sam was ready to call it a day. That climb really kicked our butts. We thought about heading back down the same way, but there was no way I was going to allow us to ride downhill with a mountain cliff to our right. That would have been unsafe. So we took out our fancy smart phone and looked up where we were on a map (thank goodness for GPS!!!). We decided to stay on course and continue east into Pasadena as planned. From there we would head back west to Griffith Park instead of continuing east to add more mileage.

Riding to Pasadena was rather nice. We were riding near the Rose Bowl and picked up some downhill speed on the way. Once we reached the southern end of Pasadena, we rode west to Glendale through Eagle Rock. It was a roughly six-mile ride from Pasadena to the western end of Glendale. Fortunately, it was on a flat stretch so we got through fairly quickly. Soon, we were back in Griffith Park and made our way back to the zoo. To my surprise, we still rode a respectable total of 24.67 miles even though we cut our ride short. It was when we got back to our car that I realized that this was the first ride I had done where I rode from beginning to end without resting at a pit stop. It’s a bit unusual to ride that long without a break to use the restroom and refill on water and snacks. I don’t plan on making a habit of this since I really needed to go to the restroom. Sorry for over-sharing. Oops!

This ride is dedicated to these awesome sponsors: Aisha H. & Bessie W.; Dave K.; Kerri S.-J.; Leslie C.; and Steven S.