Burn, Baby, Burn

We’re  finally back on the east side and joined the Chain Gang on a training ride.  It was a Saturday ride and we met up with about 30 riders at Griffith Park.  It was early in the morning and the temperature was already in the 70’s.  I think this was our first training ride where the day didn’t start off cold.

After the safety-speech and a longer-than-usual introduction to the route, we took off at 8:45 am.  We rode out of the Griffith Park area and circled the Burbank studios before making our work north toward Sunland.  We tried to stay in the front of the pack, but there was a group of super-fast riders that shot off like a canon.  I’ve never been able to ride with sprinting speed.  I just don’t have the strength to do that.  My average speed has been around 12-15 miles per hour.

Our first pit stop was at Sunland Produce, where we rested before our first climb of the day: La Tuna Canyon Road.  It’s a 4.5 steady climb, the scenery is picturesque and there is a nice downhill to look forward to afterwards.   Under normal circumstances, it’s actually a pretty nice climb.  But on this occasion, the hot blazing sun made the climb extremely strenuous.  It was so hot that it made the climb absolutely unbearable.  I was going about 5 miles per hour, panting and sweating profusely.  It was not fun.

The downhill descent into the town of Montrose was a nice reward.  We rested at Black Cow Café, where we refilled our water bottles and ate a yummy banana nut scone.  Right out of the pit stop, we immediately faced a short, but rather steep, climb up Verdugo Boulevard, which I’m sure burnt off all the calories from the scone.  From there, we rode through some scenic areas through Descanso Gardens and the Arroyo Seco Park by the Rose Bowl.  We finally made our way to Pasadena where we stopped for lunch at a Fresh & Easy.  Sam and I shared a veggie wrap, which wasn’t very good.  Blaaah.

By then, we had ridden about 40 miles and I was beat.  The sun had been brutal and I was burning up.  We were cautious not to get heat stroke or dehydrated.  We had plenty of liquids and Sam even bought a sunscreen stick so we could reapply and avoid getting sunburned.  Smart move.  Reluctantly, we took off from our lunch stop and kept riding east toward Sierra Madre.  We rode passed Eaton Canyon Park and struggled up New York Drive, which isn’t a “climb” per se, but it was an unforeseen and unwelcome incline for about 3 miles.  The sun continued to beat down on us.  The ride stopped being fun many miles ago.  I just wanted to go home.

It seemed like it took us forever to get to our next and final pit stop back near Montrose.  We really, really needed the rest, if anything, to cool off.  My phone said it was 89 degrees, but Chris, our training ride leader, said it was over 100 degrees at some point during our ride.  OMG!  We still had another 10 miles to go and the only thing we were looking forward to was about 3.5 miles of downhill descent along the way.  Still, the final ride back was difficult to say the least.  I was physically exhausted from the burning sun and I was also having a lot of pain in my shoulder and neck area most of the day.  On top of that, I started getting an awful headache from the heat during the last 5 miles.  It felt like my head was going to explode.  We had reached the Griffith Park area by the time we had about 2 miles to go but I had pretty much given up by then from the exhaustion and the pain.  I could barely keep my head up and struggled to pedal.  Those last 2 miles felt like they dragged on forever.  We finally rolled in at 5 pm, a little over 8 hours after we left, and we only rode 62.72 miles.  That was by far the worst training ride we’ve done so far in terms of the challenges we faced.

Looking back, I now realize how lucky it was that all of the prior training rides had been on cold and overcast days.  The difference between a cold day and a hot day is way too drastic.  It really takes a lot more out of you to ride on a hot day.  If this ride is any indication of how the remaining training rides are going to be in the next couple of months, then we are in for a lot more hot, hilly, exhausting rides.