200 Ways to Say, “Hell to the No!” – Part 1: The Windy Edition

DAY 1

During this training season, the ride that I was looking forward to the most was the Santa Barbara Double Century.  It is, as the name says, a 200-mile ride from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara and back.  The ride is organized by our riding group Shifting Gears.  Props go to our awesome leaders Beth and Leslie, who celebrated their anniversary on the ride.  (Happy anniversary Beth and Leslie!)  This is probably one of the most popular rides of the year.   I did this ride for the first time in 2003 when I was training for AIDS/LifeCycle 2.  I had so much fun that I wanted to do it again the following year, even though I was no longer training for AIDS/LifeCycle 3 in 2004.  Sadly, since I was not training as much that year, I wasn’t quite physically ready and could not complete the ride.  I ended up getting a (car) ride back to Los Angeles by crew members.  Needless to say, it was very embarrassing for me.  This has been hanging over me since then and it’s probably one of the reasons why I stopped riding.  So this year I was determined to complete this ride.

The ride started at Helen’s Cycles in Santa Monica at 7:30 am.  We rode up Pacific Coast Highway toward Malibu.  It was early and a little cold, but mostly it was windy.  Sam and I had checked the weather report the night before and it said that we would face headwind coming from the north so we were expecting some wind.  By the time we reached Malibu, the wind turned brutal.   At our first mini climb of the day just past Malibu Canyon Road, the wind really picked up.  It started coming at us from the right and blowing at what must have been 20-30 miles per hour.  I was already going really slow climbing, but the crosswind made the climb nearly impossible.  I had to find the strength to pedal twice as hard to compensate for both the climb and the wind.  Controlling my bike was very difficult.  Several times, the wind blew so hard that it pushed me to the left and into the road.  I was swerving onto and off of PCH.  Thank goodness it was still pretty early so fewer cars were on the road.  Still, it was very dangerous and I was genuinely scared.

Further up Malibu, we faced a new challenge.  The wind started picking up and tossing sand and dirt around in the air.  We were occasionally hit with sandblasts, which were not only dangerous but painful.  It was so bad at one particular spot that one of the volunteers had to be stationed on the side of PCH, yelling at riders to be careful.  I couldn’t hear that he was screaming “SANDBLAST” at me until I was actually hit with the sandblast.  Ouch!  I actually got this on tape so be sure to check out my video post.

Unbeknownst to us, the worst was yet to come.  At about 40 miles, we got off PCH and went inland on Las Posas Road.  I was actually relieved when I saw that we were changing roads thinking that we might get a little break from the wind.  Damn, was I wrong!  As soon as I got on Las Posas, I knew we were in trouble.  The wind was blowing twice as hard.  I swear, it felt like it was coming at us at 50 miles per hour.  It was mostly crosswind coming from the right.  If you had a chance to see the terrain you would understand why.  This stretch of road felt like it was in the middle of nowhere.  Vast, open, farm land was all around us, kinna like a small country road or that stretch of nowhere on Interstate 5 in Central California.  I could see sand blowing in circles in the air in front of me.  I pedaled as hard as I could, which was not fast by any means.  For the next three long miles I had to ride with my face turned to the left.  For one thing, it was hard to keep my head facing forward due to the strong wind.  It was also painful to breathe through my nose because the wind carried sand.  My nose was running like crazy and I was sniffing all along the way.  My eyes were tearing up but I couldn’t tell if it was because sand was constantly blowing into my eyes or that I was crying.  It probably was both.

At the next pit stop, I learned that some of the riders were blown off their bikes from the wind and some had to get off their bikes and walk.  I felt bad for the riders that fell and was rather shocked that I didn’t get blown off myself.  From the pit stop, we rode west to Port Hueneme where we faced the only tailwind of the day.  Those seven miles felt comparatively easy.  It was a welcome break from the wind.  From there, we continued onto Channel Islands and eventually to Ventura, where we stopped for lunch at Marina Park by the coast.  After lunch, we rode up the boringest part of the route, eight miles up Old Rincon Highway.  It’s a long stretch of awful, unpaved bumpy road.  It was about 70-75 miles into the day’s ride, so we hit that “Are we there yet?” wall.  It was on this stretch of road that I had to stop riding in 2004.  This time, there was no stopping me.  I was going to ride on.

It was already by far the worst ride I had ever done, but now I had a new problem.  At some point in the second half of the day, my right knee started to really hurt.  This was on top of my continued neck/shoulder problem.  I was just having a miserable time.  I wanted to give up so bad, but I told myself that was not an option.  When we reached Carpinteria, we decided to skip our last pit stop.  I just wanted to get to Santa Barbara ASAP so I could rest.  Finally, at around 6 pm we made it to our hotel in Santa Barbara, the Days Inn, where we were staying for the night.  We only rode about 93.8 miles.  It was not quite 100 miles, but it was long enough given the day we had.