What an usual day. Forecast was suppose to be windy throughout Orange County, but when I woke up, it was cold and I could not hear any wind blowing. Looking out the window, all the trees seemed pretty calm. It was fairly cold this morning, so having to turn the heater on in the house made me worry that I'd need more gear for today's ride. It was further substantiated when I left to meet up with buddy, Eddie, that car was reading 43 degrees as outside temp. As I was heading up to Irvine, I thought, wow, the temperature is climbing fast. Cool. When I finally arrived, the temp was reading 64 degrees! This was only a 20 minute drive! While the temp was nice, the winds were blowing ridiculously...just like the forecast. It seemed to be at least 10-12 mph winds with occasional high gusts.
On our way out, we rode directly toward the wind and this made the climb up Jamboree more challenging than normal. However, I knew this would be nothing compared to the climb up on Cannon heading toward Imperial Hwy.
Eddie and I stayed together all the way to Cannon, but he seemed to be picking it up here and there on occasion where it was noticeable that he was starting to dig his new bike. Near the top of Cannon, I went into spin mode, and this let me get to the top before him. He wasn't far behind though. After he passed me while I was waiting, he tore off down the other side, which I've gotten to 54 mph previously. I could not do the same today, because the wind was so scary, it kept blowing my front wheel with such great force, I was afraid I'd eat shit on the way down. After getting caught at a light, I was able to meet up with him toward the bottom and we were off.
Once we got to the Santa Ana River Trail, we finally had the wind behind us. This was the plan and why we took this route. I tore off with Eddie behind me, and I thought 24 mph was a good speed. However, Eddie decided he can do more and passed me and was riding between 26-27 mph. After he led through the wavy section and the trail straightened out, I decided to take over. We kept bouncing off 30 mph and was just flying by everyone. We kept the average up to 26-27 and then we hit a slow section dropping it down to 20. Once we got passed a few guys, we turned it up some more and dropped a guy wearing Astana kit (poser) who tried to stay with us. I think we were averaging 28 for a while, which he just couldn't hold on. We did catch a couple guys who were going a pretty decent rate, but after passing them, they jumped in our draft, and then got it front for a bit. I was waiting to make another move to get in front of them after the wooden bridge, but they just stopped there so we let them go.
On the trail towards Huntington Beach, Eddie had a pretty good pace, and I got behind him while we passed a few guys. I guess one guy wearing Rock N Road kit on a Transition TT bike thought he'd return the pass and blew by us at a pretty good rate. I chased him down and got in his draft, but Eddie fell off in the process. I was waiting to see if he was going to keep trying to get away, so I sat in his draft for a little bit. However, since he never really picked it up too much, I got in front and opened it up all the way to the beach. He couldn't hang on, so I dropped him half way through.
Eddie and I went on PCH and backed it down some. We were still doing a decent pace, but nothing as crazy. One guy in a yellow jersey decided he wanted to show us how fast he was, so we chased him down. When some pedestrians hit the crosswalk light in CDM, this guy decides he's going to use it to try to get away while Eddie and I stopped. After the pedestrians walked by, the chase was on. By the time we were getting out of downtown, we came up and passed him.
Since we have some big hill rides this year, we decided to go ahead and go up NPC. I tried to keep a good pace going up, but got caught at the first light where sweat started getting in my eyes and burning them. I turned thinking the rider next to me was Eddie to complain about my burning eyes, and it was a lady in a Simple Green kit who ended up getting a flat for the Como Street ride and decided against continuing it further without another spare. I think she weight all of 90 lbs, so I knew she was going to be strong climbing up the hill. Once the light turned green, she took off first and I tried to stay behind her just to keep her pace. Impressively, she never came out of the big chainring up front, and maintained a pretty good tempo. Behind her, I was able to stay but I couldn't figure out how I wanted to do so (spin faster, stand, etc.). Thus, I tried them all. About 4/5 of the way up, she started to gap me, so I decided to back it down some. Yeah, right.
Since Eddie had fallen back, I decided to go up Vista and see how that would feel. In the beginning, all I wanted to do was spin up it and not trash legs too much. Thus, my pace had at some points reached single digits. After it flattened out, I decided on the last hill, I want to give the big ring climbing a try again. I leaned forward and kept driving my knees toward my chest (vs. pushing down or working the rotation) and this helped a lot. I managed to make it the rest of the way up on the big front ring.
I took it easy going down Park since I still feel hints of wind blowing here and there. No incidents though.
After meeting up with Eddie on NPC, we decided to go up Shady, out to Laguna Canyon, and get on the bike trail to Harvard. Eddie still had some energy here and started this off. Once it straightened out though, I decided to put in a good pull all the way to Jeffrey. We both took turns on the bike trail, and one guy on a Fuji decided he wanted to pass us. Eddie looked back to see if i was going to chase, and latched on to that guy shortly after. After a couple deep breaths, I took off after and got in front of both until we got to Harvard. Too aggro.
The way back up to Portola was pretty mellow. We were definitely not killing it, but you can still feel the winds we felt earlier. Nonetheless, we pressed on and stayed together most of the way. I gapped a little toward the top as I again tried the standing leaning forward big gear pedaling. However, Eddie never really fell off too much here.
In Ed's defense, he had ran out of water back on the Irvine bike trail, and would not take my water despite me offering/insisting. I still had a lot of my 2nd bottle still, plus I had Shot Bloks too. He pushed on and made it all the way back without cramping. Ironman stud.
Here's a link to today's GPS stats: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/64852431
No comments:
Post a Comment