Well, I finally did it. I think I “officially” embraced my inner roadie. Today started at 4am, much much too early, getting ready for the Tour de Foothills Metric Century event located in Upland, CA. These roadies I tell you they start their rides way too freakin early! The ride started at 7am which mean I had to be up at 4am to prep, leave by 5am, arrive by 6am to check in and get ready, etc… Ugh. This was my first official roadie event. Riding this event also meant I was missing out on the final 12 Hours of Temecula event I had planned on doing with other friends. I was bummed but I was still on a bike.
Pre-ride check in went smooth, pretty much the same as any mtn bike event. The bathroom situation was a joke, I seriously hope they look into fixing that for next year. As everyone gathered at the start they were handing out Livestrong wrist bands in support of the foundation. That was pretty cool and they even held a moment of silence for riders that lost their battle with cancer.
Out of the gates it was utter mayhem. There was absolutely no organization to this event aside from police blocking traffic for the first 10 miles, which was nice. Knowing how anal most roadies are and watching road events on TV, I figured there would be much more organization and a somewhat “uniform” riding stance throughout. Nope. Everyone was out for themselves, slow guys would dart up ahead thinking they could hang with the fast guys only to cause a cluster fuck, fast guys would arrogantly shove their way through the back of the pack when they should have started in front to begin win. At least with mtn bike races they section you off by class. Considering the amount of people on today’s ride it would have been nice to see them let groups go in waves. Since there was no official clock, it wasn’t like anyone was really racing so going in waves would only have helped traffic. I spent the entire day riding with my friend Jay who is an experienced road racer and even he commented at the lack of organization. I was still having a blast regardless.
Around mile 15 is where my day turned for the worse. I dropped my chain coming around a sharp incline. Then I dropped it again about a mile down the road. Then the chain froze about 5 miles later getting stuck between the front rings. WTF. I was pretty upset because all of this down time meant Jay and the rest of my friends had left me in the dust. I was far back and there was no way I was going to make up the time. After finally getting back on the road I made my way to the first rest stop and spotted Jay. He was just finishing up dropping the kids off at the pool, which left me enough time to catch back up. From there we hit the first climb of the day, a twisty corkscrew type of a road that is fairly steep but short. I got up it without a problem although my left leg was cramping a little bit.(one of those days)
At the top, the course continued on a slow gradual incline all the way to Mt. Baldy Rd. This would be the only real climbing on the day and finally gave us a little work to do. The climb up the mountain felt good and they had another rest stop at the top. I didn’t stop even though the fresh baked chocolate chip cookies were calling my name! The descent coming down the opposite side was a 40mph blast for about 10 miles. I caught back up with Jay again after he dropped me on the climb and we hung together for the remainder of the ride. Somewhere around the 48 mile mark we took a wrong turn and ended up taking the long way around back to the course. Fortunately, both Jay and I have Garmin GPS systems and Jay having downloaded last years course to his last night made finding our way back on track a piece of cake. The remaining 15 or so miles was pretty flat and we ended up catching up to many of the half metric century riders who started their ride I believe 2 hours after us. They latched on to our wheels and followed us in to the finish.
I had planned on riding with Josh, James, John and Marcel as well but after all of my mechanical issues I knew I wouldn’t catch them. Thanks to all of you guys and Jay for riding with me today and suggesting I sign up for the event. I had a great time and will definitely be doing more road events in the future. Gotta train for Vision Quest you know!
Mileage: 63.4 miles
Ride time: 3 hours 38 minutes
Avg speed: 17.0
Calories est: 4322
Elevation gain: 3199 feet
Not a bad days work. Found this pic online and hope to find some more from the various photogs that were scattered on the course!
Thanks for emailing this photo to me Dave!
