Our friend Chris from AdventureCORPS, besides putting on the Badwater Ultramarathon and the Furnace Creek 508 (which I’ve written about so often I made a 508 tab), puts on more accessible, less well-known events like the Death Valley CORPScamp and Hell’s Gate 100.
A new ride for 2010 is the Mt. Laguna Bicycle Classic (100 miles and 10,000ft elevation gain) in East San Diego County and back in November he invited a few of us out to pre-ride the course. There are meticulous details on the route, elevation and area on the site. My concern was that I was going to feel like I wasn’t getting anywhere by riding up to the same ridge three times. But I had never been to this part of California and was amazed and stoked on how beautiful and varying the terrain is and never felt that way.
‘Not like a real road, more like a fire road that has been paved.’
but on two of three climbs it looks like this.
Can you see Jack waving?
Chris’ photos from the day cover a much wider range of the area. Jack, Brian and I were trying to think of accurate descriptors for the area. Alpine desert? When you finally get to the ridge, the far side is open and vast and slightly desert-y, but you are in pine trees. California never quits. The descent was super fast and smooth. Riding with those two guys the descents are always a race of who can go fastest and use their brakes the least..
The ride had roving support by Adobo Velo, a Filipino cycling club. They had been teasing us all day about not eating meat, then surprised us with some vegan adobo. I don’t think vegan balut exists yet, but maybe it won’t be too long since vegan veal is already a product. They were super fun. I want to try and jump on one of their club rides these days.
Some friends from the San Diego chapter of Organic Athlete were having a vegan potluck in Ocean Beach, so we made the drive over from Pine Valley (sort of) on our way back to Los Angeles. First we hit the co-op so as to not show up empty handed, then made our way to a vegan bakery for some sweet cinnamon rolls.
How fortunate are we to have been able to ride this and hang out with such great people? So fortunate that I’ve almost forgot about the 32 degree weather at the start and the flat I got in the first three miles. April will be warm and it’ll be great to push a little with 300 other riders out there.
Is there a website you go to for news of upcoming cycling events in the LA area – centuries and the like?
I don't know of any one list, I use some of the links I have on the sidebar here on this blog plus the usual orgs like AdventureCORPS. Socalcycling.com has some, but there it's mostly races.