March 15 - Tour de Sewer

The morning started very early. I was up around 4:45 am. We departed the house around 5:30 am for Bell Gardens. The ride did not start until 8 and registration opened at 6 but it was a 45 minute drive and Bell Gardens is not a terribly nice neighborhood so I wanted to be sure I was able to park inside the local park and not on the street.

There was local police presence at the park. Probably just to make sure nothing got out of hand since the event was expected to draw around 1500 participants. Mike and I got there, checked in with registration, received out t-shirts and then waited, and waited...and waited some more. Alex arrived and we congregated together just shooting the breeze.

Around 7:45 we went up to the starting area where people were being given a brief speech about course markings, aid station locations etc. and then we were off in our little starting group. The weather was nice since the rain stayed away until after we were already headed back home. The ride had one difficult climb and a few moderate ones. Turnbull Cyn was the difficult climb (5 miles). I dropped Mike and Alex at the start of the climb and only Alex was able to keep me within sight once we headed into the canyon switchbacks. I passed everyone already riding through that section and even found a few riders trying to hang on to my back wheel but unable to. When it comes to climbing, I can't say enough how beneficial compact gears are! I was pleased with my ability to hold a steady cadence of 91 rpm through Turnbull Cyn. Once through that, it was a nice and somewhat technical descent of roughly 2.5 miles. After that, only a few moderate climbs remained and Alex caught back up to me in short order. We rode together for the remainder of the ride and gobbled up anyone that had started before us on the 60 mile route. We figured our finish placing was 1st and 2nd for our ride length. While this wasn't a race, it was certainly a training ride and we made good use of it.

My left knee started giving me problems over the last 8 miles or so and I eased up on the effort a little until we were closer to the homestretch.

My total ride time for the 60 miles was 3:33:30. I felt I rode very strong through every bit of the course, particularly Turnbull Cyn.

For those interested in seeing the course route. I've created the route on a website called bikely.com. It's a great website that utilizes googlemaps to plot bike routes. The direct link is here... click me

Other than an incident where this woman didn't know or even care about cycling etiquette almost ran me off the path, all was well. For those that don't know simple etiquette please read this. When a rider from behind announces "Passing on the left", "On your left", or simply "left" that DOESN'T mean ignore it and continue riding in the left lane talking to your boyfriend! It means, please move to the right and yield to faster moving cyclists. I happened to simply announce it twice, the third time I yelled it and as I barely made it past her without contact I told her to move with some not so nice expletives. She was warned 3 times by myself and twice by Alex who was drafting behind me. Announcing I'm about to be passing you in short order is not a request for you to move, it's expected.

Ok. =)

So yeah, aside from that incident everything went well. The course for the most part, was very well marked. I was extremely happy to see that the ride hosts used spray chalk and not spray paint on the paths and roads. Also the cardboard arrow markers on light posts and traffic sign posts were a great visual aid. There were many stop signs and lights but for the most part, everything went smoothly. Drivers were courteous and numerous waived Alex and I through an intersection even though they had right-of-way.

Ride data image follows...