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I left work around noon on Friday to make the 5 hour drive to Redlands,
CA. Talk about a flat boring drive! No problems getting checked into the
hotel or getting my ride packet. The Orange County Wheelman (OCW) do an
excellent job with logistics. Like Breathless Agony last year, Ride
Around the Bear had a two hour start window, between 5:30 am and 7:30
am. Each rider checks out at a starting area when they leave. I wish
every ride started that way! It’s a lot safer at the start and on the
road when there isn’t a mass start – and you get to take your time
getting ready. I wound up checking out of the start area at about 6:21
am and started the very, very gradual climb out of town. About 5 miles
or so into the ride, it gets flat with some descending. I just planned
to have fun on this ride, so I hit that section pretty fast, maintaining
over 30 most of the way. One guy jumped on my wheel, but dropped off
when the road started to turn up again.
Ride Around the Bear is pretty similar to Breathless Agony overall.
Breathless Agony is just a bit longer with more climbing. But this ride
has a very long 20 mile climb up to Big Bear Lake. I had my 5200 with my
triple and I used all of my gears, but they allowed me to maintain a
pretty good spin going up the hill and I passed a lot of people. It was
still pretty slow going though and I was averaging under 10 mph up the
hill. When I got to the lake I slowed down and enjoyed the scenery to
the lunch stop. I stayed at the lunch stop for a bit longer than I
normally would but ran into Tom Conner (a fellow bicycle commuter I
often see at the showers in the morning at work) and Doug and Roberta
Toussaint who were at Cochise last year and at at least one of Susan’s
brevets. They were riding their tandem up the hill!
After lunch I picked my speed up again. There was a nice tail wind and I
made great time to the start of the climb up to Onyx pass. I picked up
one guy, Jeff Volpe, along the way. We hit a stop light just past the
lake and he said he would have given me some help, but he was having
trouble staying on my wheel! I set a fast pace again going up the start
of the climb and Jeff wasn’t able to get on my wheel when we left the
light. But about half way up the climb, the effort and altitude started
to catch up to me and my speed dropped to under 8 mph. For the first
time in the day people started to pass me, including Jeff who said he
would wait for me at the top.
Sure enough Jeff was waiting and gave me time to fill my bottles and eat
some fruit before starting the descent. We flew down that hill before
hitting a series of rollers. Jeff would pull me to the top of a rise,
then I would go to the front for the descents. It worked well and we
made excellent time. The final descent is a good 30-35 miles and I got
into my hyper-tuck and got up a lot of speed going down the hill. My
weight gives me a natural advantage on descents and Jeff wasn’t able to
stay on my wheel. Near the bottom though he breezed by me drafting off a
mini-van and I jumped on his wheel. The road had flattened out some but
we were still doing 40-42 mph through that section, just flying! We
stayed with that minivan back into town, then dropped off when we caught
another group of 4 cyclists. We got into a fast rotating pace line to
the final turn back to Sylvan park. Jeff had a friend in that group that
he noticed when we were coming down the hill and decided he wanted to
catch his friend. It was awesome!
I figured it would take me 6 to 7 hours total time and I wound up
finishing in 6:34 including about 26 minutes of stops. Not too bad for a
ride with over 9,500 feet of cumulative ascent!
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