Big Sur Ride

date

September 23-23, 2006

distance

~170 miles

The Big Sur ride in South of Monterey California offers a wonderful variety of coast with five hundred feet sheer drops, great hill climbs, arid inland golden oak covered hills, and inland dry valleys. This ride though perhaps a bit pricey is a benefit event for local schools and childrens organizations - and they, that is the kids, from many of these groups (4H Club, representing schools, trips for kids) did an absolutely wonderful job supporting the event.

This was the first extended ride on my relatively new bike and over all I had really wished for more training specifically on the climbs. The 170 mile 11K feet climb trip afforded (and in my case was a necessarily) a lot of stops, short rests and an embarrassing amount of pushing the bicycle up hill. I do believe however I did finish well relative to the majority of the pack. Mostly my weakness were at extended exertion at a moderately high temperature, but also balance became very tiring at low climbing speeds occasionally worsened with font wheel lift. I also must learn to ride the draft lines better as I would frequently join up with even the fastest of these lines only to burn out after a couple of miles. It just seemed like two much effort to keep in pace. When going downhill I would drift past, even when outside the line and going uphill I would really have to struggle to lift my extra weight. It was a couple days of continually passing and being passed by the same individuals and groups, completely out of sync by +/- 10 mph or more depending on if we were predominantly going down or uphill. There was only one other recumbent rider, and I suspect that he dropped out of the ride as I saw him struggling early on in the coastal rises and falls then no more. There were a couple of tandem bikes and we also watched several gear laden touring riders going at a much different pace north and south up highway 1.

Beverly and Greg were my own personal support team and I met up with them a number of times on the first day.

Satellite Pictures route and GPS on Bikely Route

Day 1 Profile

Day 2 Profile

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