Chicks doing hill climbing

We aren't sure whose idea it really was, but everyone agreed to do it.   Let's do our Shady Canyon loop backwards.   Maybe some of us thought it might be easier, but climbing that long grade up Culver and then Shady Canyon really made us feel like we were out of shape.

What we didn't realize was we were all riding it faster than we ever had before.  No stops just kept going, climbing and climbing until we were rewarded with a great down hill coming down Shady Canyon.  As we mounted the crest a gorgeous view all the way to the inland foothills came into view.   Funny how we had never noticed this great view before since it was behind our back as we climbed up shady canyon the normal way.

We kept up the pace trying to beat the impending end of daylight back to our starting point.   On Jefferey just before we moved back to the Barranca bike trail, we noticed a little Mexican restaurant and tucked the location away for future "Margarita" ride destination.  Hmm...I think someone has a birthday coming up soon.  We are going to have to plan a stop.

Total ride was 15 miles in 1 hour and 11 minutes not bad for so much uphill climbing work.

Saturday is the OCW spring metric 40 and 62 mile rides.   Next week is our normal Monday and Wednesday evening rides.  Pat will be leading.   See you there!

Chicks riding again!

With the time change we have started our after work rides again.  Monday and Wednesday evenings, meeting at 5:30 pm at Col Barber Marine Memorial Park at the corner of Harvard and Barranca.   You can tell the chicks that have been riding through the winter.   Even though we haven't had our during the week rides, it's amazing how fast the muscle memory came back.   Pat and Becky are looking strong on their new road bikes. 

The sun does start to set around 7 pm and it's a little on the cold side so we are wearing light jackets, but this week and last we made a trip up Hick's canyon with the great Jeffrey downhill as well as a trip past Sand Canyon to Alton and back.

Everyone is strong and riding smoothly.  It's been great to get out.   Looking forward to seeing you at our next evening ride.

Chicks that get a bike fit

Guess who has a new steed?  You guessed it; Pat recently took ownership of a new Trek Lexa SLX.  She spent several months researching and looking at bikes and trying to figure out what would be the best bike investment for her that would serve her for a long time.  The Trek Lexa is designed to be women’s specific and comes in several models.  The SLX has better components including Shimano 105s for the derailleurs and shifters.  Two Wheels One Planet had the best January deal going on and awesome customer service.  They were no pressure and encouraged her to test ride and come back over and over to get all of her questions answered.

A very important step in buying a new bike especially one you are making an investment in is to get a proper bike fitting.   The team at Two Wheels One Planet feels strongly about this and will include a professional bike fit in the purchase of the bike.   They know that if someone fits the bike and feels good on it they will ride the bike, continue to buy accessories, make recommendations to friends and come back to them for any upgrades.

Kristen Lawrence, the general manager at Two Wheels One Planet has years of experience riding and bike fitting.  She was a road racer in her early career and now has such a passion for bikes and getting people to ride that it’s contagious just talking to her.   Pat made an appointment one evening after work and found out included in her bike fit was lots of additional knowledge that Kristen was happy to share.

Kristen started by checking the cleats on Pat’s shoes and changing them out to be Shimano the same brand as her pedals.  While the other off brand cleats would work, they won’t provide the best continuing wear.   Kristen explained that we start at the bottom and ensure a proper alignment with the foot starting with the position of the ball over the foot directly above the spindle of the pedal.  She checked out the fore and aft as well as the angular position while Pat’s foot was in the shoe clipped into the pedal.  This is where the power stroke comes in.   The better power you have to the pedals the more relaxed the rest of your body will feel and the longer you can ride.

Kristen also explained that there is a difference between fitting a man and fitting a woman (and NOT just the seat area) as well as fitting a recreational cyclist or a racer.   As you become more confident on the bike or lose weight or become fitter, continual fit adjustments can be made.

Next after ensuring that the seat height was correct, Kristen determined the correct fore/aft position of the seat and then adjusted the level.   She told us to think of your legs as pistons that need to go up and down for the best amount of power.  If you are trying to move your quads forward or back then you are wasting a large amount of effort.  She reminded us that pushing down on the pedal is a natural thing that we learned when we were little girls just pushing off on a bike.  We should start to focus on pulling back with our foot like trying to scrape mud off the bottom of your shoe and pulling up with our toes.

Getting all of these positions correct are essential for your actual riding of the bike.   The final area to work on (handlebars) is really just a place to put your hands and reach the controls.   If you are totally leaning on your handlebars and constantly pushing yourself back up on your seat, then you will become exhausted over a longer ride and aren’t taking advantage of your best power.

In between each adjustment, Kristen would have Pat spin her legs around both to practice her pedaling stroke and get a feel for the changes in adjustment.  For the handlebar height, Kristen explained that women do not have the huge back muscles that are inherent for men and because of our body build a slightly higher rise in the handle bars will make for a more comfortable ride.  She swapped out Pat’s stem with one at a higher angle.  Again, if Pat decides to join master racing and new adjustments and swaps can be done in the future.   Kristen then had Pat check her reach and gave her some hints for riding on road handlebars to practice on her upcoming rides.

Now that each of you has some miles on your bike I would encourage you to consider getting a proper bike fit.  The beginning of our evening riding season would be an ideal time to do it. Kristen said that if we get a group together she would give us special deal.  

So be looking for Pat on her properly fitted new Lexa on our next group ride and we will plan for our traditional champagne toast to the new bike owner.

Remember Jeri and Theresa will be racing in the Race on the Base triathlon Saturday, February 25.  Becky is organizing a ride from her house in Garden Grove.  Contact her if you are interested.

What is your excuse?

Too early?  Too Windy?  The chicks that stayed home really missed a great ride.  It was a beautiful morning.  I woke up a couple of times during the night and could hear our front porch wind chime which meant "Santa Anas" were blowing.   But it seem to get less and less noisy as dawn approached.  I couldn't decide if we were going to regret riding.  But I knew I would regret NOT riding.  I checked the weather channel first thing and it showed LA as being calm.  This was decision time. Let's do it.

We planned on an early start, so that a certain someone could make it back in time for a family commitment, but she had some kind of "excuse".   We could/should have slept in and started a little later.  Jessy said that we should just drive to her house and make her provide us breakfast.

Since Jeri and Jessy had joined us we all decided to do the shorter 11 mile route through Strawberry farms.  Pat did an awesome job videoing our trip.   Enjoy!

The actual normal speed video isn't shaky, but we sped it up and edited quite a bit, since we didn't want to bore you with 7 minutes of similar scenery, but it gives a great example of one of our regular rides.  The microphone worked great, but Pat refused to narrate the whole ride, so it got a bit boring.  Thanks to Jessy for the editing and finishing touches.

The early chick gets.....

COLD!!! Brrr... was it cold. I was going to say the early chick gets breakfast, but there was an unseasonably drop in the air temp this morning.  Since this brunch ride was sort of inspired by the Chicago area cup cake ride group who ride in the snow, I guess having cold weather in Southern California was appropriate.  When I hopped out of bed, the outdoor thermometer said 45 degrees.  Ahhhh, we live in Southern California, I thought, when the sun comes up, it will warm up.   However, for good measure I grabbed my running jacket, figuring that would be better than arm warmers and pulled out my running tights intending to pull them over my cycling shorts when I got to the ride start.

As I loaded my bike in the car, I thought, I really ought to look for my long-fingered fitness gloves, but with my dear hubby still sleeping in the dark in the warm bed, I figured, I could "tough" it out.   As hard as it was to get up so early on a weekend morning (6:20 a.m.), I enjoyed the treat of a pretty sunrise on the freeway on my way to the ride start.   The group had elected to start earlier, so that we could get our ride done, have breakfast and then get back to our families while it was still morning. That worked for me since I had an appointment at 10:30 a.m.

Everyone was at the start (La Quinta Inn, Sand Canyon and the 5 Fwy) on time so we could roll by 7:30.   Our friend Jeri joined us on her husband's Trek Mountain Bike with knobby tires.

  Jeri is athletic, so we knew she would be a good addition to the group.  I noticed everyone else was in shorts or knickers, so I decided against pulling on my tights.  Everyone kept on their warm up jackets and smart Jeri even had a fleece vest.   We pumped up the tires and headed out of the La Quinta Inn parking lot for our ride in search of Peter's Canyon trail.

We rode South on Sand Canyon and took the Barranca bike trail West to meet up with Peter's Canyon trail. The first thing we noticed was a bit of cold, but what really made an impression on me was that we did NOT see any other riding groups out for quite a while.  Maybe it really is too cold to ride?  I have been known to skip riding on a very windy morning, but I've never skipped for a cold day.  I just knew I would warm up, in a bit.   I increased my speed, thinking if I brought my heart beat up, then I would begin to warm up.  All that did was increase the feel of the wind against me which made my hands even colder.  I tried to tuck one hand at a time into my pockets or into my arm pits, but they were really starting to ache.  I was beginning to think about telling the group that we may just need to cut our ride short (I'm sure there was hot tea waiting for me at Knowlwoods, our planned breakfast place) Then I remembered that we are going to ride right past a Target off of Barranca.  I wonder what time Target opens; I wish it was still holiday hours.

Since Chris, Becky and I had put a bit of a distance between us and the rest of the group, Chris said she would wait at the trail to let the others know of our little stop and Becky came with me to watch my bike.  As I rounded the side entrance of Target, I could see the open time as 8:00 a.m. - Yay!; it was 2 minutes ‘till,  I could see the rack of 2-for-$1.50 stretchy gloves calling out to me.  I wonder how fast I can get in, choose colors and make it through the register line?  Normally I would pull off my gloves, helmet and cycling mirror before going into a store, but this was going to be such a quick trip that I headed in the minute the door was opened. 

Within 5 minutes, I was exiting the store and was met by Becky and Pat. We were able to pull on the stretchy knitted gloves right over our cycling gloves and felt immediate relief.    Then we headed back to the group at the trail just behind the store.  I didn't want anyone to get discouraged and think they couldn't ride in the winter since we weren't use to it -- gloves for everyone!

Thawing fingers!

As we continued on the Barranca trail we begin to see other riders.  Most of them were dressed appropriately with full-length tights and long-fingered gloves.  The majority of the ones that greeted us did address how it was definitely cold.   When we made it to our normal park starting point, we headed North up Harvard so we could join the Peter's Canyon trail again.   It became obvious that other groups start at 8 or 8:30 as we start seeing pelotons and groups beginning to move along the roads.

We continued up the river trail passing Team-in-Training for Leukemia joggers training together and enjoyed watching the the quail meandering in the shallow river.  The path is as pretty as we remembered it from our summer-after work rides.  When we reached Hick's Canyon, Pat and Jeri took a detour as Karen, Chris, Becky and I continued up the long hill toward Portola.   We met up with Jeri and Pat where the Hick's trail hits Portola and started our well-deserved downhill.  Although Jeri and Pat were able to cut a couple of miles, they still had to climb the deceiving trail to get to the rendezvous point.

Once we began our downhill trek on Jeffrey, we knew we would soon be ordering a warm breakfast.  Everyone enjoyed shifting to a higher gear and see what kind of speed they could make between stop lights.  I heard Pat got up to 27 mph.  

We were able to find the San Diego Creek Trail to head back to our starting point.  When we had started our ride I didn't see any trail closed signs so I figured it was opened back up from the construction we saw on our summer rides.   As we passed by the parks, we did see a "Trail Closed" sign posted on the fence but since a lady was walking her dog and the path wasn't blocked, I thought that they just didn't want cyclist on it because the pavement hadn't been redone yet and there was some debris on the path.  It was still quite rideable through until......

we made it to a locked gate covering the width of the trail.   We looked through the chain linked fence and thought, no problem the path looks fine on the other side.  We could easily make it to San Canyon and the La Quinta Inn where we could see the tower just above the road in front of us.  So we did what any law abiding bicycle group would do.....

After all, there were no signs that said there was a penalty or that we would be breaking the law.  We took it to mean they didn't have an established path to ride on.  Certainly Jeri could make it along the dirt on her off road bike.  Once we passed the locked gate, we figured we were home free until we came upon the next locked gate.  Well it was too late to turn around, so we decided to lift each other’s bikes so we could compare bike weights (Ok really we needed to get the bikes over the gate).  Jeri said, "You didn't tell me we were going on an adventure."  I'm not sure what Pat meant when she said, "With Theresa, it's always an adventure,"  since we didn't take any wrong turns this time.

 

 

A short distance more and we were back at our cars, ready for a Knowlwoods breakfast.  Total distance for the long riders was 18 miles. We pulled off our newly acquired gloves, put our bikes in our vehicles and headed for the restaurant for the long-awaited breakfast.

Pat demonstrating how the bikes were lifted over the fence.

Chicks that ride into the new year

.....and on a new bike.   Our first ride of the New Year took us to our starting point in Sunset Beach for a ride along the multi-use pedestrian path to the Newport Beach pier and back.  Karen, Pat, Chris, Theresa and Becky (on her new steed) showed up and were ready to ride on a cold overcast morning.   We kept hoping the clouds would burn off and we would have some sunshine. It was a little tough to find parking but everyone found a spot and made their way over to the meeting area at the pedestrian entrance to Bolsa Chica State Park.   Theresa and her husband rode to the start from home. 

This was the inaugural ride on Becky's new GT sky blue road bike which she aptly named Sky High.  And did she appear to be "flying" on it.  We zoomed past all the morning beach goers and surfers, past the new year's resolutionist joggers out for their morning run and then sped up the hill past dog beach.  Before you knew it we were at the Huntington Beach pier.

Along the city beach, we wove our way around families with jog strollers and kids on new Christmas bikes and headed toward the Santa Ana river jetty, for a quick regroup before we continued onto the path into Newport Beach.

The lighter use winter season made for an easy trip on the board walk with inviting sand along our right side and expensive beach front rental homes along the left.  Before we knew it, we were at the Newport Beach pier.  We took advantage of turnaround point to take a few photos before we saddled up for the return trip.  We were blessed without a headwind and made great time back to our starting point.  Total mileage for the Sunset Beach to Newport Pier and back was 24 miles.  Becky said it was "easy".

Before everyone dispersed back to their individual cars, we stopped at Pat's Nissan, popped the cork on the traditional bottle of bubbly and toasted Becky's new bike.  A fitting end to a great ride and we are looking forward to the many rides that 2012 will bring us.

Ready to start the New Year? 2012 Here we come..

Our first ride of 2012 will be Saturday, January 7th in Huntington Beach.  This is a gorgeous route mostly all on bike trail along the beach.  The only hazards will be walkers, surfers, and runners.  It will be an out and back route, so you can travel as far as you like and turn around.

We will meet at 8:30 a.m. at the corner of PCH and Warner Avenue, just inside of Bolsa Chica State Park on the Beach Path by the sand.

Travel 405 fwy north, exit at Beach Blvd.. 
Head South. 
Turn right on Warner Avenue.  Stay on Warner until you hit PCH.
Stay straight on Warner crossing PCH and make a right turn just past the Jack In the Box on N. Pacific Avenue.
Park in either of the two free lots between N. and S. Pacific Avenue or anywhere along Pacific Avenue. 
Get your bike out and ride to the starting point just inside the state park (see illustration).

Mark your Calendars, our first evening ride will be Monday, March 11 after the time change.   Also how about a February weekend away to Arizona?

Be thinking of your riding goals for this year.   Will it be a century ride? Or a new Bike? Or get smoother and faster?  New Year, her we come!