Views of Anacapa

The 2013 brevet season has started. The PCH Randonneurs hosted their second 200k of the year on Jan 12th - their popular Views of Anacapa brevet. Southern California was in the middle of a cold snap so temps were very close to freezing when we started at 7am. Fortunately Amber and I were well prepared with double and triple layers. There was a chap there from Utah - it's so cold there he drove seven hours to Moorpark to ride a brevet with us. I think he brought the weather with him :-)

Views of Anacapa has 6000' of climbing which makes it a fairly tough 200k. Fortunately none of the climbing is more than 8% and the worst climb is the 500' grind over Casitas pass. It's a good way to start the season if you've been riding through the winter, but it's quite a challenge if you haven't.

While preparing to start I noticed a number of seasoned randonneurs with their taillights pointing high up into the sky. Such an elementary mistake. Taillights should be horizontal. They need to be seen by drivers while they are still 100 yards behind you. They don't need to be seen by passing planes.

The ride started off very cold in the face and fingers - even with the undergloves. It wasn't until we had been climbing Grimes canyon for a while that I warmed up. We hooked up with Mel at the climb. As the sun came up near the top we started feeling comfortable again. There's lots of climbing and descending in the first part of the route so we alternated between comfortable and freezing. Foster was hosting the first control where we lost contact with Mel.

It warmed up to about 50F which is a great temperature for riding when you have arm warmers and leg warmers. The ham sandwich at Casitas market was fantastic. The oat muffin at Carpenteria was less so but it did mark the turn around. Headed back south along the beach with a tailwind was nice although I swear CalTrans hasn't worked on that road in the twenty years since I first rode it.

The cheeseburger at Wendys was amazing - I must have been hungry. Soon after we turned inland and the tailwind got stronger. It pushed us up the dreaded Santa Rosa road faster than ever before and we got to the turn onto Moorpark road before I even realized we were climbing.

We got to the end of the ride while it was still light. My target time for the ride was 10 hours total and we came in at 9:42. Greg had great pizza waiting for us. We stopped and chatted with old friends we hadn't seen for several months. Just before it got too dark we jumped on our bikes and returned to the trucks for the drive home.

Next is the 300k in San Luis Obispo on Feb 23rd.