Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Tour of Orange County Bikepaths

I hosted the Tour of Orange County Bikepaths 200k brevet on Saturday. It's a quirky ride with a ferry ride and a control at a Biker Bar. I had ten riders and most of us stayed in touch for most of the ride - semi-audax style :-)

Willie Hunt rode over from his house in his yellow submarine, as did Martins Zinbergs on his bamboo Calfee. The ride started nice and cool and headed to the coast for the first 80 miles where it was overcast and with an unusual Southern wind. The sun didn't come out until we headed inland and finally broke through around 1pm at mile 90.

The climb up towards Cook's Corner Biker Bar was hot and the place was packed with bikers. But the food was awesome. Finishing the climb to the top of Santiago Canyon was tough with 90F temps and a belly full of burgers. I stopped at a coffee shop at the last control and had a fantastic blueberry iced coffee. We had a tailwind to the end.

I finished in exactly 10 hours - my target speed. Most of the group finished 10 minutes earlier and Martins finished eight minutes behind me.

Overall a good ride. No-one got horribly lost, the heat didn't get as bad as predicted, and lots of people learned lots of new bike paths.

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