Palos Verdes-53.8 Miles

Last weekend I was happy that our meeting place was only 1.9 miles from my front door, at the now familiar Del Rey Lagoon Park. This meant that I did not have to wake up at 6:15am to pack up my car, eat breakfast, and drive to a distant location like Malibu or Griffith Park. Instead, I woke up around 7, unhurriedly ate a PB&J, packed everything I would need into my jersey pockets, and biked over to the park. This also gave me 1.9 miles to become successfully reacquainted with my new bike shoes and clipless pedals.


We started off our meeting with a brief tire changing clinic. We formed teams and attempted to recall our previous lessons on how to remove, replace and re-inflate our tubes. This is something I definitely need to practice on my own. I would hate to be out on a ride by myself, far away from all of the very capable and mechanically savvy people on my team, and not be able to change a tube. I don't think that knowing how to fix a flat 'in theory' will be quite good enough when the time comes.



I know many of you are experiencing very wintry weather this week, which oddly enough is directly related to the record highs projected for Southern California. I don't want to gloat about my climatic good fortune, but our Saturday ride was pretty spectacular. The day started off rather brisk at 50 degrees, but there was bright sunshine and a promise of a high in the 70's. Luckily most of my biking accoutrements are designed to be taken apart and crumpled up into a pocket. My awesome sky blue Cannondale jacket, for example, has sleeves that are attached by magnets. Pretty nifty, no? I did find that as the ride progressed and the thermostat rose I began removing layers.

From Del Rey we biked south through Redondo and Manhattan Beach. The beginning of our ride was a pretty flat 15 miles through residential beach communities, with many stop signs and street lights for me to practice clipping in and out of my pedals. I am proud to announce that I only fell over once the whole day! (Though to be fair there were a few more very close calls.)


From there we began climbing a bit, to make our way up to the Palos Verdes area. We were met with tall pine trees, verdant landscaping, million dollar coastal homes, and as we climbed slowly higher in elevation, absolutely stunning views of the ocean down below. (The name "Palos Verdes" is Spanish for "green sticks.") I have noticed that when I tell people that I am a cyclist, the trend is for many of them to ask "Have you been to Palos Verdes yet?" I now know why it is such a hotspot for cyclists. Really, I don't think I've been on a prettier bike ride. It is comparably to the famed Amalfi Coast in Italy.

Here's my mom and Mags hiking the Amalfi coast.

And here's a picture of Palos Verdes I found online.

It was in this area, around the half way mark of our ride, that we hit the hardest part of the day-Palos Verdes Drive East. It is a 1.9 mile hill of switchbacks that reveal gorgeous ocean views as you wind your way to the top at Marymount University. Our route slip marked the hill as being 1.5 miles, but when I reached that distance the hill just kept going up up and up. So I was chugging up this hill, alternately staring at my 'cyclocomputer' as my speed went from 6 to 5 to 4.5 mph, and watching the 'miles biked number' creep up oh so slowly in .1 increments.

Here's part of the hill we climbed.

And I discovered another advantage to having clipless pedals-I knew that with my level of fatigue, and the incline of the hill, if I attempted to stop it would simply be beyond me to figure out how to unclip my foot, stop and balance without tipping over. Not only that, but getting started again would be virtually impossible! So even though it was tough, and at times I really, really wanted to, I knew that I just could not stop going. It also helped that every so often another biker would zip past me going up the hill. When we reached the top, there were several other cycling groups relaxing after the challenge of the hill, and enjoying the beautiful sunny weather and the amazing views.

See that road down there? That's where we came up from.

I'm told that the more you do hills, the easier they become. I'm still waiting for the easy to kick in. However I am comforted by the fact that every time I'm feeling a bit daunted, one of the more experienced cyclist tells me "If you can do that hill, you can do Solvang." (And then I hear Brad say cheekily, "Yeah but at Solvang it's 70 miles and then a hill like that.")


The ride back down the hill was ridiculously fun. The switchbacks were great to zip around, the views were once again, stunning, and it was such a relief to know that the hardest part of the day was over! The remainder of the ride was backtracking our route, with lots of downhills and flat terrain. We had a brief break at a 7-11 where a couple of my teammates got ice cream sandwiches, and I tried a Vanilla Flavored Electrolyte Gel Pack thing which tasted kind of like cake icing....which is really not appealing after 35 miles on a bike. The last ten miles or so seemed to be the longest of the day. I was ready to be home, showered, and back into my pajamas. We made it back to our starting point around 1:45pm, making for a ride a little over 4 hours long. There really is nothing like having lunch, a shower, and chilling out on the couch after spending the first half of your day doing something so rewarding and exhausting.


I have noticed that every week I return home less tired. The first time I biked to the farmer's market (was that really a year ago?) an easy 12 miles total, I just crashed. My legs were sore and I was mentally and physically exhausted. But now, I can manage 53.8 miles, and while I was definitely tired, I was not so beat that I felt incapacitated.

Next week-back to Malibu and more hills!