tour de pain-in-the-butt peninsula

(via zerieusa)

i met up with a fellow team midnight ridaa meghan around 8am saturday and we streamed out of the bike attack parking lot not long after that. it looked like it was going to be a gorgeous day. clear skies and sunny. we rode south toward the surf-towns and volleyball nets of manhattan, hermosa, and redondo beaches. less than 5 miles into the ride though, my friend flavio had some front derailleur difficulties and had to bail.

i've taken the tour south a few times now, but saturday's ride had some slight (ride lengthening) changes on the route slip, i knew we were still in for some serious climbing. there are lots of different steeply-graded ways to make your legs burn in palos verdes, and this route was a calf-sculptor. we made a pit stop at the forev'r-mobbed-by-spandexed-cyclists malaga cove market, lined up for their meat locker bathroom, and continued on our way. instead of climbing a fairly straight-forward 4-ish miles up hawthorne to get to the top, we kind of wound our way around the mountain, hitting palos verdes north, east, south AND west. this meant lots of up and down, false crests, and staying on your bike meant recovering quickly after a climb, only to do another one right away. so the ups were shorter, and probably less steep than hawthorne, but the ride seemed never-ending.

on the way back, we passed by wayfarer's chapel, a unique glass church designed by lloyd wright (frank lloyd wright's son). i only saw it partially from the road, and nearly missed it, since my eyes were busy bugging out at the clear view of catalina island and the development-shrouded cliffs below us. did you know lloyd also designed some prior versions of the hollywood bowl? i'd say good design sense is hereditary. definitely. =)

about 30 miles into the ride, the wind started picking up and it soon felt like we were moving in slow motion even on the steepest downhills. last week we dealt with fog & mist & rain...this week it was WIND! 20+ mph gusts, enough to blow you sideways and sandblast beach bits into your legs.

this 60 mile ride was my longest yet, and my knees started hurting during the last half of it. time to pick up some clipless pedals!