Day 13: ALC Day on the Ride

For today's training ride, I went out with hundreds of LA area ALC riders for the "Day on the Ride," a 65-mile simulation of the LifeCycle experience. I was determined to not get caught in the hoards of riders (I hate cycling crowds. Who knew?) so I rode out with the fast Training Ride Leader (TRL in these parts) who also happened to be ex-child star Chad Allen. BTW, he is really good humored about his past as a teeny bopper. I informed him that my sister used to have his picture on her wall and he laughed about it and said "it was an interesting way to grow up." So much fun! All of the faster riders (including Dario, David, Melissa, Tom, Chad and the other members of the team "Funky Monkey") played cycle-tag throughout the day and traded off who was in the lead. I felt completely challenged by riding with such great athletes. Also, Dario had a minor spill (complete with bike flip) when he hit a crack in the road just was we were turning onto Westmont from Gaffey. It was an elegant spill yielding only minor scratches on his arms and legs. If you are going to fall, that's how you want to do it... I was afraid that we was really hurt, but he did just fine.

Day on the Ride is never an "easy" ride. The ALC planners always try to set us up with a challenging, yet doable, route through the South Bay area. We had the big climb up the north side of the peninsula early on and another slow climb after lunch. Predictably, I had some difficulty on those rollers. They are a challenging set of hills. And with the temperature edging up to the high 80s and sand all along the beach bike path (NO!), it was a challenging day. I rolled across the finish line around 1:30.