Saturday Ride

For the past years my Tim (my oldest brother), my Father and Greg (a family friend from church) have been getting together almost every weekend to cycle. These three are monsters on the bike and routinely put in more time in a single ride than than I accumulate in a week or even a month of riding. This past Saturday I decided to join them to see what I could do and how badly I am out of shape (compared to them). The plan was to ride about 31 miles in Pasadena and climb a few hills along the way. We met up at Tim's house a little before 6:30 which meant I needed to be up by 5:15 out in the SCV. I grabbed a water bottle and a bag of cereal and hoped by body would wake up in the 45 minute drive to San Gabriel. Unfortunately, my father could not make it as he donated blood the day before and was busy having his house re-carpeted. Now fully awake and energized we headed west towards the Arroyo and the Rose Bowl... the first stretch of 9 miles was flat and may have been a total loss of elevation, just a good chance to get loosened up. Those familiar with the Rose Bowl understand that is in a valley surrounded by some pretty quickly rising hills. Here is where it gets fun. We proceeded up the north west corner of the bowl up towards the Pasadena School of Design and boy did my legs scream at me. Moving 4-5 miles per hour we chugged up the hill and chugged and chugged some more. I did not think my crappy little bike was going to make it up those first set of climbs but the ride down was incredible.... hitting 40 MPH on a bike is something that is simply exhilarating. The excitement quickly dissipated realizing I now had to climb all the way back up the hills we just toppled. This time by legs were not just screaming they were ripping themselves off my bones.... Maybe this is a little strong by I was hurting. If I could only have had 2 more gears to shift down in I think I could have had a better chance on the hills. This put us at the 20 mile mark and it appeared it was time to head back home. We tackled a few more hills out of the Rose Bowl and had enough energy to spare.

I clearly enjoyed riding with other people and hope that my pace was not too slow for the more experienced riders and that they will invite me back another Saturday down the road.