Forgive the lack of pictures, I'll add them later.
https://www.strava.com/activities/14489096571
How not to do a quadruple, on 2.5 weeks of prep:
1) Leave your nice bike and all your gear in a different state
2) Do a test ride on an old race bike you’ve been using as a commuter and realize it has problems
3) Have an absolute angel of a bike mechanic friend fix up basically everything on the bike
4) Order a pile of stuff online because you have no gear, or tools, or chain lube, or anything
5) Spend 1 week ramping back up from zero
6) Freeze your butt off on top of some mountains while trying to get a handle on current fitness abilities
7) Do 2-3 of rides where you actually try to push a reasonable effort
8) Do 1 very slow double century to just verify that everything is ok, get beat up by some nasty winds
9) Test gear, put reflective stickers on stuff, hope you have everything
10) Go!
This ride was a bit more of an adventure than I had anticipated. But first, some backstory.
Way back around 2016, on bike to work day at Google, Josh and Dan did a 50 mile ride ending at the office. I’d biked in from Pasadena, a mere 28 miles, and was impressed. The next year, I thought, well, I could do that, and did Mt. Wilson before heading into the office, I think ending up with about 70 miles. Later that year, I did my first multi-day bike trip - a rather haphazardly planned and executed 6-day ride from Pasadena to San Jose. A year later, I started riding double centuries, racing ultras, and eventually thought, what if…? I could have the biggest bike to work day ride. A few years later, now was the time to do it.
Planning and prep for this ride began way too late. I’ve been juggling so many life things recently, and just a few weeks in advance, realized that this was something I might be able to make happen this year, and should, if I ever want to. But, I’d barely been riding at all over the past year, and most of my stuff was in Colorado. And, the coast was closed south of Big Sur due to a landslide, and around the Palisades due to fire damage, so I couldn’t take the coastal route I was familiar with.
I kind of slapped together a route, letting RideWithGPS suggest most of the routing unless it was through an area I already knew and had preferences about. It suggested a long stretch on Airline Highway, going by Pinnacles. Some clicking around on streetview revealed that this road could be kind of bumpy and lacking passing space for cars. Not at all what you’d want if you have to deal with much traffic. I got some very valuable intel from Peter that this road definitely could be sketchy, but would probably be pretty ok at night. Cool, this route would work, and I’d ride that section at night.
So, I bought and gathered the gear I needed (thanks Katie for bringing my saddle bag and top tube bag from Boulder!), and gambled on not having any major mechanicals. I wasn’t sure what, if any, options I’d have for food and water until San Luis Obispo, so I figured I’d just carry more than normal, and see how far it got me. After San Luis Obispo, there are sufficient cities that you no longer need to be careful about fuel.
I did, uh, 2-3 rides that I would consider “training” and one “test” leading up to this ride. Kendall recently posted a gravel ultra (https://www.strava.com/activities/14449034024), and I liked her description of “Kinda rolled off the couch into this one.” So you CAN do that. Or, some people can do that. I think I can do that. From my very limited recent riding, I could tell that my power output was way down from previous years. But, I didn’t need to go fast, I just needed to get there.
One thing that’s kind of funny to think about with these ultras is that you really don’t need to go fast to get to the end. If you go fast, you obviously get to the end faster and don't have to deal with the challenges of just sitting on your bike endlessly, but on a lot of the races, you need to average, like, 11 mph to make the time cutoff. This ride wasn’t a race, but given my goals of when to start and end, the speed requirements were very chill.
I left after work on Tuesday. I had been planning on leaving work early, but there were bugs that needed responses, math questions that needed asking, and always one more discussion in the team chat. So, I ended up leaving in time for rush hour.
Rush hour can be kind of fun on a bike on the right roads, because you go SO MUCH faster than the cars that are just sitting still, or crawling along the expressway at 5 mph. I had a tailwind, and, aside from a tiny piece of San Jose, just flew. Flat roads with a tailwind from the start through Hollister made it probably the fastest metric century that I’ve ever done, despite having a bunch of extra weight and so little power. And then it got dark.
The first part of Airline Highway past Hollister is pretty good, for the most part. Most of it has shoulders, most of it is good pavement, and there weren’t too many cars. As it got later, and darker, the shoulders all but disappeared, but so did the cars. I don’t think I saw a single car after around 11 pm.
I was prepared for somewhat questionable roads out in the middle of nowhere, but I was not prepared for how creepy this place ended up feeling. I’ve done tons of night rides, but they’re often out in the desert where you can see everything around you for miles. Or, you could, if it were light. Here, there were tall grasses on the side of the road. There was enough water that things were alive here.
A little after leaving the last signs of humanity, there was what felt like it was probably a marshy area off to the right. Or maybe it was just windy. Late at night, there was the sound of someone trying to start an engine and it choking and dying. And again. And on the third try, the sounds fell out of sync and fell apart into a mess of low frogs croaking.
A large thing - a bat? - flew through the air right in front of me and disappeared into the dark. That would have had to be a huge bat. But they’re what’s out at night, right? A few minutes later, another pair flew through my headlight. Owls. I continued to catch them in my headlight occasionally throughout the night.
Mice, hundreds of tiny mice, one by one, ran across the road. I was briefly concerned about what would happen if I hit one, but they seemed to be not quite dumb enough for that, and I wasn’t sure what I’d do to dodge one anyway. The rabbits on the road seemed somewhat less good at getting out of the way. They’d get startled, run a few feet to the left, a few to the right, and end up still in front of you on the road, then repeat.
My headlight lit up the rear end of some sort of animal with its head in the brush. It was round, and seemed the right shape for something like a mouse without a tail, except that it was the size of a small dog. I was gone before I could figure it out. It wasn’t right for a bobcat. It was like an enormous gerbil? I’m fairly certain there aren’t capybaras around here. Should I turn around and figure out what that thing was? It was probably gone anyway.
And then, from off to my left, came a, “Huh!” I looked sharply to the left and saw a tall stand of grass. “HUH.” from somewhere in that direction. Something pushed the grass around and crushed and shook it. “Hmm…” from the left. Another shake of the stand of grass made me jump and get out of there. A large rabbit ran out of the grass. The “hmmmm” slowly changed pitch and turned into a long howl from a farm dog somewhere.
The full moon had passed the previous night, and so tonight’s moon was still bright enough to cast shadows. Shadows of things moving onto and off of the road that didn’t exist. Turning a corner out of the dark into the moonlight and feeling like someone somewhere was shining a light on me. Everything had just enough light to be alive.
More mice. More rabbits. More owls. A cow that was hiding in the shadows just next to the road let out a loud MOOOOOOooo that made me jump again.
And then there was something standing in the road. It was small, not a cow. Maybe the size of a large fox, as I approached it. Oddly, it didn’t move. I slowed down on the approach. It was a wild pig, standing in the middle of the road, staring at me. “GO!” I yelled at it. “Go away!” It stared at me. I slowed down. Are pigs aggressive? Can I just go around it? This was the thing I’d seen earlier and wondered if it was a large rodent. As I got very close, the pig started to dart of to the right, but changed its mind and turned back to face me head on. “MOVE! GO! GO AWAY!” I yelled at it, and it finally did, hooves scraping and slipping frantically as it sprinted off the asphalt.
The temperature started to drop. I kind of expected that, from the weather predictions I’d looked up in advance. I’d been going up a gentle climb for a while, and it was keeping me warm enough. But it got colder, and humid. I was just riding the edge of warm enough to keep going, and hadn’t brought any warm clothes beyond a wind jacket. My Garmin told me it was 38 degrees.
My plan had been to stop around midnight for a short nap, then keep riding through the night. At least when I’m riding, I’m generating heat. But, with the animals and the tall grass and the weird sounds, I was not about to stop and take a break in that. So, I kept going until the road started going down instead of up, and some roadside farms had trimmed the grass enough that I could sit there.
Temperatures dropped to mid 30s. I couldn’t do the descent in this. I pulled out a mylar blanket that I’d brought (they’re amazing, you should always carry them) and wrapped myself up. When there isn’t a lot of wind stripping your heat, you actually lose most of your heat through radiation (not through conduction), and the mylar blankets are surprisingly good at reflecting that radiation back towards you. I wrapped myself up, arms around my knees, a shiny silver egg on the side of the road. And waited, and napped.
I got going again around 5am. My Garmin now read 33 degrees outside, but I couldn’t wait forever for it to warm up. At least I’d warmed up sitting there under the blanket. I wrapped it around me like a poncho to keep out the wind and keep me warm, and let it flap around me as I did the descent. Not the fastest, but moving is better than sitting in one place.
I held onto it, flapping around me and making me highly visible to all cars, all the way until late morning in Paso Robles. Once there, I finally found a trash can to dispose of my shiny blanket and all the various candy wrappers I’d accumulated.
Overall, fuel had been going pretty well. I had a few snack bags in which I’d mixed all of my snacks, because I figured I’d just put one somewhere accessible, and pick through it for what I wanted, instead of juggling multiple bags to get something specific. Each bag had some peanut butter pretzels, some gummy snacks, and some M&Ms. Usually I don’t carry chocolate, but it seemed like the risk of it melting was low. One thing I learned, though, was that the peanut butter pretzels floated to the top on all the bags, making the other sugary snacks less accessible. Either due to larger particle size, or due to lower density (maybe someone can tell me?), they wouldn’t stay mixed. So, I think if I mix snacks in the future, they have to be in same-size mixes, or maybe same-density.
Paso Robles to San Luis Obispo was uneventful, as was the route further south. Climbing up towards Vandenburg (now Space Force Base?) I saw a large truck carrying what seemed like it might have been part of a space shuttle, or something. Maybe it was just an oddly shaped huge capsule for something else. That climb always seems worse than it actually is.
On the descent towards Lompoc, I felt a prick on my leg that grew sharper and painful over the next couple of minutes, and I stopped. There was a bee on my leg, wiggling around, trying to get its stinger unstuck from my bib. I’d actually gotten stung like that through my bibs a couple of years ago, while pre-riding the beginning of the RAAM course. The thing is, bees actually don’t fly very fast, and when you descend, you go much faster than them. So, they don’t really sting you, but rather, you run into their stinger. So, try not to descend behind bees?
The bee eventually twisted itself out of the fabric and flew away. Did you know that bees don’t necessarily die when they sting? It’s possible for them to sting and survive, if their stinger doesn’t get too stuck. I kept going. Not much to be done about a bee sting right now.
An hour later, there was another sharper, immediately painful sting in that same leg. It grew in intensity rapidly, and I stopped again. Clearly sticking through my bib was a long red stinger, and the guts of whatever insect it had been attached to before it got pulled apart. Whatever this one was, it hurt worse than the bee, but it wasn’t there anymore to be examined. Oh well, keep going.
South from there, you bike on the shoulder of the 101, next to the ocean. While I’ve done this part of this ride many times, I’ve only ever done it in the dark. It’s very different being able to see where you are, instead of just having vague sounds of waves crashing somewhere in the distance. It’s a pretty good shoulder, and a pretty good road to ride on. Kind of unfortunate that it’s so far away from everything. I did see one other cyclist on the 101, but he was going the other direction.
From there, into Goleta. I must have hit 30 stop lights in Goleta. There was no point trying to go faster, you’d just get stopped at the next stoplight. Getting out of Goleta was a slog.
On to Santa Barbara. Going is slower in the cities than the more rural areas, but Santa Barbara is pretty good. They have one road that’s entirely closed to car traffic, and is now just bikes and pedestrians for several blocks.
Santa Barbara, Carpenteria, some very dark roads and bike paths right on the ocean, and then Ventura. After getting off of the dark bike paths, I opted to ride through the city instead of continue in the dark on the coast. It feels weird to be on narrow paths right next to the ocean with no light but your headlight. Starts to feel rather strange after a while.
Just a bit further south into Oxnard, I was finally on roads I was familiar with. A little too far to ride there from LA, but I’d done a handful of doubles in that area, and knew where the roads go. I passed by the hotel in Port Hueneme that the doubles usually leave from, and headed east towards LA.
I kind of knew these roads, but kind of not. Off of Hueneme Road, you go on Potrero. I knew it was there, I knew it had climbs, but I was not prepared for these climbs. With some climbs staying above 15% for an extended period of time (https://www.strava.com/segments/666758), I ended up walking the hardest one. I don’t have the gears for that, especially carrying extra weight and over 300 miles into a ride.
That led into the hills south of Thousand Oaks. It’s a nice area. It looks expensive. Low traffic, but it was also the middle of the night. I stopped for a couple of 15-20 minute naps, just so I could keep going. Just trying to get to LA at this point and not fall asleep on the bike. The hills in this area, though. They’re nice, but some of them are so steep. I couldn’t quite find a segment for the climb, but the last ⅓ of https://www.strava.com/segments/10413176 is the one that I attempted and ended up walking. It was so steep to just walk up. It gets over 20% for a little while!
Finally from there I ended up in places I knew. I’d kinda just let RideWithGPS design the route through this part of LA, since I hadn’t ridden here a whole lot before. It made some… interesting choices. The one really sketchy thing it did was put me on Sepulveda. Oddly enough, Sepulveda does have a dedicated bike lane near the top. This bike lane gets narrower and narrower until it disappears, then the shoulder gets narrower and narrower and disappears, and then you’re forced into high speed traffic with no shoulder and cars that are very angry at you for being there. 0/10, would not ride Sepulveda again. But, I got out.
From there to the ocean, Santa Monica, and Venice was uneventful. It was nice to see familiar places again. I dropped off my stuff at Google, took a shower, and found somewhere to take a nap.
