Anyone riding the Solvang Century on March 8?

I'm riding the Solvang Century this year, anyone else?

http://www.bikescor.com/solvang_century_2013_Registration.html

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/3973386

 

I saw it listed in one of the smaller regional biking mags under events and was thinking about giving it a try but forgot it was this weekend. Just checked their website and online pre-registration is closed but according to their facebook page it looks like they haven't reached the limit for riders and should be able to register on-site Friday evening or the following morning.

Some of the previous ride reports show it's a nice event, but it's about a four hour drive and I'd have to leave really early Saturday in order to register that morning. I'm a possible but not very likely to attend. If I do it'll be on the 29er.

 

I'll be on a black and white Trek Madone Road Bike. It looks like perfect weather too.

 

I'll check their facebook page later tonight and if they haven't sold out and stopped on-site registration for tomorrow I'm probably going to drive out and sign up in the morning. Looking at the hourly forecast on weather.gov it will probably be in the mid-40s when the century kicks off but rest of the day does look good. By the way, I'll be on a black & green Scott Spark (FS 29er) and dressed inappropriately for a road ride.

 

Do they close the roads for this?

 

I haven't rode this one before but it's on open, public roads and their web site shows they will have law enforcement at some of the major intersections.

 

Just to verify and put a name and face to a screen name, we did talk a couple times and it wasn't someone else from STR, correct?



For a brief ride report, I ended up leaving home a little after 2:30 am after a great five hours sleep and got to Solvang just before registration. It was fairly well organized with a ton of volunteers out to help. After kicking off the ride at 6:30 am I had been curious what the wind would be like. Reading up on some previous ride reports here and on other forums they mentioned it being strong and I wasn't sure what to expect. Having done the Tour de Palm Springs last month as well as previous years the headwind can be brutal in the first quarter of that ride during the main climbs and the Solvang ride, although gusty, wasn't too bad. It also warmed up from the upper-40s not long into the ride as the sun came up.

The course seemed to be a decent mix of riding with not too much in urban areas which was nice. Getting on an onramp to a highway was interesting but the shoulders of the road were wide and I didn't have any problems with motorists at any point. The five SAG stops on the century course were well stocked with a bunch of volunteers and the usual types of food and snacks.

The last point was appreciated. I ended up finishing in 6 hr: 13 min moving time and was doing pretty good up until about two-thirds of the way into the ride and had to take a little bit longer recovery breaks and ate more than a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I ended up burning through well over 10L of water as the temps were coming up and the hills never ending (another rider mentioned out on the blacktop his cycling computer was showing around 90 degrees near the end of the day).

Speaking of the hills, there was a lot of talk about "the wall" and sharp climbs in the last part of the ride. A lot of it was gradual increases over miles with a few sharper sections. The granny gear on the mountain bike was well utilized on a couple of those but I could see how some of the roadies with less gearing might have been hurting. The toughest part for me was dropping energy levels and mentally having a lot of quicker riders from the 50-mile route merge back onto the last half of the century course, trying to keep my pace and not push too hard to keep up with them.

From talking and listening to other riders many people do the event every year and I can see why. Well organized, fairly quiet roads, nice scenery and a great meal provided at the end (nearly half a smoked chicken ). I'm looking forward to trying it again next year and seeing if I can improve a little.

For anyone interested here's my GPS info for the course. I was doing one-second recording and the elevation gain came out to just under 6k feet when elevation corrected on both Strava and Garmin Connect (within twenty feet on both sites) and was a little more than the organizer's estimate for the course. I'll try to upload some pictures later tonight.

 

And some pics of the ride.

 

Yes that was me Eric. It was nice to meet you. Sweet bike Eric, I need to get my 29er soon. I think you were the only MTB rider I saw in the century. It was a great ride, didn't have to deal with many cars on the route and the views were great. I ended up skipping the dinner after, I was hungry and hot, didn't want to stand in line. The lunch line was super long. I gave my lunch ticket to a family in line. I cramped up near the end, I had to rest a couple of times on the Foxen Canyon Road for a couple of minutes to recover from the pain. I was drinking Cytomax and water, but I guess I didn't drink enough. Your pictures are not coming up btw.

 

Thanks and good to meet you too. I did see one other guy on a mountain bike with street-biased tires that I passed before the first SAG stop but I think most other riders had more common sense than me and stuck to the appropriate tool for the job (i.e. road bike).

The ball of one of my feet started bothering me and I took one extra stop for five or ten minutes to let my foot air and stretch out before the last major hills otherwise my legs held up pretty good. I stuck to just water but at every stop downed a small packet of salt and also mixed in some cut up pieces of potassium and magnesium vitamins to keep the electrolytes up. That seems to work well for me at keeping cramping away. If anything, for next time I need to keep reminding myself to increase the calorie intake as I started to hit a wall for energy between the 3rd and 4th stops. Moving my hulking mass takes a lot of energy and water.

All good though and I'll probably be back for it again next year. By the way pictures should be working now.