Road Ride Report Pasadena to Ventura

I went out with the intention of riding from Pasadena to Santa Barbara; in the end I went to Ventura. I took an inland route through the valley, Simi Valley, and Ojai.

It was hot out there today...really hot. The route itself was nice once I got outside of the Valley. The Santa Susana Pass was a nice climb. The climb to get into Ojai was brutal. I hung out at the Summit Cafe at the top of the climb cooling off in their misters. At that point I threw in the towel and decided to cut my ride short and head to Ventura rather than Santa Barbara.

Total mileage was just over 100 miles and over 5,000 feet of gain. Ride time was something close to 6.5 hours.

You can find my route on bikely: http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Pasadena-Ventura

 

WOW nice ride!

 

No wonder. Pretty hard pace.

 

Very nice! A shame the heat became such a factor. A buddy and I are doing a similar route later this year: Rancho Cucamonga to SB. We're going to spread it out over a weekend.

 

Funny because I didn't really feel like I was going all that fast at any point. One problem was I didn't stop enough and take care of myself. I stopped one quickly to on sunscreen, and two times to get supplies in the first 80 miles. Turns out that was not enough. At one point I did pull into a chruch to fill my bottles with hose water.

This would be a great winter ride.

Here is the profile from yesterday.

 

Nice long ride! You're a little nutty for doing it in 96 degrees heat but kudos to you for attempting to reach SB and back. :beer:
I'm curious, from mile 0 to mile 12, it shows you've gained 1000 feet in altitude. I don't understand where that climb is leaving from Pasadena. I wonder if it's that little incline through Eagle Rock or the incline past St. Francis HS and Foothill Blvd.

 

Joe, Thanks for the kudos. Though I always planned to take the Amtrak back. Pas to SB and back is a bit much.

The climb is basically from the Rose Bowl to the edge of the San Gabriel Valley. I got on Foothill at Chevy Chase and climbed up to Lowell, to Law Tuna Canyon. The end of the descent on La Tuna, which turns into Truxford and then Roscoe, was really terrible. The road surface was beat to hell, there were tons of big trucks and heavy industrial operations and lots of street sweeping juice on the road. This route would have been a lot quieter early on a weekend and not 8:00AM on a Friday. Oh well, such is life.

There is a mean spike around mile 63. It doesn't look like much on the graph. In reality it wasn't all that long (maybe 1/2 - 3/4 of a mile), but the grade was around 12%-15% in the baking sun. I got to the top and had to stop for a second. That thing was murderous. The descent on the back side was like dropping into Viper at Magic Mountain.

 

**That is Balcom Canyon. The ToC climbs up that #-o

That's a good long ride for sure, but you were just a few 'murderous grades' from going down into SB. However, you would still have likely fought headwinds going up the coast into town.

Live to die another day :bang:

 

Gnarrr!

I assume you were on a roadbike... That would kill me on knobbies. Nice job. Some friends of mine did Santa Monica to Santa Barbara last weekend. 105 miles!

 

What is ToC? Tour of...

 

Kalleefonya

 

Ah...duhhh

 

A few updates for the record. I recharged my Edge today and found I miss-stated a few stats. My ride time was 6:45 and elevation gain was 4,500' and change. I originally stated a ride time of 6:30 and over 5,000' of gain.

 

Wow, nice. I need to try this ride.