The latest of the California Triple Crown Double Century events to go virtual in 2020 was the LA Wheelmen’s Grand Tour. They also offered the opportunity to participate in a virtual “double double”, meaning double century rides on back to back days. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to go for the double double so soon after VRAW, but it seemed like a good idea and I went with it. I had to pick my dates several weeks ago when I signed up and had no way of knowing at the time that it would be the hottest weekend of the year so far. Not that it would have mattered, because it was really the only weekend that worked for me in the allotted timeframe. When I saw that triple digit heat was forecast for both Saturday and Sunday, it never even crossed my mind to bail on the rides. I just started strategizing how to deal with it.
I had been playing with the idea of repeating a variation of the big loop I did a couple of months ago before VRAW, and then doing it in the reverse direction for the second ride. I wasn’t completely sure I wanted to spend so much time riding on the coast when it was likely to be crowded, but I also realized it would be a good way to get away from the heat. I finally mapped out a couple of rides that I was satisfied with, and decided to shoot for very early morning rollouts to get in as much riding as possible before the heat.
Saturday
I elected to ride the loop clockwise on Saturday, heading south through Rainbow, Bonsall, San Marcos, Escondido, and Solana Beach before making my way north up the coast and hitting the Santa Ana River Trail (SART) in Newport Beach to make my way back home. Because I had a few climbs early in the ride, and just to have the chance to use a couple of different bikes, I rode my Cannondale Synapse on Saturday. As I mentioned in my VRAW race report, I’ve been tweaking my nutrition and hydration strategy a bit, and this would be my first time taking that out on the road for a longer ride.
I was able to get started at 3:00 am on Saturday morning, so I was all the way to San Marcos before the sun even came up, and heading up the coast before it got too warm. The breeze from the ocean was still cool, so I didn’t really felt the heat unless I was stopped. I didn’t drink a lot of water or take in too many calories earlier in the ride and was feeling pretty good at mile 90 when I finally stopped to use the restroom and get some water at the rest stop off Highway 5 between Oceanside and Las Pulgas. Not too long after that, I started struggling just a bit. Because I started in the dark, I opted to wear my sunglasses with photochromic lenses rather than my dark sunglasses. I generally only wear these glasses for my shorter morning rides, but after wearing them for several hours I started noticing they created some pressure points that started to give me a headache and make my head feel heavy. Making my way up the coast through Orange County, the wind, traffic, and constant stop and go at lights was getting tiring.
As I started making my way inland and back towards home on the SART, the cool breeze disappeared and I started feeling the heat. I stopped at Edna park to fill my Camelbak and nutrition bottles and I think it was around that time that I finally took some medication for my headache. As I continued along the trail that I’m so used to riding on my TT bike, it was very much apparent that I wasn’t flying along with the usual speed or ease and was even starting to feel a little disoriented. It may have been partly due to my bike choice, but I also think I was starting to feel the combined effects of the heat, headache, and lack of nutrition and hydration earlier in the ride. I had been trying to stick to a very low sugar nutrition regimen, but as I approached the Circle K on SART at about mile 150, I decided to stop for a Coke. I just spent a few minutes downing about half of a 16 oz can and hoped the cool drink and the sugar would revive me. It might have helped a bit, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped. As I continued into and through Corona, I watched the temperature on my bike computer climb as high as 115 degrees. I had enough fluid and nutrition, but it was too warm to be refreshing and I wasn’t feeling hungry. My mouth and throat were completely dry, but drinking the hot water was only filling my stomach and not helping alleviate the thirst. I stopped again to get some cold water with about 30 miles to go, determined that it would be my last stop.
The final slog home was brutal and frustrating. Whenever I looked at the temperature it was between 110 and 115 degrees and I felt like I was moving at a snail’s pace. Every time I had to stop at a traffic signal, it was another minute or two of sitting in the heat without any air movement. I counted the miles and minutes that I knew it should take me to get home, but at the same time wondering if I’d be able to convince myself to go through this again the following day.
Because of the early start, I finished a bit earlier than I’ve finished my other virtual doubles, around 4:00 pm for an elapsed time of 13 hours, 5 minutes (12 hours, 20 minutes of moving time). Much like I did between my VRAW sessions, I took a shower, Epsom salt bath, ate a good meal, spent some time in my Air Relax boots, then went to sleep with my alarm set hoping to be rolling by 2:00 am on Sunday.
Sunday
I was able to get started at around 2:15 am Sunday morning, first heading northeast toward Menifee, Perris, Moreno Valley, and Riverside before heading west towards Corona and the SART again. It was a bit of a variation of Saturday’s route and now in a counterclockwise direction. I assumed the winds would be more favorable in this direction, and I rode my aerodynamic Cannondale System Six and hoped I might make better time despite the fatigue from Saturday.
I thoroughly enjoyed my first few hours of riding in the dark on empty roads, and was pleasantly surprised that my legs weren’t too sore or stiff from Saturday’s ride. The sun was just coming up as I climbed out of Riverside to Lake Mathews. I realized as I approached the descent on Cajalco Road into Corona that, although I’d climbed Cajalco many times, I’d never been down the windy descent before. As I bombed down the road with the sun coming up behind me, I was smiling like a little kid, wondering how I’d never managed to find my way to this AWESOME downhill before!
Having struggled so much through the afternoon heat on Saturday, I took advantage of having some mistakes so fresh in my memory and made sure to correct them on Sunday. I can only describe my attitude on Saturday, as with many long-distance rides, by saying that I sometimes try to be some kind of “bike hero” and avoid stopping as much as possible. I conceded that in the more extreme conditions I would need to do whatever it took to stay comfortable, and had to continue reminding myself of this throughout the day. I drank more water earlier in the day. Not an excessive amount, but just made sure to take a sip from my Camelbak when I noticed my mouth getting dry. I also made sure to start taking in calories earlier and more often, which was easy because the calorie deficit from Saturday left me starving and I wasn’t working as hard so it was easy for my gut to process everything. I also opted to use my dark sunglasses that I’m used to wearing all day, but waited to put them on until it was light outside to avoid getting a headache again.
I stopped to use a restroom at a park in Corona, which was a good sign that I’d been hydrating enough. Then I stopped a few miles down the road to fill my Camelbak and nutrition bottles with water AND ice before it started getting hot. I realized how stupid it was to not use ice to keep everything cold on Saturday. I also had to pick up some sunscreen as I realized a few miles from home that in being so careful to apply extra sunscreen to my arms and legs I’d completely forgotten to put anything on my face.
I jumped onto the SART and headed out towards the coast, feeling much more like myself this time on the System Six as I was able to fly down the trail comfortably in my aero bars. I’d planned ahead and updated the route in my bike computer to take me around the construction at the tunnel under I-405, and made the detour without missing a beat. As I got off the trail in Newport Beach to start heading down the coast, I was pulled out of my zone by my friends David, Sam, and Glenn yelling at me to say hello as they were getting onto the trail in the opposite direction.
I’d timed my route down the coast much better on Sunday and made it across all the beach towns before there was too much traffic. I was hoping to make it to Oceanside before stopping again, but my Camelbak was feeling a little light and the water was getting a bit warm by the time I got to San Clemente. “Stop trying to be a bike hero”. I stopped and got more ice and water, and made another restroom stop before heading through the campground and onto the bike trail, then down I-5 into Oceanside, before heading inland and back home.
I enjoyed some of the coastal breeze for at least a little while before the dry heat started to hit me around Bonsall. I made one last stop for ice to cool down my water and nutrition bottles before heading up Highway 395 where I knew the heat would only get worse. I hadn’t been working terribly hard most of the day anyway, but I kept my bike in an easy gear to spin up the last few climbs back through Rainbow and into Temecula.
Unfortunately, I realized during that last stretch that the 202 mile route I’d mapped out on Ride With GPS on Saturday night was going to be about 5 miles short if I followed it straight home. Apparently (according to RWGPS), sometimes it makes more sense that someone would want to make a U-turn in the middle of a bike trail and backtrack a mile or so rather than go from point A to point B in a straight line, so because I didn’t have the time to meticulously review every point I plotted on the route, it added about 5 “mystery miles”. So I found myself 10 miles from home but needing about 13 miles to get to 200 when it was 105 degrees or so and windy. This was the most frustrating part of the day for me, trying to meander my way through town to add extra distance as painlessly (i.e., with as little climbing and headwind) as possible.
I made it back home in an elapsed time of 12 hours, 38 minutes with a ride time of 11 hours, 44 minutes. I was able to ride Sunday’s route faster than Saturday’s route with significantly less effort, which I attributed to being on the more aerodynamic bike combined with a more favorable wind pattern.
Much like my thoughts on VRAW, I am really happy with the overall training experience I had with this solo, self-supported double double. I had a chance to ride in more extreme conditions (dark and heat). I was able to continue working on my nutrition and hydration strategy. And of course there is the ever-important ability required in ultracycling to work through mental and physical fatigue. I’ll more than likely be adding another double double weekend into my schedule in the next month. As I said after VRAW, it is definitely a bummer that Race Across America (RAAM) and so many other events were canceled due to the COVID pandemic, but I’m happy to take advantage of some of the unique training opportunities that have arisen as a result and know that I will be that much more prepared for RAAM when it comes around next year (hopefully).
