San Gregorio Loop
Went for a long bike ride this past Saturday. From 280/84 in Woodside over Old La Honda, down to San Gregorio Beach, and back up Tunitas Creek and down Kings Mountain. It was around 41 miles, which is a distance with which I have no problem. But, we climbed 4700 meet, comprised of two climbs: Old La Honda and Tunitas Creek. A few miles in is when we encountered OLH, so I had enough stamina and strength to get up.
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| From San Gregorio Loop |
I’m not a very fast climber and since I was familiar with the route and knew we had a long ride ahead, I didn’t push myself to get up. When we met up with Skyline, we descended the other side of OLH towards San Gregorio Road, which was nice and flat and FAST! It was really foggy on the other side of the mountain so I ended up having to go down without my sunglasses since they were fogging up.
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| From San Gregorio Loop |
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| From San Gregorio Loop |
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| From San Gregorio Loop |
David’s not so awesome water bottle (looks cool but splashes on bumpy descents):
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| From San Gregorio Loop |
Hehe:
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| From San Gregorio Loop |
We took the road to the beach, took a bathroom break, and took Highway 1 to Tunitas Creek Road. At Highway 1 and Tunitas Creek, the Portrero Nuevo Farm has a great little Bike Hut, which has water, bike tools, and snacks to take (based on the honor system).
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| From San Gregorio Loop |
Tunitas is a nice and shaded climb, but the steep beginning was something I wasn’t prepared for and didn’t have much legs left to make it up. I went very very slowly and was the last up by about 10 minutes. I’m just really bad at climbing. The last mile I rode with a woman who worked at Lockheed Martin and kept my mind off of all the climbing while we chatted. I met up with the rest of the guys I was with and took Kings Mountain down to Woodside and back to the parking lot where we started. I think I ate around 7 Gu-Energy gels but was still hungry at the end. The great part of the ride was that there were nearly 0 cars throughout the ride, particularly during all of the climbs and descents. It’s always depressing for me to see a car speed by while I’m struggling up a mountain.
Picture of everyone going faster than me:
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| From San Gregorio Loop |
I took along MyTracks on my Android phone to record the ride, so it’s embedded in all its glory below. One thing I discovered was that Google Maps will only render a set number of points. Since MyTracks pieces together various markers to make a track, if I had embedded my original map, I would have shown only 3/4 of this ride, which wouldn’t make for a very good map. Thanks to the Google Maps Help Center, I discovered this thread, where one of the Top Contributors notes that if you click the “View in Google Earth” button, you can get a map that will show all points. Hallelujah!
Not sure when I’ll do another ocean loop anytime soon, but it was really fun! Signed up for the Tour of Napa ride after some peer pressure in late August so I’m looking forward to that!