Today was our final training ride for our trip. We had driven quite a bit to the Tahoe area the past few weekends so we weren’t in the mood to go very far from home this weekend. We’ve ridden most of the longer trail rides in the near vicinity and it’s always fun do ride something new so we decided to do a long road ride along the Pacific Coast Highway. Since riding on road is quite a bit easier than riding on dirt, our goal was to do 40 miles on the road.

We started where the 92 meets PCH and rode south from there. It was quite a bit colder along the coast compared with inland - it was actually a bit chilly at times. PCH, at least the sections we rode, is actually nice to ride on as it has a fairly large shoulder. Despite the large shoulder, Judy still was not comfortable riding on the road with all the cars and trucks zooming by.

In order to get some climbing in, we decided to climb the hill that leads up to Purismo Creek. Although not much further inland, it was noticeably hotter along this road. We climbed up the road to the trailhead, cruised the downhill on the other side, joined back up with PCH, and continued all the way to Pescadero Beach. The round trip wouldn’t quite be 40 miles, but I needed to get back for a conference call at 7:30 so we decided to turn around and head back. After eating some food while watching some surfers brave the chilly waters, we began our ride back.

If we had the time, we would have climbed back up to the Purismo Creek trailhead, but I was barely going to make my call so we stayed on PCH all the way back. Our final mileage was 36.88, all of it on road. Not the 40 we had hoped for, but still a good training ride nevertheless. We were tired, but not overly so, and in general, we feel pretty good for our San Juan huts adventure. Hopefully, all this training will pay off. We’ll find out next week! Here’s some pics of our last training ride.

Posted by Roger at 8:33 pm.