Chino Hills

So Andrew has been on a "new trail" spree lately. I can understand. He is up in the top 10 for the year and working for a monthly medal. This means he wants to ride as many new trails as possible for bonus points. Combine this with the fact that we've been riding in the Santa Ana mountains for the last few months almost exclusively, and you get a day in Chino Hills.

Two routes were on the menu for last Saturday (1/27/07). The first would be 20.4 miles with 3,500+ feet in climbing and the second would be 14.6 miles with 2,200+ feet of climbing. So 35 miles in a totally new area. Sweet!

Since Mark Whaley wasn't able to make it, we all got to sleep in. I met Troy, Matt and Andrew at the park entrance a little before 8AM and we got started pretty quick.

I wasn't sure what ride we were doing first, but I was hoping for the long one. I really wanted to get it out of the way. It's different riding a new trail ... you don't know how to pace yourself or what you might come across so it's tough to know how hard to push.

As it turns out it didn't matter. Matt, Andrew and Troy left me in their dust. I could list a ton of reasons why I think they are riding that much faster, but I won't. Haha. It was definitely a theme for the day though. I'd ride to the top of a small hill only to look and see the three of them on the top of the _next_ hill. Haha.

Nothing interesting to report for the first several miles. It was just seemingly endless fire road going up and down and up and down. Eventually we hit a singletrack called "Bovinian Delight". I have to say this is probably the best trail name I've ever heard. It's not "Cow Delight", or even "Bovine Delight" ... it's BOVINIAN! Haha.

Small section of Bovinian Delight:



Anyways it was nice to ride down some singletrack for a change. It wasn't technical or challenging, but it was cool.

Bovinian took us to four corners. It seems like every park in Orange County has a four corners. I swear. Anyways, from four corners we took Raptor Road down to some ranger station. Raptor had some cool parts and was a bit steeper than Bovinian. It was mostly singletrack and I'm glad we weren't climbing it like some other guys we saw.

Some guy going down Raptor. A pretty cool shot:



From that point things started to go downhill physically for me. I remember climbing some mild fire road after getting to the ranger station and having that familiar "pushing" feeling. It's that feeling that someone is pushing you backwards while you pedal. I always look down to hope to find myself in the middle ring or something, only to find I'm already in a low gear.

After that it was again a blur of fire road mentally. I ended up walking a few short steep sections rather than trying to ride up and burn a lot of valuable energy. It was around this time that the cramping set in too. I've been cramping a lot during the last few rides and I'm sick of it. It ends up lasting all week too. I can feel twinges at work, driving the car and even sleeping. I wonder if I'm doing serious damage to my legs.

Eventually we ended up back at four corners only to climb up North Ridge to undulate some more. Thank God it ended with several miles of fast fire road descent. I saw two guys starting the North Ridge climb as we finished, which will be noteworthy later.

We ended up taking a break at the start of the trail and then went for round two.

Round two consisted of going up North Ridge, down to four corners, up Bovinian Delight and then down South Ridge. We had already been on maybe 80% of the trail from the previous loop. We were just doing most of the familiar sections in reverse.

Back to the two guys climbing from a few paragraphs ago ... I figure they had at least a 20 minute head start on us, and yet we still caught them on the climb. That felt so good. It's always a great feeling to pass someone climbing.

I ended up climbing Bovinian Delight without having to get off even though there were a few steep sections. The cramping was becoming dangerous, but I managed to drink a ton and eat a ton and I think that helped.

Nothing else really noteworthy about the second lap and this post is already too long.

This is the view from the top of South Ridge on the way back:



It was awesome to ride with a smaller group because we were pretty efficient. At least it felt that way for me. I'm sure Matt, Troy and Andrew felt just a little bogged down by me, but oh well. Hahaha.

I ordered a book on Troy's recommendation about how to eat and take care of yourself while working out. I have lots of plans to change my riding habits in regards to eating and drinking, so hopefully I can nail it before Counting Coup.