Brian Rides Bikes

11-6 through 11-7-09 – Around My Neck of the Woods

Good evening friends!

This weekend has been a blast for riding.  While it was awesome to get in a bunch of great rides up around the North County for the Qualcomm Million Dollar Challenge training rides, there’s something comforting to revisit my favorite rides close to home.  On Friday, I had a chance to ride out with one of my favorite riding partners, my cousin Eugene Brillo.  Friday’s ride took us to Eastlake and started us on a fun 40 miler from the Trek Store in Eastlake  all the way to Jamul and into the mouth of the dragon, a 2500 foot climb up Honey Springs.

Here’s a bit of history about the Honey Springs ride.  This ride, for a very long time, was THE ride that I absolutely hated with a passion.  For years, every time I took on this ride with my riding buds, it destroyed me.  What’s more, is that because I couldn’t hang on the wheel with my buds, I constantly found myself emptying my tank just to catch up with them on the 15 miles of flats to get to the start of the climb only to be completely drained to the point of puking by the time the climb actually started.  For this reason, I avoided doing this ride at all costs.

But this has been a great year.  With a stranglehold on my diet, exercise at a priority, 6 months of excellent training and coaching from the QMDC, wonderful experience at hitting some of the hardest climbs that not only San Diego, but California has to offer, and 40 lbs of weight lost, I’ve gained a newfound love for climbing and was excited to see how I’d do against this formidable Honey Springs opponent.

Here’s what I always enjoy about riding with Eugene.  He and I took on cycling together over 5 years ago and we never looked back.  In fact, he loved it so much, he got a job at Performance Bike, where he still works today.  In fact, while we both started out with mountain riding, he was the one who took the plunge into road biking and eventually got me into it.  Something great about Eugene is there is absolutely no quit in him.  He’s a stud rider and has an unending willingness to push himself through an entire ride.  Flats, climbs and descents, he gives 100% all of the time and doesn’t hold back at all.  While a piece of it is due to the “Brillo” never say die attitude, it’s also based on the fact that while we treat each other like brothers, we’re also fierce competitors, which always makes for a great ride.

So how did I do against Honey Springs today?  I pushed myself to the red zone and kept a 12 mph average riding up to the top!  What a difference a year makes:)

This morning, I had an excellent adventure planned.  I had a chance to give the Bailey a rest and heed the calling (more like incessant mocking) from my Gary Fisher Hi Fi, and went out for a mountain bike ride!  This morning took me to pay a visit to one of my best riding buds, Patrick Moneda, where he and I, along with buds Art, Ben and Mike, had a chance to venture out into the wilderness and take on the Rockhouse Ride at Mount Miguel.  For the geographically challenged, like yours truly, this ride takes place in and around the outskirts of the Sweetwater Reserve area and headed towards the Eastlake canyon areas.

We started today’s ride at 630 this morning, pretty early for a ride, but as weekends usually go, especially riding with fathers and husbands, we have to start early so we can all get home to take care of our “honey do’s” from the wives, watch the kids, or even catch our favorite college football games.  The crazy part of the Rockhouse ride is that it starts the climb about 30 feet after you get onto the trail.  The beginning of the ride is completely unforgiving.  It’s a vicious climb that stretches through switchbacks for a good 45 minutes until you reach the summit.  Furthermore, with the thick coating of fog all around the mountains today, you could hardly see what’s ahead, so with every switchback and every technical climb, it almost seemed never ending!

We all had our tough moments and had to get off our bikes to “hike a bike” some of the trickier sections or due to the fact that on an incline, it’s so frickin’ hard to get back on the bike, especially when you’re sucking wind!

One thing that I’ve learned from this ride, is that I’m a pretty awful mountain biker:)  After sitting on my road bike for months and months with only a mountain ride here and there, its so hard to get back in the swing of getting all of the balance, technical aspects and just plain old bike handling confidence that comes from practice.  The cardio?  Nothing wrong with that, so every time I had to get off my bike, I made sure to sling the bike over my shoulder “cyclocross style” and run my sorry butt up the hills until I could find a flat spot to get back on the dang thing!

Riding with those guys was a lot of fun.  This was a first for me to ride with Art and Mike.  Art was our seasoned vet who was a sure-footed billy goat climbing up Rockhouse today.  He’s a stud rider who has awesome bike handling skills.  Mike is a workhorse, and on his Santa Cruz Heckler, he powered his way up the mountain today, with a great big smile on his face when he got to the top.

Ben is another great rider.  He may not be the fastest, but he’s got skills and the dude’s cardio is amazing.  If you want to know about some of the greater climbs he has in his resume, he’s done the Alpe d’Huez.  Wowee Zowee.  Pat’s another one.  A super technical rider, Pat’s a student of the game and when it comes to either road riding or mountain biking, he’s got great balance and form.  Today was a rough day for him based on a riding hiatus due to an engineering exam he’s spent the last couple months studying for.  But there’s no quit in him, he pushes himself to his limits every time, all the time, and once he gets his cardio back, he’ll be back to his top form — on either of his beautiful steeds (his 14 lb Colnago road bike or his insane S-Works mountain bike).

At the top of Rockhouse, there was this massive pile of rocks waiting for us with a sign that said “DANGER, ROCKS AND WALL MAY FALL WITHOUT WARNING.”  Yikes!  Also up there is an actual rock house, a rock walled maze that looks like a house without a roof.  We all got off our bikes, took in some food and water, smiled at our great accomplishment of reaching the top and took on the Rockhouse rite of passage — placing a rock on the the rock mountain, before getting back on our bikes for some killer downhilling.

That’s the best part about mountain biking; for every long, grueling and punishing climb, we always get rewarded with some amazing downhilling where we get to fly down the singletracks, fearlessly fishtailing around all of the switchbacks and sweet turns.  For this guy, I had a fun time flying head over handlebars when I completely overshot a turn and rolled into some bushes!  But as it always goes, you have to get up and run to your bike as fast as you can so no one sees that you just ate it:)

All in all, this weekend has been an awesome two days of riding.  With my wedding anniversary approaching, I’m gonna take a few days off to spend with the wonderful wife.  Two years of a happiness and many more to come!

-BB