The EN Tour of California 2011 Thread
Team,
Below is the admin letter I just sent to the 12 EN athletes joining us for the Tour of California next week. PnI have been doing this camp every year since 2007. This is an EN Members-Only event, about the coolest thing you can do on a bicycle.
We'll update this thread, and blog, as PnI are able to download pics and write updates throughout the week. Hopefully our experiences will help you decide to join us next year!
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Hi Folks,Hopefully you're packing is almost done and you're looking forward to checking out of the world and onto your bike for an awesome week of California cycling!
Below is everything you need to know about the ToC so please print out this email.
What to Bring:
For bike: ~5-6 tubes, multitool, a spare tire and whatever you usually carry to fix a flat on the road. We'll have floor pumps in the vans and basic tools.
For you:
- Recommend 3 full cycling kits (shorts, jersey, gloves)
- Other stuff to ride in any weather: armwarmers, vest/jacket, legwarmers, wet weather gear, toe caps/booties, etc. You all know the drill. Most notably...and I can't believe I'm about to type this...the forecast for Sunday is for a high in the high 30's and rain or snow. It's the mountains, meaning the weather is very changeable, so who knows. Don't worry, we are NOT going to ride in conditions that are miserable or unsafe. We'll figure something out. I hear that a local bike shop is having a sale on those clear cycling rain jackets and I plan to pick one up today. Let me know if you want me to buy you one also.
We actually have a lot of room this year in the vans so no need to pack crazy light. However...you’ll find you won’t have time for anything other than ride, sit in the van, eat, sleep, repeat. So...
- 1 day bag: this will be in the van with you before/during/after you ride. Pack whatever you need to support yourself during the ride and, most importantly, a comfortable change of clothes to drive in to our next hotel after the riding is done for the day.
- 1 “main bag:” your other bag where all of your other stuff goes. This will go ahead to the next hotel in the luggage van so don’t plan to have access to this bag during your riding.
Communications
Admin Cells:
Please reply to this email and copy Joanne with your cell # and the # and name of your emergency contact person.
Please enter these cells in your phone right now:
Rich: 626-203-3278
Joanne: 626-242-4647
Marvin Fong: 626-241-7321
GroupMe: I'm going to fire up this tool to help us communicate with everyone via text message if you need to. Look for an text or an email from me as I set this up after I've received your cell numbers above.
Room Assignments:
Rich and Joanne Strauss
Marvin Fong and Patrick McCrann
Bill Truax and Lynda Neuman
Joe and Nemo Brauch
Leigh and Dave Boyle
Michele Cellai and Kitima B.
Aaron Burstein and Dave Corso
Peter Geisin and Marc Robards
Mike Allen
Tour Maps, Profile and Logs
Download as a zip file here. We will provide printed copies for you but it would be a good idea for you to familiarize yourself with these beforehand. Note that Stage 5 is missing from this file but see our Stage 5 plan below.
Itinerary
Below is a draft of how I expect each day to unfold. Note that this is very fluid as we adapt to road conditions, how everyone is feeling, weather, what the Tour throws at us, etc. Bottomline is prepare to be flexible. We’ll talk about this much more when we meet on Saturday and you’ll know tomorrow's plan as soon as you get off the vans at tonight’s hotel.
General Stuff
- Start Time: expect to be wheels up from the hotels at 8am every morning. I'm 98% sure that all of the hotels have a continental breakfast.
- AM Run: I'm going to do my best to get in "a" run every or most mornings, as ~1 miles of warm up + strides, 1 mile at Tempo pace, 1 mile easy, about 25' total. Probably 6:30am. Would be great if I could others to pinkyswear with me to keep us all honest.
- Lunch: we will only have training food in the vans. We may bring stuff to make sandwiches in the hotel, for you to have after your ride, and/or we do our best to hit something after the ride and before we drive to the next hotel. We've had pizza delivered to a street corner, stuff like that. As the vets know, success during this week is about time efficiency. The less time we spend on admin stuff the more time you have between rides to rest.
- Dinner: for the most part people do their own thing, or we use the vans to get people out in town, some people get takeout and bring it back to the rooms, etc. We don't drop into a restaurant as a party of 18, as that really slows us down. See time efficiency above.
- Vans leave LA at 8am and we should be in Sacramento by about 4pm.
- Most everyone is flying into Sacramento. Some will be at the airport and some downtown. Over the next couple days I’ll connect the downtown people with each other so you can rally up at one location and we can swing a van by to pick you up. We'll swing the other van by the airport, pick everyone up and drive to our hotel in South Lake Tahoe. Drive time from Sacto to SLT is about 2hrs.
- We'll have an admin meeting at the hotel before going to dinner Saturday night.
- Saturday hotel: Best Western Timber Cove Lodge
Sunday: Stage 1, South to North Lake Tahoe, clockwise loop around the lake
About 80 miles
Expect to ride about 80 miles. We’ll pull everyone off the course so we can get in the vans and beat the Tour to NLT and get to our hotel. That said, the weather forecast is pretty crappy so also be prepared for us to change the plan :-)
Sunday hotel: Truckee Donner Lodge in North Lake Tahoe
Monday: Stage 2, North Lake Tahoe to Sacramento
Monday Hotel: Best Western Golden Key in Auburn
Plan: Note that Stage 3 starts in Auburn and our lodging Monday night is in Auburn. For this reason we’ll likely ride the course into Wheatland, stopping at Hwy 65 so we can jump on that and drive to Auburn. About 90-95 miles, mostly downhill (famous last words...)
Tuesday: Stage 3, Auburn to Modesto
Hotel: Best Western Vineyard Inn, Livermore
Plan: We’ll all start to feel the riding by now. I expect we’ll either ride all the way to the sprint town of Oakdale and end the day there (mile 98), or pull out beforehand at one of the major east-west highways you can see on the map, probably Hwy 26 (~mile 70), so we can drive to Livermore.
Wednesday, Stage 4: Livermore to San Jose
Hotel: Best Western Beach Resort Monterey
Plan: This will be our first beefy climbing day. If you look at the map, you’ll see they do almost a loop outside of town before heading up the Mines Rd climb...we’ll skip that loop, instead riding straight to Mines Road. We’ll follow the route, finishing at the top of Sierra Road. Sorry, you can’t do ToC without experiencing Sierra Road...and Mt Hamilton, for that matter, along the route :-). The vans will be parked at the bottom of Sierra Rd and we might stick around to watch the pros climb. We then descend to the vans and drive to our next hotel, in Monterrey. I ballpark this day at 70 miles, with 3 x Category 4 climbs, 1 x Cat 1, and 1 x HC (beyond category = crazy hard).
Thursday, Stage 5: Monterrey to Paso Robles
Hotel: Pea Soup Andersen's Inn, Buelton. Dinner at the Hitching Post Steakhouse
Plan: See the route I’ve created here. The Tour was originally scheduled to ride down the coast. However, a storm washed out a good bit of the road and, while it’s now open to controlled traffic, it looks CalTrans doesn’t want a big bike race going through so they are rerouting the Tour inland via Carmel Valley, King City, etc. These are ok roads, Carmel Valley is pretty cool...but it ain’t the coast so we are going to do our own thing! This is our day to maybe sleep in, get on the road on our own timeframe and enjoy a ride down the California Coast! We’ll ride down the coast, through Big Sur, and take a left on Naciemento-Furgeson Road. We then climb over the coastal range (2500ft gain in 7 miles, about 1k of that in the first 1.5 miles) and descend through Fort Hunter Liggett. Pacific Coast Highway, especially north to south, is why you ride a bike. NF Road and Hunter Liggett is original, old California terrain. Bottomline, this ride is about the BEST you can do in Cali. You’ll dig it. We then jump in the vans and drive to Solvang for the time trial on Friday.
Friday, Stage 6: Solvang Time Trial
Hotel: Monrovia
Plan: A sorta rest day for us and a great opportunity to actually see the race. We’ll leave the hotel, and ride the TT course to Foxen Canyon. Do an out and back in Foxen Canyon and drop back onto the TT course. Finish the loop (good idea to be done and off the course by ~9:30-10a), return to the vans to change into street clothes, then spend the rest of the day watching skinny doodes ride bikes very fast, getting your pastry on at the many bakeries in town, etc. We rally back at the vans at around 3pm and drive to Monrovia. Kabobs, hummus, rice, beer, wine, a fire, etc at my house.
Saturday, Stage 7: Claremont to Mount Baldy
Hotel: none
Plan: I did the route in April and climbed 10,200 feet in 72 miles...we’re not going to do that :-) See the route I created here. We are riding from my house to the bottom of Glendora Mtn Road (the Tour will ride up this later in the day). You’ll pack a sammich in your jersey as lunch in Baldy. Climb GMR and turn right on Glendora Ridge Road. The Tour will now be riding towards us. At some point we’ll be stopped by CHP and we’ll have a chance to see the peleton go whizzing by. When the roads are open again we’ll continue on to Mt Baldy Village, turn left and climb up to the Mt Baldy Ski Lifts. Pick a corner/switchback to watch the pros climb up. When the race is done we’ll descend to Claremont where we’ll meet the vans, drive back to Monrovia to clean up, box up bikes, eat, and get you to the airport!
Any questions? Let me know or give me a call, 626-203-3278. Sonny, Riley and I are in the garage all day today putting your bikes together :-)
Rich Strauss
www.twitter.com/teamen
www.endurancenation.us
www.triathlonexecution.com
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Comments
Is the Tour passing through your area and do you want to ride a stage with us? Post to this thread and we'll coordinate here. Please do not PM or email us. We will be beyond busy next week. Thanks!
Hey Rich:
Not Riding Stage 4 from Livermore but would love to meet up with you guys. Nemo says you are staying here overnight before you start stage 4: http://bit.ly/kL2Kqv If so, would love to meet-up for dinner the night before in Livermore or breakfast before you leave and ride Stage 4.
Lemme know what works best for you.
John
Looking forward to an epic ride with you all.
Carrie
So I'm plotting a crazy scheme- and looking for guidance on whether it's feasible. My thought is to drive to the start of the HC climb up the back of Mt. Hamilton (Stage 4), and warm up. When you guys get there and start climbing, I'll climb too. You on saddles, me in Asics. At the top, I'll u-turn and bolt back down the hill. I'll then jump in the car and drive to the bottom of Sierra, wait for you there, and then race you all up that climb as well.
SoCal Athletes:
Please plan to join us for Stage 7! Here is our planned route, starting from my house. Sorry, I won't be able to transport you back from Claremont to Monrovia but it's an easy flat ride on Rt 66.
Sorry, folks, I was far too busy, especially Wed-Saturday, to do much of anything except plan, drive, eat, ride and sleep! I have 8 bike boxes loaded up in the bed of the truck to drop off at FedEx and another 2 in the driveway!
The Mt Baldy stage was nuts and I thought, while I was climbing through the crowds, that I should have ditched the cycling kit and ridden up it in my pink speedo
. Maybe next year!
Is there a place where we can upload/download photos and videos from the trip?
And so begins 2012!!! Stage start/finish cities released in the article:
www.cyclingnews.com/news/2012-amgen...-announced