Harding Time Trial 2013

This past weekend was the 2013 Harding Time Trial put on by Saw Sports Productions and Linked Cycling. In the time trial spirit my goal was to better my time from last year (1:04). The 9.2 mile climb up Harding is one of the popular fire road climbs in the Santa Ana Mountains of Orange County. It starts off with a steep 10% grade for the first mile, drops to an 8% grade through mile 5, and then to a 5% grade for the last half of the climb. Harding's always a tough climb - but doing it at threshold and having come down with a head cold the week before - I knew it was going to be an even tougher one hour suffer fest.

For the first half I was able to match my splits only missing last year's time by 13 seconds (37:15 vs. 37:02) and even beating my mile 1 time by 24 seconds. I felt I was keeping a solid pace continuing into the second half but eventually slowed down on the last section due to snow and ice on certain sections of the trail. My second half of the climb ended up just shy of 3 minutes slower than last year's time resulting in a total time of 1:06:53. The bike that took me up Harding was my trusty MXYBB.

There's always next year...or tomorrow considering you can always test yourself with a time trial - right? I guess the difficult part is making yourself ride hard for an hour straight when you're not in a race environment. The geek in me likes looking at numbers so below is a graph showing elevation, heart rate, power, and speed as well as a chart showing the results of the 8 times I've climbed Harding since I started using Strava in late 2011. The first two on the list are the time trial results from 2012 and 2013.

A section of the course near 4 corners from Thurs, 2/20....a bit of this melted
Friday and the rest turned to mud, ice, and crusty goodness to ride through!

More base miles...

Snowy Spin Up Maple Springs

Base Miles...and views of the Channel Islands

One of the great things about the Santa Ana winds in Southern CA is that it makes for really clear days. So clear that you can get unobstructed views of downtown LA, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the Channel Islands. When it's relatively clear you can usually see Catalina Island, but we were lucky to even see further than Catalina and got slight views of San Clemente Island, the southernmost of eight of the Channel Islands located off the coast of Southern CA.

Saturday morning I left from home and headed out the canyon road. While it was much warmer than I had anticipated due to the Santa Ana winds, it was definitely a grind getting out to the trails with the wind feeling like it was coming straight at me. I met up with some riding friends on the way out to the Maple Springs gate and we headed up the trail eventually to the "saddle" which is the area between Santiago Peak and Modjeska Peak and is also the start/top of the Joplin trail head.

From the "saddle" alongside Brian and Matt...thanks for the pic Josh!

We descended Joplin, a challenging loose rocky descent that eventually takes you to an area known as Old Camp. The trail from Old Camp down to the Luge turnoff is a fast and flowy somewhat wider singletrack. It's a great descent although it's just as great of a climb so on a Saturday morning you definitely have to be aware of uphill traffic. We got down the Luge and I eventually split from the group and headed home via the canyon road. Thanks to the same wind that was in my face on the way out I had a nice tailwind returning home. What a great day of riding!

70 Degrees & Perfect Trail Conditions

The trails in Orange County are incredible right now. We've had just the right amount of rain and the temps have been perfect. Crisp and cold in the morning, typically in the 40's when I usually get out at 5:30am, and really nice in the afternoons, either on the weekends or when I'm lucky enough to get away from work early.

I feel incredibly lucky to live where I live. I can be on the dirt right from my front door in a matter of minutes. My Garmin read 70 degrees this afternoon as I started on one of my quick local spins, the Santiago Oaks/Weir Canyon loop. When time permits, I enjoy doing the Weir loop in both directions. This ride packs 2,600 feet of climbing in just shy of 18 miles. Here are some pics from the ride.

Testing out the Vamoots CR...

Brisk canyon loop this morning aboard the Vamoots CR with Troupe/Poseidon rider Jeff Lewis

Photo by jeff_inc • Instagram http://instagram.com/p/UHTpsvOYj9/

OC Parks Tour - O'Neill Regional Park

pre-race with single-speeder & Path Bike Shop rider, Matt Palmer

I really enjoyed racing the 3rd race in the 2012 OC Parks Tour series. I missed the last two races so I had been looking forward to this one for some time. The course for the race consisted of a 3.5-mile start loop on the south side of O'Neill park to attempt to help separate riders before completing three or four (depending on class) 3.75-mile main loops on the north side of the park. The pro/experts were to complete four main loops climbing approx. 650 feet per lap. The course was a lot of fun with some solid climbing, quick singletrack descents, and a bit of pavement riding back to the start/finish.

I entered the expert class and the pace started off brisk with four riders in the lead group including local pro Sean Donovan, the Path Bike Shop riders Luke Wronske and Josh Jacquot, and myself. The four of us stayed tight through the initial start lap. As we crossed through the start/finish line and headed out for the four main loops Sean began to pull away. Luke and Josh also turned up the pace a bit and I found myself riding solo for the rest of the race. Sean came in first, Luke in second, Josh in third, and myself in fourth.

The race was great and the course was a lot of fun, but we really need to work on riders coming out to support these local races or they won't end up happening at all. Fairly sad turnout in the pro/expert class in my opinion.

Results