Day Five (Recap): Santa Barbara to Marina Del Rey (89 miles)

As we enter our fifth day, I’m feeling pretty good. Many alumni had told me before that as the ride progresses, you’ll get stronger. I thought they were crazy because I figured I’d be really tired and in pain by now. But they spoke the truth. I feel really strong today and really good, besides my butt being sore. I guess my body has started adapting to the stress of this ride and is working better now. Amazing thing our bodies are.

So we left our beautiful Santa Barbara hotel and headed south. Our destination, 89 miles from now, is Marina Del Rey. Today is a relatively flat day compared to our previous days, and it’s a day meant for speed. I started jamming along, pulling Christopher Self (a former Seal) and Ted. It was fun flying through the streets of Santa Barbara at 22mph.

We had a little riding time on Highway 1, which was pretty crazy. Jeff C pulled me through this portion and before I knew it, we had hit our first SAG. Unfortunately, Brian S missed the exit we were supposed to take on the freeway and ended up hitting a freeway grate. Freeway grates run parallel with the traffic as opposed to other grates that are perpendicular to traffic. So Brian’s wheel feel into the grate and he flew over his handlebars. He had some major road rash on the face, but is doing fine now.

We hit out first SAG in record time and got some Accel Gels and drinks. The Garmin team blew by us, again, as we were at the SAG. We hopped on our bikes, and kept on going.

The weather was excellent today and the ocean waves breaking against the cliffs were amazing to watch. While going through some city streets, we caught up with Pete Stetina from the Garmin team. We started riding, in a paceline about 16 deep, and it was a lot of fun. We held a nice pace of 22-24mph on the flats and our day flew by. These professional riders are so small, but so muscular. If they weren’t in their cycling kits, you would never expect that they were so good at such an intense sport.

We eventually got to lunch, and for once this week, I had gotten to lunch before lunch was ready. We were jamming!! I really enjoyed the day so far, but was pretty hungry now since we had been booking it. In N’ Out was on its way for lunch, but ended up coming an hour late. Some of us waited, and it was worth it… at least while we were eating the burgers. Afterwards, it felt like a brick in our stomachs.

After lunch, and Brian B’s amazing display of his Rubik’s cube talent, we were back on the road to MDR. I joined Adam B, Mike H, Alex H, Brian B, Lisa J, and Chris B and were cruising along. Well, cruising along until we hit a hill and Alex Clydesdale Hamlow put on the after burners. I tried and tried to keep up with him and some of the others, but the hills were too tough at that pace. Mike, Adam, Chris and I fell back and started our paceline.

This was great because once we got a groove going, we were jamming. Mike was even surprised that I was keeping up. It was nice to see how much I’ve improved since the training started. We blazed our way to the next SAG, keeping a pace of around 23-24mph on the rollers.

The last SAG of the day was a funny one. I had never seen Brian B as exhausted as he was before. He was spent from hanging onto Alex’s wheel, but congrats to him for doing that!! It was impressive.

We left the last SAG and Kevin L pulled us like a bullet train through Malibu. We booked it through the windy streets of Malibu, where the drivers can’t drive. It was awesome! We had a group of 15 people and slowly, one by one, people were dropping off. I hung on for dear life and eventually made it with the remaining 6 riders to the Santa Monica boardwalk.

Hello LA!! It was nice coasting on the boardwalk and seeing all the familiar sights of LA. Cirque Du Soleil was even in town and their bigtop was setup on the beach.

About 30 minutes later, we arrived at our hotel in Marina del Rey. I was quite tired because of the furious pace we kept, but they had my favorite food waiting for me… PIZZA!!! And then, Priya, Reema, Ritesh, and Ajay, along with Priya’s family all came to say hi.

Dinner was on the roof, with a beautiful view of the city. I saw Cody from CAF for the first time also. He is so cute and quite full of energy. Sarah Reinerstein also said a few words along with signing her new book. It was quite a great day and night!!