What it’s like to bike from San Francisco to Santa Barbara in one weekend
day 1, mile 64: all smiles on the western front
The Coast Ride is 380 miles of cycling and over 20,000 ft of elevation gain, split over 3 consecutive days. That distance and elevation is kind of insane when you think about it, and that’s exactly what I thought last year when deciding whether to do the 2019 edition of the Ride. Then, I had only just returned to cycling and I wasn’t sure if I could finish the whole ride. So I settled for only doing Day 1: “just” 133 miles and 6,800 ft of elevation gain.
But this year, I was gunning for the whole thing.The Coast Ride has a rosy origin story:
The coast ride has been an annual tradition dating back to the 1990’s, born out of a desire to simply ride. “Keep the water on your right, and keep on pedaling.” The original spirit of that ride was simple. In its first years, there were just a couple of friends that would embark on this odyssey, carrying whatever they needed, and figuring it out as they went. Props to all of those who have come before us.> For the last two decades, the ride has become more and more organized, and the number of riders has steadily grown… and then it sky-rocketed. In 2014 we had over 130 riders! Then we topped 200. Last year we had over 300. Unbelievable.
So yeah, the ride is getting more popular, and with that comes SAG vans. For the longest time, I thought SAG stood for “sweep and gather,” as in the vans would come by and “sweep up” the slow cyclists, but it actually stands for “support and gear,” which makes way more sense. The SAG vans are great because you plop your bag down at bag drop every morning and the vans drive it to your next stop. Imagine having to carry a big bag on your back as those early riders had to do! Yuck.
I needed an excuse to insert this food photo
The night before the ride was all about carb-loading and packing. Carb-loading was pasta with a homemade tomato sauce, onions, ground beef, squash, and parmesan. Packing was a frantic, late-night effort to fit everything I needed into the 20L Peak Design Everyday Backpack. What stuff, exactly? Mostly just clothes: multiple kits so that every day I got to wear fresh kit, t-shirt and pants for lounging around after each day’s ride, Allbirds (they’re wool, so they compress well!), toothbrush, etc. And a ton of snacks — I brought 6 Clif bars and 4 goos (GUs? reminds of bandage vs band-aid™), and I would collect more at every food stop. And finally, the most important thing: my a7riii attached to a Mettle Speed Strap, to be able to snap photos while riding.### Day 1: San Francisco to Monterey
134 miles, 6700 ft elevation gain
some nice golden light as we left San Francisco
Our crew rolled out from Sports Basement Presidio at 7:25am and headed towards the Great Highway. From there, it was smooth sailing: after Pacifica, I hopped on various pacelines until we reached Davenport for lunch. Chugging Coca-Cola has never felt more blissful.
day 1, mile 75: the lunch mob
After Davenport, we sailed through Santa Cruz. Here, having the route displayed on the Garmin Edge 530 I had just bought a couple days ago came in super handy, as it appears some stragglers took a couple interesting routes according to Strava Flyby…
the blue path is an interesting one
40 miles after Santa Cruz at around 3:00pm, we arrived in Monterey. The Coast Ride tradition is to have Costco pizza and Coke at the end of every day, and after burning over 4000 calories I was chowing down on those slices.
Since I also did Day 1 in 2019, we can compare my average speed between the two years. I’ve gotten a lot faster: while I could “only” manage 15.9 mph last year, this year I did the Day 1 course at 18.9 mph! Another proof point: last year when I got to the finish, there was no pizza left, which was highly unfortunate, but thankfully not the case this year. And while I was suffering a lot last year, this year I could relax and take photos.
Devil’s Slide
some members of Dolce Vita—I was pulling with this crew for some time!
Day 2: Monterey to Morro Bay
122 miles, 8100 ft elevation gain
a pack of cyclists on Bixby Bridge. and look at the guy off the front, taking a photo on his phone!
Ah, Bixby Bridge. Emily, Huy, and I were inspired by this shot by Kyle Thornhill and so we spent a half hour running around this bridge, trying to get good angles of all the cyclists whizzing by.
focus: what this guy is doing, and what my camera did well
After Bixby, there were a series of rather punishing climbs before lunch. The worst one was probably Ragged Point Climb 1: that’s when I passed my friend Jay, who was on the verge of bonking. I wasn’t doing too hot either, choosing to spin up at 7.8 mph. So slow!
Lunch was at mile 78, and I ate several mayo-ham-cheese open-faced sandwiches. My stomach regretted the mayo later in the day (turns out mayo is just raw eggs??), but at the time it was delicious.
Emily is really excited to be holding a sandwich
With most of the climbing out of the way, post-lunch was smooth sailing, although I was going slow and Scott’s Fusion crew caught up to me at mile 108. I tried and hung on for 10 miles until they pulled slightly ahead. But no matter—shortly after that, it was pizza time.
Despite the 8,133 ft of elevation gain, I had kept up a good pace for Day 2 with an average speed of 18.1 mph. Not bad!
Kailen loves that good good Costco pizza
stretching them legs out
We were tired, and it showed. When we went out for dinner, we forgot to close the door to our motel room, so any passerby would have a clear view of six lovely road bikes just sitting there for the taking. (Nobody took anything, phew!) A friend who shall remain unnamed “micro-napped” way past dinnertime and so he ate our leftovers…three green beans. I accidentally drooled on a bike because my facial muscles were loose. And my IT band was definitely acting up…
But we still had another day to go. So it was time to rest up.
a solitary stretch
green hues
Day 3: Morro Bay to Santa Barbara
128 miles, 5300 ft elevation gain
Noah’s out-of-saddle effort
The final stretch. First stop of the day: San Luis Obispo, around 16 miles in, for coffee and pastries.
invisible coffee
croissant fuel
Lunch would be at Lompoc. In the meantime, I was able to sit with the Dolce Vita crew for a good 16 mile stretch before getting dropped on this climb.
After lunch was when I came the closest to bonking. Realizing that a 6-inch Subway sandwich wasn’t quite enough, I started diving into my food stash. First up at around mile 85 was a 260 calorie Clif bar. Then at around mile 90, I broke out what I thought was my secret weapon: a double espresso Clif shot with 100mg of caffeine. Finally at mile 122, just 6 miles from the finish, I started getting desperate: I downed a mandarin-orange flavored GU, ate a Chewy bar and a “Bonk Breaker” energy bar, and then drained my water bottles.
I had averted disaster. I made it to the finish and there was still pizza waiting. Unfortunately there was no more Coke, only Diet Coke…something to improve for 2021!
a lot of excitement here at the finish
After some celebratory photos, it was time to head back up to SF. I headed over to the Santa Barbara Airport to pick up a minivan, drove it back to the finish to load up the friends and the bikes, and then after a quick pit stop at In-N-Out, drove 4.5 hours to San Francisco. Then after dropping everyone and their bikes off, I drove over to SFO International to drop off the car (the only National location open that late) and then Lyfted back up to the city. So, a lot of driving that day!
(In case you’re wondering, as we were when planning this trip: minivans are quite spacious and can definitely fit 4 people and 4 bikes.)Strava says I should take a break for a bit. After Day 3, my “Fitness score” hit an all-time high of 91, but so did my Fatigue score: 218, nearly twice as fatigued as I had ever been before.
graphs are cool
So maybe I’ll do that—but soon I’ll be back on the saddle, camera in tow, wondering where to cycle to next.
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