SCNCA Road Race Championships

The Golden Empire Classic and SCNCA Road Race Championships are coming up on Saturday and Sunday, June 6 & 7th in Bakersfield, California. I would like to race in both.

Silly me. My last post discussed racing up North in San Jose on May 25th and that this would be my first race back after my accident. Well, I forgot that is the birthday weekend of my youngest child Jade. She'll be turning 8, and though I'm a fanatic when it comes to bicycles, I certainly know what's more important between the two events. So scratch San Jose to Livermore and bring on Bakersfield.

Saturday, June 6th is the Masters' Championships. At the time of this writing, the Kern Wheelmen site has not put up a profile or race map. I did find a race description on their site and created a MapMyRide map, which can be checked out below. Their site does promise a video of the complete course to arrive on May 1st - so I'll look for that. The course is 31 miles and I plan to enter the Men 50+ group that goes off at 7:30am. We only do 1 lap but the course looks challenging, with one good hill and a few rollers tossed in.

On Sunday, June 7th, we have the Elite Championships on the same course. I would like to enter the Men 45+ 3/4/5 group going off at 7:15am. Again it's only 1 lap of 31 miles. Now I've got to talk my family into staying in Bakersfield for a couple of days. No disrespect intended toward the City of Bakersfield, but that might be my hardest sale for the weekend.

New Bicycle Club for 2009

It's official. I am now a member of the San Diego Cyclo-Vets Bicycle Club. I have been spending just about every other weekend in San Diego since my wife and oldest daughter moved down here for work and school respectfully. We can't sell our house in the Antelope Valley in this terrible economy and I couldn't switch jobs so we have had two residences starting last July. It's not a great situation but it is always better to make "lemonade out of lemons" so I enjoy riding in San Diego's weather as much as possible.

In my attempt to learn routes in the San Diego Area, I started hooking up with a couple of local bicycle clubs. The first group I tried was the Swami's. I still love their hard Saturday training ride up to Escondido and back but it was a pain to get to their starting point on the coast. The Cyclo-Vets also have a great Saturday ride that starts out of the parking lot of "The Coffee Bean" located at Mission Valley Mall right off of Camino de la Reina. Their starting location is just 6 miles from our apartment, which is located just North of Qualcomm Stadium. I can get to the starting point of Saturday's ride by bicycle. I drop down the bike path that starts at the South end of Murphy Canyon Road and ends at the North end of Qualcomm's parking lot. From here I exit the parking lot at the SouthEast end onto Rancho Mission Road, take a quick right on Ward Road and another quick right on Camino del rio North and just keep going West until Camino del rio North becomes Camino de la Reina. I stay on Camino de la Reina until I get to the Mission Valley Mall and The Coffee Bean on my left.

The Saturday ride leaves at 8:30 am and has several variants; see the Cyclo-Vets website for further information regarding this ride. I always ride the Torrey Pines loop. It is the longest of the options and composed of a very spirited group of riders that travel at race pace at various points of the ride. There are at least three regrouping points for this ride to allow more sedate riders a chance to ride with the group again. The Cyclo-Vet's website does not give a "play by play" of the route but I've made a map of the route by using my garmin and MapMyRide site. It is not complete in that I show the end on Aero and West Canyon Rd but that is where I jump off and head to our apartment. Other riders branch off around this point too. There are a lot of ways to get back to the Mission Valley Mall from this point. You could go back to the Mall by using the bike path North of Qualcomm as described above or take Balboa Ave back down to Moreno and back track your way to the Mall. I get about 47 miles in from my apartment to the Mall and back to my apartment.