An Uphill Battle on the Bike Path

Belated lessons learned: No. 1: If you haven’t been cycling for a while and you’re carrying a few extra pounds like me, don’t make your first outing with a pro racer.

No. 2: Pick someplace flatter than the San Gabriel Mountains.

The idea was simple enough. I would ride with a professional cyclist just to see how it compared with my own doddering pace, perhaps getting a feel for the kind of exertion it takes to be a top-flight rider. And maybe I’d even get a chance to ride one of those fancy racing bikes as well.

So I called my friend Cameron King, a mortgage banker by profession, as well as a senior pro racer with the U.S. Cycling Federation, and asked him to ride with me. King has been racing off and on for the last 22 years. He retired from the sport when he turned 40 but took it up again this year, at 45, because he missed the competition. Sure, said King readily. Not only that, he’d supply me with one of his racing bikes.

I’m no stranger to cycling, having done it in at least moderately serious fashion for the last 30 years. I’ve got a few dozen centuries (100-mile rides) under my belt and have even done the grueling--the name says it all--Hotter ‘n’ Hell Hundred in Wichita Falls, Texas, a couple of times. But my regimen had lapsed during the time we lived overseas (Israel and cycling don’t mix), and I’d gotten on my aging touring bike only a few times since returning to Los Angeles 18 months ago.

I had noticed, though, that the streets around our Arcadia home are filled with expert cyclists on weekends, not casual riders but hundreds of hard-core bikers streaking through town. King is one of them. All of them are doing what is called the Montrose Ride, which begins at La Canada’s Descanso Gardens every Saturday morning; moves east, hugging the mountains, to the San Dimas area; then doubles back to Sierra Madre. The complete circuit is 50 miles, and riders at the front of the pack average 25 miles an hour for the run--in other words, flying by my standards. That a ride of this caliber should be taking place in Southern California is no surprise. One in six of the 26,912 professional riders in the U.S. lives in California, according to the Cycling Federation, the sport’s governing body. (As King explained it, pros in this country are akin to minor leaguers compared with those who ride the European circuit, where elite cyclists make millions.)

On the appointed morning, King picked me up in his SUV and we headed toward Azusa. We weren’t going to do the Montrose Ride, but rather a 20-mile loop through the San Gabriel Mountains on a hilly but reasonably easy (for him) route. At the Azusa Greens Country Club he parked and quickly began assembling his bike and mine. The one he’d picked for me was a sleek Bianchi titanium racing bike with top-end components. He said it would retail for around $5,500, or about $5,000 more than my own bike. My first thought was: What will I do if I wreck it? Worry No. 2 came when I looked at the size of the cassette, the set of gears on the rear tire. They were small, very small, the kind used by expert racers to squeeze out even more speed, but avoided by mere mortals because of the strength required to pedal.

We set off east on Sierra Madre Avenue for a five-mile run in the flats before turning north onto Glendora Mountain Road. And it was here that the pain began. The road climbed steeply, and I was soon in the easiest gear, if you can call it that. King, ever patient, rode at my side, though it was clear he was not used to climbing at such a snailish speed. Three riders King often rode with overtook us.

“How’s it going?” King asked as they passed us.

“Same old road,” one of them replied.

In a few moments they disappeared around a bend. King sped up to stretch his legs, and I finally got off the bike, panting from the exertion. When King returned we started climbing again, up the winding road that soon left the basin behind. But again I had to stop. And then again, near the top. We had been climbing about three miles, and my heart rate monitor was registering above 190, compared with the high end of my recommended zone, which is 142. King, mercifully, decided it was time to go downhill for a change, so he changed our route.

“I don’t want you to die,” he said.

We turned the bikes around and began zipping down the hill. King said the trick going downhill is to ride in as straight a line as possible and not to hit the brakes. Me, I used them a lot, especially around the hairpin turns. The rest of the 20-mile ride was in the flats, and after two hours of riding we were back at the country club. My heart rate was still above the maximum for my preferred zone. In fact, I’d only been in my zone for a little more than five minutes. The monitor said I’d burned more than 1,900 calories on the run.

A few days later I called Katie Safford, one of the top women racers in the country and a Montrose Ride regular. What would she recommend as a first step for those who want to take up cycling?

“Get fitted correctly by a reputable bike shop and make friends with the people in the shop because you’ll be back in there a lot,” she replied. (Spending a small fortune on bike and gear isn’t necessary, most pros say.)

And what to avoid? Don’t overdo it. “It’s especially true with women,” she said. “They go out with their boyfriend or husband for his favorite 45-mile ride. Then the bike gets hung up and never used again.”

In a way, that sounded a lot like going for a ride with Cameron King.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Snapshot: Cycling

Duration of activity: Two hours

Calories burned: 1,900

Heart rate*: Average, 152 beats per minute; high, 190

Time in target zone*: Only five minutes, because heart rate exceeded target zone for most of the ride.

Where to go: Ask your local bicycle shop about cycling clubs in the area, including those that offer instruction and rides of varying degrees of difficulty. On the Internet, check out: www.at-la.com, www.socalcycling.com and www.bicycle-rides.com.

*This information was obtained using a heart rate monitor. The time in the target heart rate zone is a measure of the intensity of a workout. The target zone varies based on one’s age and individual heart rate.

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Fitness Bound appears the first and third Mondays of the month. J. Michael Kennedy can be reached at j.michael.kennedy@latimes.com.