This story was submitted by Jill Theodossi, who helped lead the A group on both days.

Well, I have been trying to figure out how to make the team fun Saturday ride sound as good as Heather B   when she writes it up, so here goes…

Well as some of you know, some of us started out the previous Saturday July 19th doing the Strava climbing challenge… (27,000 feet of climbing in 9 days, which is appx 3,000 feet per day)… With a very tough route that our fearless leader Heather B was planning on leading us on…And as I’m sure by now all of you know that fearless leader is on the injured list so she did not get to do this….(her goal had been 5,000 feet per day, there’s is a story behind the climbing challenge for Heather Bruemmer,)  but that means we had a new fearless leader-Heather Krauss… So on Saturday July 19t,h 4 of us (Heather Krauss, Rosio, Jessica, and myself) started out on the 50+Mile, 6,000+ foot ride. Little did we know that we were getting started with a bang, appx 5 miles into the ride we made a left turn onto Neblina, .8 miles at an average grade of 6%… Ugh! And from there we didn’t stop climbing.  Some of the tougher hills this day were San elijo to double peak, then over to Valborg, which is long and hard, and back over to wild canyon which takes you right back up to double peak again… So far Heather Krauss is just killing it, and Jessica is right behind her, it’s my first time doing double peak more then once in a day, and it is Rosio’s first time up double peak… And her 2nd, that is pretty impressive I think, now we head up to finish San elijo and go back through San Marcos with 4 more climbs to do… We get the 1st one, we skip the next and the next… This ride is taking a bit longer then we anticipated… So as we ride, we go past Jessica’s house and she heads for home, that leaves HK, Rosio and my self to finish off the ride.

Jessica, Rosio and Jill on Mt. Soledad, 7/26

We decide to do the last climb because while it is a little steep it’s also very short, and the rest of the ride is downhill and flat, so la costa to ECR to my favorite route to home, a left on Arenal which eventually throws you out to Batiquitos Dr, after a few more lefts and rights, then a right onto Kingfisher and now your on the last climb, through the Aviara resort, you get to the top make a left on Aviara a right on Blackrail and end up at the top of Poinsettia, 2 miles downhill to the coast and 5 miles back to the shop… Of course I started at home, which we pass on the way down the hill to the coast so I yelled my goodbyes and headed home to get ready for work, 2 down 2 to go… HK and Rosio headed on back to the shop and were done… Day one of the challenge complete! One more sat Team Fun Ride under our belts.. Thank you Heather Bruemmer for the super tough route, thank you Heather Krauss for leading on this tough route 🙂

I will skip the week of climbing and get almost directly onto the next Saturday ride, the 2nd to last day of the climbing challenge…Heather Krauss and I had talked several times during the week, discussing whether or not we really cared about finishing the challenging… It was hot, Heather Bruemmer wasn’t able to do it with us… I think both of us said we didn’t really care, but really we both did, as you can see by the fact that we put in quite a lot of climbing, both together and separately… So on Wed we discussed what we would do for our Saturday ride, to get the biggest bang for the buck elevation wise, while also staying close to the coast due to the heat and the humidity. We figured out a route that had a lot of miles, a lot of feet and some Very Steep hills, which we have done before, but not at the tail end of a climbing challenge, Heather K mapped this route which was Mt Soledad… Pretty much almost every way possible.

While we rode Friday, we discussed again our Saturday route and decided… That route was a very bad idea, we should stick to the easier sides of Mt Soledad so we could actually kind of enjoy the ride, not feel like we were dying… So this particular Saturday we started at 7 am, to skip some of the heat, once again we started out with Heather K, Jessica, Rosio, and myself, we met at the glider port in la jolla and rode down la jolla shores into downtown La Jolla, stopped at the cove and saw seals, sea lions and a bunch of people getting ready to go swim. Heather Bruemmer would have loved the sea lions, we always stop there to look and take pictures anytime we are in the area…
I believe, we stood there chatting, checking things out, basically putting off the next part of the ride, heading over to Nautilus to get started on our 1st climb of the day…

Finally after a potty break, and some more photos and a very friendly man telling us what the folks on the cliff were doing-something about a graduation class and a swim-
We headed out to the downtown back streets of beautiful La Jolla until we found Nautilus, we made a left and got started… After a couple stop signs we were on the main part of the climb and Jessica took off… Heather and I were just slow steady and Rosio was not far behind us… We got the top, I think we took few pictures and it was time to go down for our 2 climb.. This time we were going to go down Soledad mountain to the bottom, make a u-turn and head right back up again, we had decided that each time we were going all the way to the cross, for the few extra feet it would give, and it’s a perfect place to wait for everyone, once again Jessica was at the top waiting when the rest of us made it, we decided that was a bit easier then the Nautilus climb so we would do it again, we also discussed getting coffee at bird rock coffee shop somewhere along the way, so after one more time up and down Soledad (3 now, only 3 to go) we decided to go get our coffee. What a great break that was, and a busy place, no wonder- the coffee is delicious, and who did I run into but my sister and brother in law! Nice to see them, for the 2nd day in a row.. Unusual.

Bird Rock Coffee

Anyways, Jessica decided that she needed to head back, she had a swim to do later in the day and a hard run on Sunday, so we lost one, were down to 3, we went back up Nautilus one more time, and then down and up Soledad Mtn Road 2 more times and we were at the goal Heather Krauss had set of 5,000 feet, I was now done with the challenge and Heather K only needed about 1600 more feet, so we had one more hill to climb on our way back to the glider port, and it’s a tough one, Calle del Oro, we passed a man going up who was going so slow he couldn’t even ride straight…. We got back to the glider port, went and watched a bunch of hang gliders and para-sailers and finally we were done for the day… Well, except I had to go to work… What’s new!

So by the end of the ride, Heather Krauss only needed like 1100 or 1200 more feet to complete and she got it done early Sunday morning and then some.
All in all a good week of climbing, but not the same without Heather Bruemmer…we missed you!  I would not be the climber I am now, if it wasn’t for riding with my 2 really good friends and being pushed to my limit and past, pretty much all the time.

Laurie, Kim, Susan, and Judy atop Mt. Soledad, 7/26

Team Fun C Group at Torrey Pines – Julie, Robin, Sian, Kim Z & Karen