Who is doing the Grand Tour on June 26th

[Sanford Aniya]

Anyone else doing the LA Wheeman Grand Tour in June ?

I've never been on this ride.  Hopefully someone can fill me in on what to expect.
I was told that the Lowland route has less climbing that one of Jeff's regular rides, so I signed up for the Highland route.  What do you think, was I duped ?

-Sandy

[karlos]

Sandy, You should do the Highland route. It's just plain nicer. At a little over 8,000 ft of climbing (the couple times I did it), it is one of the shallowest double centuries. This is  more total climbing than our Regular rides. RideWithGps, the interactive map site which Jeff has been using, typically overestimates elev gain by about 20% (for example, last weekend's Mt Palomar was about 7300 on my Edge 305). Although, I don't claim to really know absolute accuracies, when I rode the Highland route, I did log somewhere around 8400' total elev gain if I remember. This is stretched out over 200 miles, so the average gain of ~42ft/mi is truly less than many of Jeff's typical rides, where 100' gain/mi usually means a very hilly ride!
enjoy - Karl

[Sanford Aniya]

Karl, thanks for the reconnaissance information.

I have set my sights on the California Triple Crown this year.  (Three doubles in one year) Having not done a double until this year, I wanted to choose moderate doubles.   I survived the Spring Death Valley Double in March, the Grand Tour will be the second in June and Death Valley Fall will be the third in October. 
They say if you put it out there, your friends and family will help you achieve your goals.  So  if you see me on the side of the road whining about the heat (or faking a flat tire),  tell me to get back to work building up that layer of calluses on my back side.

-Sandy

[robert#5639]

Do the highland. Do it for me, as I'm now out for medical reasons. It's actually a pretty easy route. If you do the lowland, you'll get bored and wish you did the highland (or so I'm told, I've never done the lowland). The climbing is good, challenging but not stupid hard. Besides, once you get over Casitas pass, it's all down hill coastal rollers.