I’ve been hit by a car twice, so I do 100% of my riding in non-vehicle areas.
For the oceanside 70.3 I did all my riding on the 52 bike trail and on the trail that goes behind the Oceanside Airport.
I’ve also done some riding on the Las Pulgas exit bike trail up the coast.
I’m getting real bored doing the same 8 miles over and over again for hours and hours…
My goal is to finish the California IM, so looking for some place to do long flat rides.
So where can one do long Z2 rides in so-cal with no cars?
I’m also open to century length “no cars” rides anywhere east of the Missouri river
as long as they are close enough to a small airport that I can get from the airport to the ride with minimal traffic.
Some place my wife would find cool to visit for a weekend would be a plus.
Again thanks everyone here for helping a fat old newbe reach their goals. I finished the Oceanside 70.3 under the time limits, first goal of the year, accomplished.
Trained for CA last year, only non-car route I can think of is San Gabriel River trial, Los Alamitos to Azusa. Can cut over at Whittier Narrows to the Rio Hondo trail, down to Long Beach. Can easily get 100 in if creative. SGRT out and back is about 70
I’ll second what Chris said and add that when riding the San Gabriel River Trail (SGRT), you can also mix in the Coyote Creek River Trail from Los Alamitos to La Mirada (about 9 miles each way from the bridge on the SGRT to Foster Road in La Mirada).
Also, about 12 miles south along the coast from the SGRT is the Santa Ana River Trail that you can take from Pacific Coast Highway at the border of Newport/Huntington Beaches, about 30 miles inland, north to the Orange/Riverside County line near Green River Golf Club. Flip it and you get almost 60 in with no traffic lights.
If starting at the coast, riding inland on these trails and returning to the coast in the late morning or into the afternoon, expect some headwinds as you ride south back to the beach.
I live between these two trails and have ridden thousands of miles on them when training for courses like IM California, Arizona and Florida.
Finding a long, continuous car-free section of road in SoCal is a bit tricky…
You’ve mentioned some of the San Diego County ones I know; here are those, plus a few more I have ridden:
*Bike path near the 76 in Oceanside
*56 bike path
*52 bike path (although this one is not flat)
*Rose Canyon bike path in La Jolla
*Bayshore Bikeway
I do a lot of riding on Fiesta Island when I want to ride in the aerobars…it’s not car-free, but it’s calm enough it feels safe compared being out on multi-lane roads with traffic lights. Super boring to do 4-mile laps over and over, but it’s a trade-off.
Now if you want to open yourself up to some gravel riding, you’ve got a whole lot more car-free possibilities!
You can fly into Utah’s Ogden-Hinckley Airport and jump onto the Great Western / Legacy Parkway /Jordan River trail system. It’s about 75 miles of paved bike path from Ogden down to Saratoga Springs (150 miles out and back) There’s a few road crossings, but the only time you’ll be riding with traffic is the 2-3 miles from the airport to the trail.
For a cool weekend away from San Diego that your wife might enjoy, check out the Ventura-Ojai Bike Trial. The trail itself is ~15 miles one-way and there are additional trails along the coast that can be used to extend the distance.
Orange County has a good number of nearly totally car free trails.
Santa Ana river trail already mentioned.
Aliso Creek Trail is ~16 miles one way with just a few streets to cross. Slightly hilly with about 1000 feet over its’ length.
Irvine has a lot of bike paths. San Diego Creek Trail is one of the longer ones. Also Peters Canyon/Mountains to the Sea.
In south San Diego, you can ride the bay shore bikeway from 54, south around the bay out to Coronado ferry landing entirely on bike paths with 1-2 crosswalk protected street crossings. That’s about 20 miles each way. Lots of tri-guys ride the Silver strand…
There is a decent amount of foot traffic so best to avoid peak times
While training for Arizona, I was able to do a 3-lap Ventura to Ojai trail route that pretty well mimicked the Arizona course with similar elevation gain per lap, and you can do it all on car-free trails.
The bike path that goes up the old highway 1 from Ventura to Carpenteria has pretty minimal riding on a separate bike lane without too much car traffic, and sections of only bike lane, and the views are great too! You can do about 15 miles each way on that too. If you do 17 out and back to Ojai and then 15 out and back to Carpenteria, you can easily get 60+ miles and add back another 30 or 34ish miles depending which loops you repeat. If you want to do a little climbing, traffic is light around Lake Casitas but there isn’t a dedicated bike lane.
There was another recent thread about Santa Barbara riding which has some Strava links for routes.
Santa Ana river trail from Huntington Beach to Corona and back gets you a 56 mile round trip.
There can be a fair amount of traffic on the trail though.
The upper section is usually less crowded than the beach (for obvious reasons)
Barely to the east of the Missouri/Mississippi rivers Minnesota has a bunch of old rail to trails bike trails. Miles of car free rides at your disposal and since they are old railroad grades, what incline they do have is very gradual. I use the Duluth to Hinckley section often. Over 70 miles of trail in one direction with just the occasional road crossing. Small towns about every 15 miles or so to refill your water bottles and grab a snack too.
Not far from MSP (Minneapolis/St Paul airport) is the Luce Line trail. Cannot remember how long that goes but it is quite a distance. But it is crushed limestone and pavement so you would likely not want to take a Tri bike on it. Road bike with 25-28 tires would likely be fine by would be a great gravel ride for distance training with not too much in the way of hills.
