Central Coast Bike Adventures

If you're a cyclist, you may want to bring your wheels along when you visit the Central Coast. We've got plenty of scenic back roads offering everything from challenging hills to easy and flat tours. The Central Coast hosts several world-class bike teams every Spring when they train here in preparation for their upcoming competitions. In addition, the Amgen Tour of California has passed through the Central Coast each year so our roads and hospitality are becoming well known amongst cyclists world-wide.

Rick Sweet's Central Coast Cycling website is a handy resouce for bicycling around the Santa Maria valley. Rick's site provides info on local rides, routes with elevation plots and topographic maps, lots of photos, a comprehensive event calendar, bike shop pit stops, and several road, mountain and pleasure rides.

We also stumbled upon another site the other day which combines the technology of Google maps with some very creative programming. You can design your own bike route on the Velo Routes website simply by inputting the geographical area you're interested in and then clicking away on the resulting Google map to plot your course. The site will track in your choice of miles or kilometers and provide an elevation chart for the resulting route. Of course, the site is pretty handy for runners, hikers and walkers too! Here's a link which will take you directly to a map of the Santa Maria region.