The streets of Los Angeles are Alfredo Bueno’s playground.
The EF Education-Aevolo sprinter grew up on wheelie bikes, hopping from neighborhood to neighborhood, practicing hand drags, knee-over frames and knee knocks around the city with his crew. He got into road biking on a ride-out the night before the L.A. Marathon. Speeding down dark, empty city streets with a peloton altered Alfredo’s sense of perception forever. As the sun rose over the City of Angels and the streetlights dimmed, he realized that the greatest trick he could do on a bike was ride fast.
“Every year before the L.A. Marathon, there’s this group ride,” Alfredo said. “It’s called a ride-out. All the wheelie bike guys come together. They close the streets for the L.A. Marathon, so the night before there is this ride that starts at Union Station. It’ll snake through the L.A. Marathon course and finish in Santa Monica. I had to beg my mom to go to my first one when I was maybe 11 or 12. A couple of years later, I did it on a fixie and there were all of these guys on road bikes. That was what sparked it for me. I was like, ‘Oh, I want to start going fast on these bikes.’”
Soon Alfredo was flying. From Southern California industrial park crits to big bunch sprint wins on the UCI Europe Tour, Alfredo rocketed onto EF Education-Aevolo and now spends half the year in Girona, Spain, chasing his WorldTour racing dream. Los Angeles will always be his home, though. Alfredo honed his skills sprinting through traffic and time-trialing down L.A.’s paths.
“Over there, it’s all just racing, racing, racing, but this is home,” Alfredo said. “I just feel like myself here. When I try to explain to people where I live, I usually end up saying ‘Grand Theft Auto.’ It’s so fun, just figuring stuff out. You ride one street over from what the heat map says and end up having a beast ride. You can definitely piece some good stuff together. You get on the paths and stay on the pedals. Sometimes when the go-go intervals get hard, I’ll go to this canyon called Turnbull for some short little climbs.”
Alfredo’s favorite ride goes from his family home in Long Beach all the way up to Griffith Park in the Hollywood Hills and back.
Alfredo's route
“We go through North Long Beach, the little ways, on the little side streets, and then jump on the L.A. path,” Alfredo said. “Every serious guy in L.A. rides on the path. You’ve got to stay on the pedals. Then we’ll pass through Vernon, which is industrial, and then through South L.A. on the little streets to hop over to Griffith. When we are over there, there are some views of the city and we go through some of what I think people think of as more L.A.-type L.A. We go to this overlook, and from there you can see the whole city, the Hollywood sign.”
The L.A. that Alfredo knows and loves best isn’t the city of movie clichés, though. He tells his friends to go explore the city’s neighborhoods. Spinning from block to block can feel like traveling the globe.
“L.A. County is a field of dreams,” Alfredo said. “There are so many different possibilities. You just think of everywhere you can go in Southern California and it’s like going to different countries. The adrenaline is great. Sometimes you have got to do some maneuvers and sometimes you have just got to stop, stomp, and go, but that is what makes it great. Back during my wheelie-bike days, we would take the train or bus everywhere. Now, I'll ride through some of those spots, and it will all come back to me like, ‘Wait, how did I end up here? I know where I am. There is no way I rode here from home now.’ That's so cool.”
That is what road bikes let you do.
Join Alfredo Bueono, beyond your universe, in Los Angeles, California.