One of the weekly club rides I like doing is the Metcalf Mauler. With the advent of Daylight Savings time the ride has moved to 5 pm, so we get a lot faster riders through the summer. Today was the first such fast paced group. After running 20 miles yesterday I was not sure how well I would do and started making excuses before we even hit the hill. Maybe it was the new bike, but I set a new PR going up the hill, at 13:28, beating my best time set last fall of 13:35.

I won’t bore yo with yet another heart rate graph but my average heart rate during the climb was 168, with a max of 173. Okay, I can’t resist, here is the graph. The numbers 1 and 2 on the horizontal axis shows the start and end of the marked climb. By graphing based on time, instead of distance, it looks like the hill incline is consistent, but that is only because I was holding the elevation gain per minute nearly even. See how my heart rate went up towards then end of the climb, because I knew I was close to setting a new PR. That might have been a mistake to do so early in the year.

Now the fun part of the ride is going down San Felipe. I pulled par of the way down the hill, with a train of about 10 riders right behind me. Notice on the following graph the speed we reached. I am glad I didn’t have a compact crankset or I would have spun out trying to pedal at that speed.

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On Saturday, I took my new road bike out for a ride and the first hill we did was Quimby. I was a bit worried about making it up such a steep hill with just a double, but it was okay. Here is a graph of the data during the climb. You can see my heat rate was going a bit into my defined red zone during some parts of the climb, but I was not pushing the pace. When I do push, my heart rate goes above 170.

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There is always the discussion if cycling is friendly to the environment. I suppose on the surface it would appear so but as a sport we often get in our cars and drive it to the start of a club ride, which is not friendly the environment. Well today I decided to ride from home. Problem is most club rides start in the major city that is 30 miles from where we live. I did the Metcalf Mauler club ride and got in a total of 75 miles on the bike, but only 20 of that was on the official club ride. So at least for today, call me Mr. Green.

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I ran 8 miles today, after taking yesterday off from running. The running injury is still there but I was managing. I got an email from Donny that he was climbing up Henry Coe at 2 pm, on road bikes, so I replied I would join. We all met at the bike patch trail head in Morgan Hill. On the way to Dunne Ave. I saw a large group of road cyclists and forgot that I was dealing with an injury and chased them down (I just can’t resist myself). After I started to climb, I noticed the injury a lot. I had to take it slow going up. I got back just in time to join the Night Riders weekly Wednesday ride up Henry Coe so I repeated the same climb. It is a riot descending down the mountain in the dark, but we have good headlights so we can see the road. This same group of guys also does Mountain Biking in the dark, but I am not ready for that yet.

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While in the middle of training for the Boston Marathon in April, I got the bug to do a double century so I signed up for the Solvang Double Century. It is a 200 mile cycling adventure but with less than 7,000 feet of climbing.

Still I knew I needed to get in some longer rides so yesterday I did an ACTC (www.actc.org) ride called Cheese Burgers at the Junction. This is a ride that starts in San Jose and goes up over Mt. Hamilton, down the backside and out to the junciton. There had been considerable email traffic on the ACTC website warning about the terrible conditions for this ride, considering it had been snowing up there two days before. I was prepared to ride in the snow, and the sand placed on the road due to the snow. What did I find? A beautiful sunny day with temperatures at the summit in the mid 50′s and over 70 degrees coming backup the back side of Mt. Hamilton.

The following link shows the data that day from my Polar Heart Rate Monitor. As you can see, I was taking it easy because I was dealing with an running injury to my right Achilles.

This coming Saturday I plan to do even a longer club ride, part of the Long Distance Training rides, with 125 miles and similar climbing as yesterday. This time I get to go up Mt. Diablo.

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