Dion’s Exercise and …

Well, the ride down was a touch quicker then going up. Was a bit rusty on my descending and I don’t really know the road so I took it pretty easy. Biggest problem is my neck gets sore from looking up from down on the drops hanging on to the brakes. I just don’t like having my hands anywhere else when I’m going above 45 km or so, it just feels a bit unsteady and moving around has to be done very carefully.

Passed about 10 more people riding up, gave a quick hi and zoomed on. As the road straightened out near the bottom I got a bit more speed up and flew through the entry gate. Made it back to the entry to the block we were staying at and grabbed my shoes from the morning and then even rode down the loose gravel drive and across the paddock. Got a few strange looks from the awaking hoards, most of them thought I was crazy !

A great ride and one I’ll have to repeat next time they have their party in two years …

Here’s the Sportstracker Data and HR info to come.

View Larger Map

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 12/31/2007
• Time: 08:05:00
• Total Time: 00:33:24.00
• Distance: 22.2 km
• Average Speed: 39.88 kmph
• Max Speed: 66 kmph
• Ascent: 20 m
• Descent: 1,151 m

Here’s the route

Got away nice and early after walking across the wet paddock and up the dirt road, I wacked my shoes on and headed down the road. After a tiny climb there was a short descent where I nearly collected a large male deer with a fair size set of antlers, not quite sure who got the bigger fright !

Then it was a gentle climb up to the entrance gate of the ski area, about 15km to the summit from there and someone had put up some nice altitude and distance to go signs, though they seemed to get further out compared to my HR altitude as I got near the top. Passed 3 people already heading down and had about 5 cars go past other wise it was very quiet. The sun was coming up and it was nice and cool in the shade but a bit warm in the sunny bits, luckily there wasn’t too many of those. The HR temp was sitting around 20 C so it was really nice temp. The climb is fairly steady most of the way up, with only a few short steep pinches out of a couple of the corners. At least, until the last 1 km or so, then it really pitches up and I nearly had to do a bit of tacking but I dug deep and dragged myself up to the top.

After a short stop to fill up my water and have a wee break, I figured I’d better head up the last bit of the road through the ski village to the end of the paved surface. That was about another 1 km, again pretty steep, but I’d had a rest so no complaining ! The paving ended under one of the ski lifts so I snapped a few photos, reset the Hr and SportsTracker and headed down …

Need to upload my HR data but here’s the stats from the SportsTracker, the entry is here.

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 12/31/2007
• Time: 05:52:00
• Total Time: 1:40:40.00
• Distance: 21 km
• Average Speed: 12.52 kmph
• Max Speed: 49.7 kmph
• Ascent: 1,070 m
• Descent: 20 m

As part of our Christmas holidays we headed up to some friends property on the way to one of our ski areas, so what to do for the last day of the year ? Ride to the top, of course ! Headed out fairly early as they were predicting a top over 40 C, I’ll post the ride in two goes as the stats are rather different. The total climb was just over 1000m and descent was only 20m, so the way down was rather faster then the way up. Was a good ride apart from a bit of a sore neck on the descent from hanging onto the brakes …