“Ride #38: Attack Those Hills (but with a light heart)”

Left for today's ride with a light heart! Business has started to pick up again since I whined a little earlier this week, and I felt fully recovered from Tuesday's half century. So, feeling good, I knew today would be a chance to try that extended route that I mentioned on Saturday.

On Tuesday's ride, one of the riders felt like giving me a little coaching (which I appreciate), and told me that instead of shifting into an easy gear and riding up the hills - pedalling fast, but moving slow - that I should stay in a harder gear and stand up out of the saddle for as long as I can, so that all of my weight is working the pedals instead of the seat post.

(For future reference, this is called "attacking the hill".)

I knew that, in fact, but I've been really bad about actually doing it. It's very hard work. In fact, this is the part of a ride where a cyclist's heart rate is the highest, because it's akin to running as fast as you can up a hill, but in slow motion. Lots of people have bike computers with heart monitors on them, and have to watch them because their heart rate will get up as high as 200. On a tachometer, that would be well into the red.

Anyway, I'm not inclined to push myself that hard yet, but I did push. I'm certainly feeling a burn like I haven't since high school, when I lived in N.H. and had to ride my bike up really high hills to see my girlfriend. :-)

By the end of the summer, I'll be able to keep up with that Tuesday night crew. I hope.

Stats: 24.65 miles in 78:55, for an average speed of 18.74 miles per hour. No, that's not my best speed, but frankly I think I was saving being a little too conservative while I worried about how bad the hills were going to wear me out, but they didn't! We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Some more interesting stats for your number-crunching pleasure (OK, for my number-crunching pleasure).

• this was my 38th ride, but last year I didn't reach 38 rides until August 19
• by June 28, 2000, I'd only ridden 15 times, my average speed was just 16.45 mph, and I'd only been 272 miles
• this year I've already ridden 738.21 miles
• I've already had more rides this month than in any month since I started keeping track!

Wow, that's encouraging!

(Yesterday an old friend accused me of bragging about my cycling. I'm going to have to write about that separately, but I don't think I'm bragging. I don't think most people really even care about this stuff (I know some do). If anything, I would hope that my success this year, after starting out in such terrible shape, would be encouraging to others. I'll save the rest of my comments for another time.)