13 July 2007

New Kensington Hill Loop

Went out to Kensington with Al last night to do some hill loops. He showed me a new way to do them. The old loop was two big hills in 3.5 miles with about 350 feet of climbing total. The new one is three big hills in 5.0 miles with about 450 feet of climbing. In the chart the first loop starts at about the 2.75 mile mark. The next three start at 7.75, 12.75 and 17.75 mile marks.



If you look closely, you'll see that the first two hills in each loop are very similar in gradient and distance. They are pretty steep and hurt a lot. Then there are some rollers along the back of the loop and we come around for the third hill. Seems to me the Farm Center hill (first hill) is the hardest. I was going to check the grade with the Garmin last night, but I was hurting too badly to look.

Last night we did four loops. With the ride to the loop and back it was about 2000 feet of climbing in 25.5 total miles (76.2 feet of climbing per mile). Not a bad workout for a couple of flatlanders.

2 comments:

Howard said...

Just did some eyeball calcs, and it looks like those pair of climbs rise a hundred vertical feet over about a third of a mile each ... for an average grade of about 6%. That's an excellent training climb, if you can find it. Also, the upward lines on the graph are a bit irregularly up, so brief portions are probably even steeper. Do enough of these repeats and you'll be ready for that big climby ride later on this season.

John Natiw said...

Just about right on Howard. My Garmin Pain-O-Meter says that in a few places they hit 6-8%. Biggest challenge around here is finding hills over a half a mile long. But... It'll do.

On a related note, I was riding with a friend the other day and we came upon a very short, but very steep hill. I quickly looked at the Pain-O-Meter and it was registering 14%. That is the steepest gradient I've ever felt. Big fun!