Mount Hamilton New Years Day

My boss gave me the option of working today and taking an extra day off some other time. The weather was super nice today so I said "Screw It" and decided to ride up Mount Hamilton instead. Mount Hamilton seems to be a very popular ride for New Years Day. I saw easily over a hundred riders on the road today. It is the biggest climb in the Bay Area, over a vertical mile including the couple of spots you loose altitude on the way up.

This morning I was out for coffee with my neighbor who told me about one of his New Years rides to the summit in the past. He had to stuff toilet seat covers from the bathroom at the observatory in his jersey to stay warm. I had no such problems today. It was sunny and calm with temps in the 50s.

Now that I am able to monitor HR and cadence I tried to focus on keeping those steady for the duration of the climb. My targets were 135 bpm HR and 85 rpm cadence. I stuck to that most of the way but had to slow the cadence down on the steepest parts to stay in the HR zone. If you look on MB it shows my max HR somewhere around 215 bpm. Seeing as I am still alive, I tend to think there was some sort of technical glitch with the HRM. I did have extra layers over it on the way down.

I feel like the focused 3-4 hr workouts I have been doing lately have been doing me some good. It can't replace the mental and skill aspects of ultra long workouts, but I think it may be more effective at building fitness. Saves time too, which I never seem to have enough of these days.

No pictures today. I didn't bring a camera because 1) I wanted to travel light and 2) I plan to do the climb again later in the season. You can make an insanely brutal loop out of this ride, see google maps to see what I mean. When I get around to it that should be the longest training ride I will do before PQ.