Yesterday I went up King’s Mountain Road for the first time in my cycling history in the Bay Area.
What a grueling climb it was! I had been up Old La Honda before which is supposedly 3.75 miles from bottom to the top. In comparison, my GPS said King’s Mountain was 5.2 miles although others say it’s 4.3 miles to the top, but all the way it felt like it was just sucking energy away quickly. Great training ride and I hope to do it more often now that I know where it is, especially with the 1+ hour warmup ride from Cupertino to Woodside to get there!
Grueling on the way back too in a different way – the screaming downhill down 84 back to Woodside gets you up to 25+ MPH and your HR cools down until you feel like you’re freezing because it’s still early morning and the fog hasn’t burnt off…!
This time I took my Garmin Forerunner 301 with me to check out some of its PC related features. It’s an awesome little device that is much better than its predecessor, the Forerunner 201, because it’s got a HR monitor in there. All my training is HR monitored and not having to wear 2-3 watches/devices is a good thing.
The GPS actually records tons of data when you use it. Using its training software, I download my King’s Mountain ride onto my PC. WOW. And I start geeking out big time. I had hit the lap button at various points on the ride and now I can see how long it took to get to the top of King’s Mountain, as well as the elevation, speed, and average HR during each lap.
This is way cool! Now when I get elevation maps from races, I can judge how hard the hills will be during the bike portion.
This of course also applies to running as well….