My new-to-bicycling friend from last week and I went for a ride up the mountains yesterday. It was kind of a silly idea, because it was 104F in the shade.
This mountain road has a way of messing with my head. The grade is a fairly gradual climb up the mountain, but there are smaller hills along it. Somehow my brain started to classify the average grade as ‘level’, and then I got really discouraged about my low overall speed. A couple of times, I even got off to check if I had a brake pad rubbing the rim. There was one time when I tried to coast down a ‘downhill’ section, but I started to go backwards.
Wierd. I was convinced that it was downhill, but it was actually a pretty steep climb.
When we finally decided we had better turn around and head back to the car, the reality of the topography became obvious. We were back to the car in about 10 minutes.
Elapsed Time: 01:05:00
Max Speed: 31.0mph
Average Speed: 10.3mph
Distance: 11.3 miles