Biking St. Paul's Hills! (x6)

Tuesday between classes, I got out for a hilly ride. I rode up Ohio Hill 3 times, and then rode up Ramsey Hill 3 times. This was my first true hill workout in nearly 2 years.

6 hill repeats (3 Ohio and 3 Ramsey), but STOPPING my watch accidentally
to start each of the 3, so this only shows 4 repeats (and 2 sudden jumps in
elevation as I restarted my Garmin at the top, noted with the exclamation points).


Speed and elevation combined. The big spike in speed in the middle
between the 2 sets of 3 is biking down the Smith Street High Bridge.

Being this is the first time doing all these hills on my new bike (Eiffel), I wanted to look back on this same workout from a few years ago when I was doing it on my old bike (Goldilocks). Here are my splits up these hills the last 3 times I did a workout like this: 3 years ago, 2 years ago, and this week (each as a different column):

Dates: 5/2014, 5/2015, 2/2017

Ohio #1: 2:25, 2:14, 2:16
Ohio #2: 2:26, 2:19, 2:18
Ohio #3: 2:29, 2:19, 2:18

Average: 2:27, 2:17, 2:17


Ramsey #1: 1:37, 1:25, 1:21
Ramsey #2: 1:35, 1:28, 1:23
Ramsey #3: 1:35, (xxx), 1:21 (only did Ramsey 2x in 2015)

Average: 1:36, 1:27, 1:22

So the new bike was as fast as I was 2 years ago on Ohio, but then was a fair amount faster on the final 3 hills on Ramsey. AND THIS WAS A FEBRUARY RIDE! I need to keep this up to be in GREAT shape for duathlon and triathlon season!

Here's a photo of bro-in-law Matt warming up before riding this workout with me in 2014:

Trailing big sexy down Big River's Trail.

Here's a bit from 3 years ago as I finished up that workout with Matt as seen in this post:

Here are some photos Matt got of me on my final hill climb:

That speck in front of that car is me - I'm about 2/3 up the hill.


Almost up.


Close up of the elevation of the 6 hill repeats. Some nasty climbs over 25 mins.
Close to 2,000 feet of climbing over 6 miles!

The bad news is that after my short run the next day (Wednesday), my knee started hurting again. I took Thursday off, swam a bit on Friday (which didn't seem to hurt it), and I may try hopping on the trainer for just an easy 20-30 min spin this afternoon before running tomorrow. Hopefully I just angered it a bit by stressing it on the hills, and after a few days of rest, it'll be good again. HOPEFULLY!