I like Strava. I don't get to go on many group rides so seeing how I do against others and myself is sometimes as close as I can get. It also helps me to improve as well as humbles the heck out of me. Nothing like riding a slightly downhill segment as fast as I possibly can, then finding out that the pros rode that same segment 10 mph faster during last year's Amgen Tour of California while they were just cruising. Yikes.
On Sunday I did one of my go-to figure eight routes. Not too long but lots of climbing. I've been riding stronger lately so I was curious how I did on one of the hills on the route. My second best time, so that was okay. However, I noticed that my personal best put me in the bottom 15% of the riders for that climb. That's not surprising, though, because I am not a climber at all. I can get over hills, I just do it very slowly because I'm so big. Sucks but that's just the way it is. I looked at the leaderboard again and noticed something else: there are just not a lot of people doing that climb. Almost 3x the number of people do the descent but because that climb is so hard (not so long but steep, isolated, and it can get hot out there), most cyclists aren't even trying it.
Sometimes it's not about how fast you go up the hill. Sometimes it's just that you go up the hill at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment