Competition

There has been a nice side benefit of uploading rides and climbs to Strava – I think about my efforts every time I put my wheels on a known segment or climb. I am pushing myself harder up climbs in order to put up personal best times. This last week, I had a few. One was up Kruger and over Gibbs Cemetery. I hit a personal best on Wednesday by over a minute. I thought that this was quite a feat, especially when the best time I had I thought I had pushed hard. On Saturday, competition shows how it can impact performance as well. Saturday was the Reach the Beach ride. The century leg starts in Beaverton and finishes in Pacific City on the Oregon coast. Although I was not participating on the organized ride, my planned ride for the day put me on the same roads. I had already been up a portion of the climb earlier in my ride but I had done the Haugen Road at about the halfway point and was climbing up over Kruger and Gibbs to come home. I had riders in front of me at the start. I chased them down and about halfway up, two riders rolled around me. I thought, “not in my backyard.” So I jumped on their wheel and got over Gibbs with them. We talked on the way down as we dropped into Newberg. I then headed out North Valley. When I uploaded to Strava, I had beat my Kruger-Gibbs time by over a minute again. Wow! I was at 45 miles and 5K of climbing when I started the climb and I crushed my old time. Legs felt tired but a little competition motivates.


I am loving Strava.

STP only 8 weeks away.

Climbing and Strava

A few months ago, I clicked on this link on the velonews website that took me to Strava. After not being impressed with the website, I took a survey about my thoughts and how to make it better. With that survey response, I got a free one year membership. The membership opened up a new part of Strava for me. The premise of the website is that many cyclists are competitive and like to talk about how fast they ride, especially up hill. So, on Strava, you can upload your rides, pick out the climbs or other segments of the ride, and Strava shows how fast you rode the climbs or selected segment. It then sees if other riders have ridden the same roads and compares their times with yours - competition is on. The external link to my page is www.strava.com/athletes/cbeecher. I have found only one other that has posted their time up rides that I have done in the area so not much competition as of yet. What this also does is help to save for me my best times up certain climbs. Cool!

Saturday was a monster day on the bike - it was the most elevation gain in one day for me - just a hair over 8K in 70 miles. I figure that is was close to the effort that will be needed in August at the Mt. Shasta Super Summit Century. It was painful at times but well worth the ride. I found out on the climbs that I like to climb in silence - I need the time to focus. I was riding with music for the first few, not a lot of strain on those climbs but on the most intense part of going up the back side of Bald Peak, I had to take out the ear buds and just focus on the climb. It helped to get me up the hill. Interesting and good to know.

Only about 8 weeks till STP and then 3 more weeks to Shasta - good times.