I recently signed up for Strava premium which lets you compare efforts with others in your same age group. Strava tracks “Kings of Mountain” (KOMs) and “Queens of Mountain” (QOMs) for various routes. A convenient local challenge for me is climbing Llagas road, which is only 15 minutes away by bike. The climb currently takes me just under six minutes which is a good length challenge.
This places me 87th out of 142 in my age group who have tried this segment. There are a lot of fast old folks in Morgan Hill!
I’m not a particularly good climber so this gives me something to focus on improving. Training to get faster at that will require the kind of intervals I’m already doing, but I have to focus on doing them uphill instead of on the flat. This will be a fun challenge for me over the next few weeks.
I did this effort first thing yesterday morning. I then went home and switched bikes from my unassisted road bike to my electric-assist bike, which I took on my Tuesday group outing, a longer ride at an easier pace. But to start off with my climbing training I turned assist off on all significant uphills and rode them more briskly.
BionicOldGuy 