On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

My KOM up Dyer's Pass on the South Island of New Zealand was crushed "yesterday"... I put "yesterday" in quotes because it's hard to figure out precisely what it means that many time zones away, especially with the date line: The horror... the horror... With my light bike, with fresher legs, with a better warm-up, I know I could have gone faster. But a full minute faster? Or rather -- 61 seconds faster? That's the way Strava is. With exponentially increasing user base, records don't usually last long. In the San Francisco Bay area, things are hitting the linear growth regime, but elsewhere, the market penetration is still much smaller. Every week, more people are going to be posting rides, more climbs are going to be ridden hard, and KOMs come and all-to-quickly go. I'd love to go back -- it was a great trip, and I miss the great riding there, even if I am appreciating with renewed freshness the riding here in the San Francisco area ...

I've described a decent number of climb profiles from my trip to New Zealand, with profile data collected from a Garmin Edge 500 or, in the case of Haylocks, by Strava using topological data in conjunction with positions recorded by the Strava Android app. It's then obvious to ask: how do the climbs compare? Which was the toughest? Good question. First, some data. I plot here the altitude gained versus the climbing distance for each of the climbs. I define "the climb" as the portion of road which maximizes my climb rating, which I've described in this blog before. Here's the result, where I normalize each by the number associated with Old La Honda road: What makes a climb tough? To me, it's continuous time spent at a big grade, with a lot of altitude gained. click on image for expanded view profile of Haylocks from Maori church. Ignore wiggles, a mapping artifact; climb is continuously up. Click on image for larger view. Using an objectiv...

With climbs, there's a tendency to focus on those which gain big altitude and are frequently ridden, preferably in top-level races. However, sometimes it's the back-road little-known compact climbs are equally memorable, or in this case, surprisingly challenging. The day after my big Banks Peninsula hill ride, I went for a short scenic ride with Cara south of Akaroa. The goal was to check out Lighthouse Road. From the distance Lighthouse road is clearly visible, etched in the side of the treeless hill, the occasional car snaking its way slowly up the road's numerous switchbacks. It looked steep. But before our trip I'd set Cara's bike up with a 34/32 SRAM 1070 cassette with a medium cage SRAM Rival rear derailleur, a very nice combination which seemed to work very well (I detected no reduction in shift quality relative to her previous SRAM Red short-cage). So I figured we'd go check it out and see how steep it really was. Looks can be deceiving. In cent...

Christchurch was the beginning and end of my just-completed trip to New Zealand. Christchurch consists of a dense central district, a suburban ring, and beyond that, agricultural land dramatic mountains. The central district has been largely destroyed in two days of quakes: 4 Sept 2010, and a highly destructive aftershock on 22 Feb 2011. The damage to the suburbs is less visible but just as real: many houses were condemned due to structural damage. But the riding outside the city limits remains truly excellent. There's three popular passes just south of the city: Gabbies Pass, Dyers Pass, and Evans Pass. My route book, " Classic New Zealand Road Rides " by Jonathan Kennett and Kieran Turner described a ride over Gabbies Pass and Evans Pass, and shorter ride over Dyer Pass and Evans Pass. Each of these rides went over Evans Pass, but I was told as I staged at Zero's Cafe near Princess Margaret Hospital in Cashmere (part of Christchurch) that Evans was closed. S...

After climbing Long Bay Road on that second ride, I continued along Skyline Road, west towards Hill Top. Summit Road was absolutely gorgeous. Never flat, it's alternately up and down the whole way as it offers fantastic views of both sides of the ridge. It's reminiscent of Skyline Road in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties of California, Summit Road and Highland Road down near Loma Prieta, and Ridgecrest Boulevard on Mount Tamalpais, or El Camino Ciel above Santa Barbara. Each is gorgeous, each similar yet unique. The pavement on Summit on Banks Peninsula was quality chip-seal, no issues at all, and traffic was light, although a high fraction of the traffic was trucks. It's a rural place, with ranches on either side of the road, ranches taking up much of New Zealand land. So I passed first the road to Le Bons, then Okains Bay Road, then Pigeon Road, in addition to several "unsealed" roads along the way. But then I emerged finally at Hill Top, the terminus...

Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula, southeast of Christchurch on South Island, New Zealand, provides for excellent cycling: probably the best encountered on Cara on our vacation. First up on the list is Long Bay Road, which goes from the northern boundary of Akaroa up to Summit Road. Summit runs along the rim of a volcano, Akaroa Harbour forming the cone, and Long Bay (among others) on the outer edge of the rim. There's a series of roads which run from the harbor (the cone) over the rim. From east to west the paved ones are Long Bay Road, Okains Bay Road, and Pigeon Bay Road. I rode all three while in Akaroa last week, but Long Bay received most of my attention. Long Bay is the longest and toughest. Upon arriving in Akaroa, having done a fantastic 10 km trail run at Lake Takape that morning, I went for a "preview" ride of the hill. I'd not planned on doing the whole climb, but with Summit Road dangling in the distance, the hills mostly stripped of sight-blocking tr...

Having climbed the east side of the pass, it was time to descent to the west. Every new turn brought a fresh view of the scene laid out before me, and it was a challenge to keep my focus on the road. After a wonderful series of sweeping turns, one punctuated by an active road construction crew, I entered the final portion of this descent, a series of tight hairpins reminiscent of my descent of the Poggio on the Ligurian Coast last fall. I knew I was riding these too slowly, but taking the turns a bit easier had the benefit of extending their duration, and they were worth savoring. The descent done, I was ejected onto Highway 6. I expected this would take me to Arrowtown just down the road: a few km at most, based on my reading of the route profile before I'd left. But I'd misunderstood the route profile. What had been so close to the Crown Range was Arrowtown Junction, not Arrowtown. It was still 5 km to the town. So down the side road I went. When I arrived at the to...

During a particularly good SF2G, I head the rider called "Space" say he'd been to New Zealand. I asked him what the best ride he'd done there. "Wanaka to Queenstown", he said. At that moment this became a "must-do" for my trip to the country. There's two routes connecting the two cities. The main route, Highway 6, goes around the mountain while the more direct route, Crown Range, goes over it. Obviously Space has been referring to the latter. Crown Range was only paved relatively recently. Indeed, the profile in Scott Kennedy's book marks it as dirt. The text description, on the other hand, makes no mention of a dirt surface (although gravel on shoulders is described in the summary directions). Obviously Lonely Planet had failed to update the profile in the edition where the text was updated with the new road work. The book has many issues. Strava verified Space had ridden the Crown Range. So when Cara and I arrived in Wanaka,...

Weird... After not seeing the Haas Pass data on several log-ins, it appeared on my account... not sure where it was hiding, but glad to see it back! Actually, I think there's an issue with Synchronization when running in "airplane mode" when running the Strava app on a phone. I'm running airplane mode because data and voice are too expensive overseas, and I want to avoid any risks apps will check for updates or new mail or whatever and incur $1.99/minute data charges. And when I'm on vacation, spending time dealing with the internet becomes a low priority: it's liberating to do things like read actual newspapers, play Scrabble, or just sit and enjoy the chirping of the birds in the morning. So Haas is back. A few other activities are now mysteriously missing, but I have confidence eventually my phone will "sync" them with my account. Patience, patience.... On my trip: not riding much, but every day is something: runs, hikes, even a fun day ...

Next on my list of New Zealand climbs was Haas Pass. In a way, this was a ride destined to end in tears. But more on that at the end. Cycling New Zealand, a guide written by Scott Kennedy for Lonely Planet, describes the route from Makorora to Haast Junction, crossing the pass. However, if you look carefully at profile, shown on page 268 of the Sept 2009 edition, it's clear that only three data points were used for the profile between Haas Pass and Haas junction, covering 82 km. There's a point at the junction, of course, then one at 11 km from the pass at 100 meter elevation, then one at the pass itself, at what appears to be 560 meter elevation. So that's 460 meters gained in 11 km, an average of 4.2%. No problem, one might decide: this calls for an 11-20 straight block. Heh. I rode with Cara from our D.O.C. (pronounced "doc") campsite at Boundary Creek. Riding was effortless, it seemed, a good sign that there was going to be a heavy price to be paid l...

New Years Day meant two big events for me: riding the San Bruno Hill Climb for the first time in four years, and going to SFO to fly to New Zealand. After a night in Christchurch, viewing the sobering post-apocalypse which was the central business district and the contrasting beauty of the botanical gardins, Cara and I got in our rented camper van and headed out on national highway 73. Our destination: Jackston's Retreat, a very nice holiday park in Jacksons, west of Arthur's Pass through the New Zealand Alps. I'd read about Arthur's Pass using Strava Explorer . It's part of the Five Passes Tour , a combination bike tour + state race where riders tour the southern island and are timed over 5 climbs along the way. Arthur's Pass is rated a 5: the maximum points of the five. The profile was impressive. The net stats are fairly close to Kings Mountain Road: 6.87 km and 490 meters of total climbing, no intermediate descents: average grade = 7.16%. Kings mo...