My incredibly very hilly ride.

Friday, 27 July 2012

One thing which bothers me about bike riding is that you just don't get sufficient payback for all your uphill riding efforts - i.e. you can ride uphill for 1 hour, then turn around and you're back where you started in about 2 minutes. It's very unfair, especially for someone like me who hates riding up hills.   If I have a choice I always prefer to get the hills over and done with right at the start of a run or ride, then I can enjoy myself for the rest of the trip without having to fret about what's coming up.  Actually that's not true,  if I have a choice I exclusively ride along pipeline tracks! But I'm training for the cape to cape mtb race at the moment which I'm guessing is going to involve some hills, so today I did my extremely hilly hill ride of great altitude..

First I head up our drive (ok so I push up the drive but whatever) and hop on my bike and slog up through the neighbourhood onto Summerleas road, fighting the urge to quit then and there..Then I turn off Summerleas  and head up past Kingston High School.  It's no co-incidence that it's called Kingston High School you know, it's a good solid 5 minutes climbing from our house and I can already taste the air getting thin..

After Kingston High it's a even more uphill minutes to the new Mountain Bike Park, so new that it's still closed until spring.. sigh.. 

From there I turn onto a trail which goes past the Mt Pleasant Water Tank.  Yes, MOUNT pleasant.  It's very mountainous. 

After the water tank I join a road which winds Pyrenees like up even more hills. Along the way I encounter extremely mountainous fluffy yak like things (which can probably only survive at these extreme altitudes):

 and also these Alpine Alpacas:

Then it's back onto Mount Pleasant Road.. where I'm wishing I'd made some sort of oxygen tank drop before I arrived, so I could get my breath back.  Again note the MOUNT factor..

Up up up I go,  happily I'm not bothered by much traffic (not many cars are made for these altitudes I guess).  You can see that the vegetation is thinning out (are those snow gums I can see in there?). I stopped to take a photo of the block for sale - I'm sure the Australian Institute of Sport would be interested in acquiring it for some high altitude training..

Then it's with some surprise that I find myself at the Huon Highway, but it is with satisfaction that I read the sign (which is obviously showing the vertical kilometres as opposed to the regular kilometres)

After I cross the Huon Highway I struggle up yet another hill (who'd have thought it possible) until I finally reach the highest point of my ride, after an epic 40 minutes of riding..   Up here in the clouds the views are fantastic..

Although I'm keen to linger and savour the hard earned altitude I'm conscious of not getting caught out up here should there be a sudden change of weather, so it's time to stow away my camera and go rattling back down the hills on a fun yet steep network of single trails.

Which have me back home in what feels like 30 seconds but as the whole ride takes about an hour I guess it's a little longer.  

Then of course it's important to recover by doing nothing the rest of the day (to allow my lungs to decompress, or compress.. or something) except bake and eat brownies of course.