Altitude
Do you ever know what altitude you are at? The bit that impressed me most about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is when he adjusts his carburettor to take account of the altitude in the mountains. Nice. I always wanted to do something like that.
Plancher Bas is at 424 metres (1,391 feet), not all that high. It runs down a river valley, so to go anywhere other than down river, you have to go up hill. Auxelles Bas is only 4-5 km distant, but is around 100 metres higher, at just over 1,700 feet. So I set myself the challenge of cycling up that hill this holiday. I didn't take my own bike with me, but borrowed my brother-in-law's mountain bike, which turned out not to be as good as mine. The tyres are too fat for road riding, and its gears were a bit fucked (the odd slippage when you tried to apply some pressure), and it was a trifle small for me, with no toeclips on the pedals. All in all, I estimate it was costing me 25-30% of the energy I was putting into it.
But I got up that hill. There was a speedometer on the bike. I was in the bottom granny gear, and I was doing 8km per hour for the last couple of kilometers. After an hour's rest in the garden at Auxelles Bas, I went back down, topping out at 48 km per hour before I slowed it for a bend. Again, those fat tyres were costing speed. I'd have hit 60 kph on my own bike, I'm sure.
I did a couple more rides, up to the waterfalls beyond Plancher Les Mines. Further to ride, with a gentler climb, just 10 kilometers each way. But then when I went out on my 10 mile home circuit yesterday, it felt so easy. The hills that had seemed like mountains to me before, I breezed up them, with an Armstrong-like pedalling cadence. I killed that ride. Possibly my last time, because we move next weekend, so I'm glad to have killed it at last.
+++
Update: I worked out at lunchtime that I live at around 40 metres above sea level (131 feet), and my weekend bike rides take me no more than 10 metres above that, so my feeling on the Plancher-Auxelles ride that I couldn't get enough air into my lungs was probably real. A bit.
Plancher Bas is at 424 metres (1,391 feet), not all that high. It runs down a river valley, so to go anywhere other than down river, you have to go up hill. Auxelles Bas is only 4-5 km distant, but is around 100 metres higher, at just over 1,700 feet. So I set myself the challenge of cycling up that hill this holiday. I didn't take my own bike with me, but borrowed my brother-in-law's mountain bike, which turned out not to be as good as mine. The tyres are too fat for road riding, and its gears were a bit fucked (the odd slippage when you tried to apply some pressure), and it was a trifle small for me, with no toeclips on the pedals. All in all, I estimate it was costing me 25-30% of the energy I was putting into it.
But I got up that hill. There was a speedometer on the bike. I was in the bottom granny gear, and I was doing 8km per hour for the last couple of kilometers. After an hour's rest in the garden at Auxelles Bas, I went back down, topping out at 48 km per hour before I slowed it for a bend. Again, those fat tyres were costing speed. I'd have hit 60 kph on my own bike, I'm sure.
I did a couple more rides, up to the waterfalls beyond Plancher Les Mines. Further to ride, with a gentler climb, just 10 kilometers each way. But then when I went out on my 10 mile home circuit yesterday, it felt so easy. The hills that had seemed like mountains to me before, I breezed up them, with an Armstrong-like pedalling cadence. I killed that ride. Possibly my last time, because we move next weekend, so I'm glad to have killed it at last.
+++
Update: I worked out at lunchtime that I live at around 40 metres above sea level (131 feet), and my weekend bike rides take me no more than 10 metres above that, so my feeling on the Plancher-Auxelles ride that I couldn't get enough air into my lungs was probably real. A bit.
posted by Anonymous at
Monday, August 02, 2004
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home