Finally, a few pics
26 July 2007
Last week, I mentioned I would post some pictures of my bike ride on Mt Gretna with the kids. In the end, I only found a few that I wanted to post.
Last week, I mentioned I would post some pictures of my bike ride on Mt Gretna with the kids. In the end, I only found a few that I wanted to post.
After complaining about it a little calorie calculators, I have some empirical evidence to back me up. I loaded this spreadsheet up in Google Spreadsheets and put in some approximate numbers. It confirms what I’m thinking: all those calculators assume you’re covering flat land. But add in a 9% grade and the energy used changes dramatically. Now, I realized I’m not going to be hitting a 9% grade consistently. I’d die. But at least I can see that I am going to be burning a lot more calories than what the calculators are telling me.
Yesterday, I didn’t ride. My excuse was I had a flat and was so into work that I didn’t get to the shop to get a new tube (I had already patched the tube). Today, instead of going for distance, I decided to try some hills. I didn’t have a lot of time (only 45min) and I wore myself out pretty quickly. Nevertheless, I managed to do 3 reps on a 9% grade (120ft climb/0.25miles). Plus another ~9% grade to get home. I may start alternating climbing days with distance days. Till now, I’ve only really focused on distance, but perhaps that is a throwback from living in the relatively flat southern Louisiana. So, tomorrow would be a distance day.