One last monster and a summary of all eight

On my way to the BBL this morning, I had just enough time to head up one last monster – Vesclub to Vestavia Dr. This is also very close to my house with the start of it less than two miles away. My apologies to the BBL folks as I was running about 5 minutes late because of the additional climb on the way over.

The final monster – Vesclub from Little Shades Creek to the Vestavia Dr high point. Click the picture for the medium version or click here to down the huge version. Note on the map how the climb starts in the “blue” lower elevation and goes all the way up to the highest point on the map!

3D view of the Vesclub – Vestavia Dr Monster.

This stair-stepper climb has five or six major sections depending on how you divide it up. You start out and climb from Little Shades Creek onto Rocky Ridge Rd followed by a flat to gently rising gradient to the Tanglewood entrance. Turn left into Tanglewood and the first steep step is immediately in front of you. Take this step and then turn right at the next stop sign to continue climbing steeply up and around the bend. Then you’ll go through a 3-way stop down a short steep hill before hitting the first wall climbing 150ft in less than 0.2 miles! At the top turn right to get a “breather” as the climb continues at close to 10% avg gradient. Then you get a real breather where you can enjoy the view to your right looking across Dolly Ridge towards Meadowbrook, Hugh Daniel, and the top of Double Oak Way just peeking out from behind Hugh Daniel. Enjoy the view because the steepest part of the climb is coming up fast – 0.12 mi @ 17.2% with overall average gradient of maybe 15% for 0.3 miles. At the top, turn right at the stop sign to head straight on over to Vestavia Dr where you climb the last quarter mile at an average gradient of 6.5% all the way to the top where you are rewarded with a great view of Red Mountain, Homewood, and the entire Shades Valley.

First statistic – the Scanuppia Factor (length of climb with avg gradient > 17%)
0.21 mi split into two segments (0.09 mi @ 18.2%, 0.12 mi @ 17.2%)

---- Vesclub - Vestavia Dr ----
Dist:        3.35 mi (0:14:56)
Climbing:     793 ft
Energy:     248.1 kJ
Cals Burn:  237.2 kcal
Braking:     -1.9 kJ (-0.8%)
          Min   Avg    Max
Power       0  276.9   504  W
Gravity  -784  198.7   513  W
Speed     3.1   13.5  29.0  mi/h
Wind      9.9   13.0  24.3  mi/h
Elev      414    761  1187  ft
Slope    -7.9   4.31  21.9  %
Caden       9   79.9   106  rpm
HR        137  162.7   178  bpm
NP 301 W; IF 1.084; TSS 29.3

iBike data – check out the wildly swinging gradients.

And finally, here is the summary of all eight monsters sorted by Scanuppia Factor: