Jacob Tubbs sent me a link yesterday to a climb near Trento, Italy called the Scanuppia – Malga Palazzo which averages 17% for nearly 5 miles with maximum pitches of close to 45%. Yesterday, I went out to find the steepest climbs in Birmingham for comparison purposes. I think we will call it the Scanuppia…
OK, so I’ve just finished up the most insane month of training ever. It has been a great month, though, and I’m very confident now that it is going to pay off with sustained fitness to carry through the racing season when the intensity goes up and the mileage (and climbing!) goes down. The key…
Today was awesome. I’m going to try to convey some of the ride highlights, but I think this post is going to be kinda long. First, as I was climbing up on top of Double Oak Mountain, a red-tailed hawk swooped down from a tree beside me and flew in front of me for a…
10000 feet of climbing in one ride – the garmin edge 800 cannot display 10,000 feet because it only can display 4 digits in any one column as shown in the red circle! As a side note, the yellow circle indicates what in my opinion is one of the best new features of the Garmin…
Today, I narrowly avoided a really bad accident more by luck than anything else unless there was some angels keeping me from low or high-siding the bike during the sideways skid to avoid a collision with a pick-up truck. Here’s the details and a caution / warning for a particularly bad intersection in the Hoover…
Great ride today – very cold though! I climbed up Double Oak Mountain to see if there was more snow and ice up near the top because of the elevation difference. I was surprised to find trees sagging under the weight of a lot of ice. I think we dodged a bullet here in Birmingham…
401 miles this week with 37,373 feet of climbing! I wasn’t sure if I was going to ride today with the winter storm warning, but the system wasn’t moving in until later in the day. So I rode 45 miles on the way to church with almost 6,000 feet of climbing. Then after church I…
We just got back to Alabama after traveling up to Wisconsin for Christmas and New Year’s. On the way back home, we stopped to visit Kristine’s grandmother in northern Indiana. During the trip, I got to ride in Wisconsin and Indiana. Then yesterday I did a 54 mile ride with over 6000 feet of climbing…
The weather forecast called for a cold rain pretty much all day today back here in Birmingham. But as I was working from home, I noticed a huge gap in the rain clouds on the radar. So I decided to go for the 60 mile climbing ride that I’ve been wanting to do after the…
The weather forecast for today included a winter weather advisory with really cold temps. We went to visit some friends about 30 miles away near Hayward, WI. I took my bike along to try to ride back to Shell Lake if the roads were clear enough. I mapped out a route that took me near…