So it was our lovely Saturday group ride today; a 4 hour bike ride on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) which is actually a really lovely ride. Seeing the ocean and the waves and surfers is just a wonderful inspiration of nature and it's effects it has on people like me that choose to explore it through means of running, hiking, biking, kayaking etc...
We got a chance to climb one of the famous hills of San Diego....Torrey Pines hill climb. There are 2 ways up, the short and steep road or the less steep but longer way up. Today we chose the less steep route. It looks like this picture below.
It was fun to climb it. I was slow of course at a wonderful average of 7 mph...yes that's right. One of our groupers, Steve, is great at hills. He decided to visit the restroom while we started the hill and then came up to chase us and caught every single one. Nice! Something to look forward to gaining mad skills on in the future.
At the top, our coach and fearless leader says "if you got this hill then Wildflower is no problem". I'm definitely nervous about doing the Half Ironman distance at Wildflower because every time I mention it to someone they go "woah, that is a HARD course". Even the wildflower website says "The course is 56 miles long and is considered relatively difficult".
A confidence crushing for a newbie! So I'm looking to get lots of hill experience in until April.
There is a big hill in Wildflower towards the back end of the bike as well. So I pulled the elevation charts from today's ride and from Wildflower for a comparison.
PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) - Torrey Pines Hill at Mile 40
Wildflower Long Bike Course - Big Hill at Mile 40
Hmmm...there is a difference here to what Coach Julie said....the PCH had a 450 ft elevation over 2 miles and Wildflower has a 1000 elevation over 5 miles. There's a little difference there...
More hill training coming up!
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