Recovery update

Making great progress on recovering here. Today (Friday), I put in my first really hard efforts following a flying Warren St John up several cat 3 climbs on a climbing version of the Ross Bridge loop. My shoulder has limited mobility and I can stand for longer stretches, but I still can’t torque on the handlebars enough to race … so unfortunately I won’t be able to try to defend my state criterium championship tomorrow at the races in Huntsville. I’ve got some great teammates though who are heading up there to try to keep the title in the Tria Cycling family! Here all the stats from the ride today via screenshots and links to the Strava website:

Annotated ride map – View on Strava – http://app.strava.com/rides/593226

And here is annotated topocreator version of the map:
Annotated topocreator map of the ride

Here are the Strava stats on each of the Cat 3 climbs:
Cat 3 – Caldwell to Vestavia Dr – View on Strava – caldwell-mill-vestavia-dr-634284
Cat 3 – Patton Chapel to Park Ave high pt – View on Strava – patton-chapel-to-park-ave-high-pt-655443
Cat 3 – Big Momma West Oxmoor Rd – View on Strava – big-momma-to-high-point-on-shades-633351

Fun climbing commute

Yesterday, I had to run by the bike shop to fix a problem with my shoe. Thanks Bob’s Bikes for the quick fix!!! Jonathan at Bob’s is the fastest Specialized tension knob replacer on the planet. On my way home, I climbed up and over 12 ridges both large and small. It was a fun meandering commute, but one that I have done a few times now. Thought I would share the TopoCreator map of the ride.

12 ridge commute topocreator map. Click for large version.

Speaking of TopoCreator, at the risk of sounding like I am “crying wolf” since I have been “almost ready” with the new site for the past 2 years, I really am getting close to going live with the site. A good sign of this is that I am currently working on user management issues. Previously, I was just basically focusing on features and not worrying about users. Now I am trying to make the site robust enough to scale to many users. Look for an update soon with a link to try out the new site!

Update 3/25/11
I had to update this with a couple more maps I made yesterday and today!

First, this is the route that took me up and over 500,000 feet of climbing for the year today. I took it pretty easy on all the climbs except the Woodridge climb. Everything else was pretty mellow because I am racing this weekend at Tour de Tuscaloosa. A note about the route, it only crosses itself twice – once on the out/back portion of the Woodridge descent / climb and then again on South Cove because when I did the descent the first time a pick-up truck was driving the speed limit on the descent so I went ahead and did the Renfroe climb so that I could try the descent again – 57mph!

This commute from Samford back to my house took me up and over the 500,000 ft mark for the year!

The second map shows a zoomed in view of my last 100 commutes, which includes both my commutes yesterday and all the commutes back to the beginning of February.
My last 100 commutes from the beginning of February 2011 until March 24, 2011.

This final screenshot shows my standings in the Strava KOM challenge contest. I was the first person to reach 400,000 and 500,000 feet!

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:

Climb	Distance	Climbing	Scanuppia	Max %
Double Oak Way	3.77 mi	883 ft	0.42mi	23.9 %
South Cove Dr	0.26 mi	229 ft	0.26mi	24.3 %
Hugh Daniel Brae Trail	1.97 mi	614 ft	0.26mi	19.4 %
Southcrest	0.56 mi	299 ft	0.22mi	24.5 %
Vesclub – Vestavia Dr	3.35 mi	793 ft	0.21mi	21.9 %
Woodcrest	1.91 mi	478 ft	0.18mi	21.4 %
Montclair (Trinity)	0.38 mi	212 ft	0.13mi	21.8 %
Hugh Daniel Greystone Crest	1.36 mi	371 ft	0.11mi	24.4 %

The Birmingham Monsters, addendum

When I was exploring the Birmingham Monsters on Wednesday, I knew that I didn’t really have time to go out and hit up my favorite monster in Birmingham – Double Oak Way. So today the opportunity came up to ride out that way and report on the stats of three more monsters and one more mini-monster in the Greater Birmingham area. This ride was on my commute home from work with a backback on so I would think you would have to consider these part of Birmingham if I can include them on my commute!

The Birmingham Monsters, southern edition, complete ride.

3D View of the Hugh Daniel – Brae Trail and Double Oak Way Monsters.

3D View of the Hugh Daniel – Greystone Crest and Double Oak Way Roller Coaster section.

Annotated topocreator map of the southern monsters. Click here to download a huge detailed version.

For the climb statistics, first, here are the Scanuppia Factors for the three new monsters…

Hugh Daniel Brae Trail -
0.26mi (0.06mi@19%, 0.06mi@17%, 0.14mi@17.8%)

Double Oak Way -
0.42mi (0.14mi@17.1%, 0.09mi@18.3%, 0.05mi@17.1%, 0.14mi@17%)

Hugh Daniel Greystone Crest -
0.11mi @ 17.1%

Hugh Daniel Brae Trail Monster – Stair stepper.

Double Oak Way Mega Monster – Roller coaster.

Hugh Daniel Greystone Crest Monster – Crazy steep at the top.

Laurel View Peak – My neighborhood mini-monster.

-------Double Oak Way from Mt Laurel-------
Dist:        3.77 mi (0:18:19)
Climbing:     883 ft
Energy:     281.2 kJ
Cals Burn:  268.9 kcal
Braking:    -12.5 kJ (-4.4%)
          Min   Avg    Max
Power       0  255.9   514  W
Gravity -1780  153.6   554  W
Speed     0.0   12.4  40.3  mi/h
Elev      775   1156  1496  ft
Slope   -14.2   3.64  23.9  %
Caden       0   70.5   107  rpm
HR        126  152.4   168  bpm
NP 288 W; IF 1.038; TSS 32.9

------Hugh Daniel (Brae Trail high pt) from 280-----
Dist:        1.97 mi (0:11:10)
Climbing:     614 ft
Energy:     181.8 kJ
Cals Burn:  173.8 kcal
Braking:     -6.2 kJ (-3.4%)
          Min   Avg    Max
Power       0  271.4   450  W
Gravity -1216  203.5   425  W
Speed     4.6   10.6  30.0  mi/h
Elev      578    880  1175  ft
Slope   -12.3   5.61  19.4  %
Caden      23   75.0    98  rpm
HR        133  154.5   169  bpm
NP 290 W; IF 1.045; TSS 20.3

--Hugh Daniel (Greystone Crest high pt) from Co Rd 41--
Dist:        1.36 mi (0:07:09)
Climbing:     371 ft
Energy:     108.6 kJ
Cals Burn:  103.8 kcal
Braking:      0.0 kJ (0.0%)
          Min   Avg    Max
Power      13  253.1   447  W
Gravity  -311  191.6   416  W
Speed     4.5   11.4  22.7  mi/h
Elev      808    953  1165  ft
Slope    -4.2   4.90  24.4  %
Caden      40   71.3    96  rpm
HR        130  149.1   165  bpm
NP 286 W; IF 1.031; TSS 12.7

---Laurel View Peak (from Rocky Ridge woods)---
Dist:        0.21 mi (0:01:45)
Climbing:     101 ft
Energy:      24.8 kJ
Cals Burn:   23.8 kcal
Braking:     -0.6 kJ (-2.3%)
          Min   Avg    Max
Power       0  236.6   482  W
Gravity   -65  161.1   412  W
Speed     0.0    7.2  12.1  mi/h
Elev      422    470   521  ft
Slope    -3.3   6.55  18.0  %
Caden       0   61.8   100  rpm
HR        128  146.4   156  bpm
NP 283 W; IF 1.022; TSS 3.0

And if you are interested in recreating this ride yourself, a couple notes – 280 during a Friday lunchtime rush hour isn’t too bad as long as you can keep a steady 35-45mph on the long downhills. The lights are timed for you to make most of them at about that speed and then catch up with your group of cars when they miss the light in front of you. Watch the people merging from I-459. I ended up traveling nearly the entire length of 280 with the same group of cars because traffic was heavy enough to be going relatively slow (i.e., a lot slower than 55-60mph!!!). I got dropped from the group on the way up to Meadowbrook, but caught them again at the light at the top of the hill.

10,000+ feet of climbing

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 800 – the ability to display your climbing rate (instantaneous and 30second average).

So how does one climb 10,000 feet in Birmingham? Here’s the maps and data! 10,000 feet of climbing in one ride – annotated with climb names and a line indicating all the descents approaching 50mph.

It’s Birmingham, so what would a ride be without a few greater than 20% gradients per the red iBike slope data above – 21% on Renfroe and Double Oak Way, 24.7% on the climb to Greystone Crest off of Hugh Daniel

10,000 feet of climbing in one mega-climbing loop! Click the map for the medium version. Or download the huge version to see all the residential road names.