Compare then to now.

The ride yesterday included a climb I knew I'd done a few times before. It felt like I was getting good pace for the effort, and I knew I'd given everything I had to get to the top on one of the previous ascents.

That's all it takes to motivate a bit of geeking out with sporttracks. Two previous runs up the same hill were found. Drilling in to the Pinehurst/Moraga intersection as the start and the stop sign limit line where Pinehurst meets Skyline as the finish allowed a direct comparison.

October 5, 2008 - 21:45
November 18, 2008 - 23:32
June 21, 2009 - 21:58

On the October ride I followed my friend John up and then sprinted to the top at the end for King of the Mountain honors. You can see from the graph that I spiked my heartrate up into Zone 5. That ride was the one time I've ever fallen over on this bike -- because I couldn't get my foot clicked out of the pedal while I was sucking wind at the top having just crossed the finish line.

Yesterday I hit the beginning of the climb and decided to keep spinning it up because I could hear the crunch of gravel from someone right behind me. If they were going, I was going. That turned out to be John again, and he dropped back near the end and I spun it in without any finish line kick.

The two graphs are both highlighting the same start/finish section from the two rides. Most noteworthy difference is the cadence. First time I tried to grind it up in as high a gear as I could hang onto. This time I spun lower gears trying to keep at 85-90 cadence, but eventually ran out of gears near the top where it gets steepest.

Before:



After:



And there would be less empirical fail if I a) remembered my heart rate strap on Sunday and b) had both graphs be over time, or distance, and not a mix of both.