Hilly Ride and Minor Setback

Monday morning's hilly ride in Dandenongs was great, very cold but a lot of fun.

With the temperature hovering around 5 degrees Celsius, we headed down Burwood Hwy to Belgrave and then followed the Puffing Billy Fun Run route up to Emerald. Elaine has raced Puffing Billy (fun run where you race the train) three times, but each time I have caught the train to Emerald. She always mentioned that it is quite hilly, but I never really appreciated this until riding up these hills on my bike.

From Emerald we followed a downhill winding road to Monbulk. It was an extremely foggy morning. Being high up in the Dandenongs we were often above the low lying cloud cover, but would ride back through the thick fog on the descents. The road between Monbulk and Olinda is usually referred to in cycling circles as (cue dramatic music) 'The Wall'. Up til this point we have ridden up several category 3 and 4 climbs, but 'The Wall' is a category 2 climb - steeper and longer.

Through the smaller category 3 and 4 climbs everything felt good. Well actually my face and fingers were often numb due to the cold (my Garmin bike computer recorded the temperature for most of the ride as 1 degree), but my knee and back injuries were giving no signs of problems. However (you knew that was coming), during the steep sections of 'The Wall' I was unable to maintain a fast cadence. This can result in extra pressure through the knees as more force is being applied to each pedal stroke. When the hill gets very steep, you often rock and twist your whole body trying to extract extra force to help get the pedal turned over. Not surprisingly this extra effort irritated both my knee and back injuries.

The sore back slowly improved throughout the day and was barely noticeable when we swam Tuesday morning - an even colder morning (4 degrees) on which we swam in an outdoor pool. My knee did not get as sore as my back, but is taking longer to feel better. I didn't run on Tuesday as planned and will see how it is feeling before deciding whether to run or not on Thursday.

I think the hilly ride itself was OK, my only problem was climbing the steep sections of 'The Wall' when I was unable to maintain a good pedalling cadence. So assuming the back and knee recover well, I'll keep doing hill work, but just avoid the overly steep climbs like Arthurs Seat and 'The Wall'.

I've started uploading my training data to a training website called Strava. Below is a quick snapshot of my ride: