40kms of rolling terrain....

Arranged with our neighbour a while ago to go cycling together, and have been threatening for a while to arrange something. Finally yesterday we went out - and we're a good match for one another. He's pretty strong on the flats and downhills compared to me, and definitely much much fitter (windsurfs a *lot*, cycles on avg 10000km per year although this year has been slow, etc..). Being 20kg lighter (and 20 years younger), I'm quite a bit faster on the hills - but he kept his heart rate below 150 the whole time [I should mention at this point that he has a triple chainwheel], whereas mine was - as usual - hovering around the 170-180 mark on the hills (granted, I was going about 50% faster than him on the uphills). I really need to work on my fitness.

So, thanks to my trusty Polar Heart Rate Monitor which is also my cycling computer, I have nice stats about altitude, speed, cadence (pedal rpm), etc...

Our route took us from home (Binz is *just* above Zumikon on the top-left of the map linked here) through Zumikon, and parallel to the highway heading east towards Egg. Just after Egg we turned southwards, and over the Zollikerberg down towards the Zurich lake, joining it somewhere between Obermeilen and Männedorf. Then head north-west along the lake to Meilen, and back up the hill to Egg, and track back to home. 40km in all, with around 600m of climbing (I started my clock a little way into the ride because I was fiddling with my wireless chest strap for heart rate pickup).

Here's a PDF ouput of the ride, all nicely graphed

As you can see, I'm not the fittest cat on the block, but I can "comfortably" maintain 180bpm for quite a while going uphill so I suspect my lactate threshhold is at least at a decent level compared to my heartrate. A couple of these rides a week and I'd have no trouble with it at all, and could probably increase my pace considerably.

As Greg LeMond said: "(It) doesn't get easier. You just get faster".
True words.