Saturday Hill Ride

After a walk to downtown and back (which sometimes seems more taxing than a bike ride), I went out for an hour's worth of exercise on the (now dry) slopes of Seattle. Luckily I'm situated on Capitol Hill, one of Seattle's finest peaks - in fact only 20 or so blocks away from the steepest street in the city, E. Roy St at 26th Ave. (source)

Here's the Ciocc, now with Open Pro rims instead of the Ksyrium SLs. The Ksyriums were decent, but having to worry about breaking some proprietary spoke (that requires a wacky spoke wrench to fix) was never a good feeling.

The Powertap Pro+:

On the way down to Lake Washington (I headed to Leschi for a warmup), I saw none other than SIR's very own Jan Heine (I think), doing what looked like a pretty fast interval on a bike with fat tires & fenders, about to dive down that section of Lake Wa Blvd through the Arboretum. I'm sure he's gearing up for that next 7 hour 200k.

What you're looking at is E. Roy Street facing west - I like how it ramps up by about 5-7% each block. The first section is maybe 8%, then it goes to 13% or so. And then, 20%+.

And after two blocks you're here, at the (supposedly) steepest section of paved road in Seattle city limits. WKO+ was saying some sections of this were 23.5%, and I can believe it. Doing this seated, on a 39x25 gear was kind tough. But it was a great way to pump out about 400+ watts for 30 seconds:

After doing Roy once (all the way up to the cobbles), I turned around at the top and went down for a second dose. Going down a 20%+ grade is almost just as interesting as going up.. luckily these are low-traffic streets, but you always wonder when your brakes will give out.. just don't brake too hard, and dont' lean too far forward!

After two repeats of Roy street, I took a right on 23rd Ave and shot down the hill, passing cars at 30 mph - could have sworn I used to hit 35+ on that downhill.. oh well.

Power Stats

For the climb up 10th Ave from Roanoak up to Cap Hill - you can zoom in on certain parts of the ride, and get detailed info on it. For instance, I always thought that hill was steeper than 5%!


Duration: 3:46
Work: 64 kJ
TSS: 7.3 (intensity factor 1.081)
Norm Power: n/a
VI: n/a
Pw:HR: n/a
Pa:HR: n/a
Distance: 0.746 mi
Elevation Gain: 203 ft
Elevation Loss: 8 ft
Grade: 5.0 % (196 ft)
Min Max Avg
Power: 153 605 282 watts
Cadence: 40 83 65 rpm
Speed: 2.4 17.9 11.9 mph
Pace 3:21 24:46 5:04 min/mi
Altitude: 138 333 249 ft
Crank Torque: 174 763 368 lb-in



Entire workout (196 watts):
Duration: 52:57
Work: 656 kJ
TSS: 81.8 (intensity factor 0.963)
Norm Power: 261
VI: 1.26
Pw:HR: n/a
Pa:HR: n/a
Distance: 11.251 mi
Elevation Gain: 1508 ft
Elevation Loss: 1516 ft
Grade: -0.0 % (-8 ft)
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 802 206 watts
Cadence: 15 110 64 rpm
Speed: 0 56.4 13.9 mph
Pace 1:04 0:00 4:18 min/mi
Altitude: 16 405 156 ft
Crank Torque: 0 1744 289 lb-in


Tomorrow, I'll head out for some interavals.. should be interesting.