Pumpkin Ridge Redux...

During today's group ride, we made a trip up Pumpkin Ridge...as I've written about many times being my "Baseline Climb".

Today I had many carrots to chase...Mitch being one of them (probably the best climber on the team)...the others were club members that made it to the climb before we did since we took a longer route to get to the climb.

Since I was on my new bike I wanted to give it a good workout today...even though it was wet and got dirty (ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!).

The trip to the climb was actually pretty hard. We were holding a good pace averaging 21.5 mph on some fairly flat roads, but we had many sections where we were rolling along at 24+ mph....so I wasn't exactly fresh going into the climb, though my legs felt pretty good.

Once we started the climb Mitch and I immediately dropped the other two in our group and hammered the climb. The first 2/3 of the climb I felt like I was holding Mitch's wheel well and we were rotating up the hill trying to get a little draft along the way, but I started to fade a little about 15 minutes into the climb as he put a small gap on me.

Looking back he saw I was off his wheel so he slowed until I caught back up to him and kept pushing me all the way up the climb. I'm doubting he was hurting much considering he's 155 pounds and I'm 190, but it was good to be there with him.

The whole way up the climb we were flying by other club members on the road...and getting some angry honks by passing cars (such is life when your riding a bicycle on the road).

At the top I pushed it to the end and set a new Personal Record for time up the climb. We climbed it in 22:10 (21 second faster than I've ever climbed it before) with an average wattage of 384 watts for the entire climb.

I must say the new frame fits very well and I'm glad I decided to get a new custom frame that would fit my body much better with no compromises when it comes to fit. It's definitely stiff...stiffer than my old Velo Vie, but some 25c tires and a few less PSI in the tires will take care of the ride. However, the bottom bracket area has to be the stiffest I've ever ridden on a bike. Also having more room on the front of the bike makes climbing more comfortable because I can use more positions than I could before.

Once side benefit of the new frame...I can ride with no hands if I need to and not have the bike feel really squirrelly. I've not been able to do this for quite some time.

Anyway...A great ride today (66.72 miles and just under 3.5 hours) with some great teammates and a new PR...which means I just have another number to chase after :)