A few weeks ago I did a bike ride in the Sierras with Undiscovered Country Tours. It was three days of riding over high alpine passes. The scenery was breathtaking, and so was all the climbing! The owner of UDC, Terry Morse, is a frequent poster on road biking user groups, including bikeforums.net . He is an authority on climbing technique and I am really glad I found Terry and his company through the community. I highly recommend them.
I have a weird fetish for data, and that is currently being fed through my new Garmin Edge 305 GPS. I originally used a Polar CS200, but had I looked at the community before buying I would have some frustrating issues with the Polar. And a lot of very happy Garmin users.
Technology shouldn’t amaze to this extent but for some reason this little gizmo constantly has me saying “how the heck can it do all that”? Coupled with one of the best software packages available for analyzing ride data, Ascent (Mac only), you can enjoy both a hard ride and full post-ride immersion into a world of data.
Here is a comparison showing the effect of altitude acclimatization. Your body starts adjusting to altitude by producing more red blood cells starting after 12-18 hours at altitude. The PezCycling News blog just did a great post recapping a recent study on altitude adjustment. Here is data from the climb up Ebbets pass on Saturday:
And from Monitor pass from the next day:
My average heart rate dropped significantly from one day to the next as I acclimitized to the altitude. So when you go skiing, get up there a day or two before the rest of your group and you will be good to go! I also learned that all the other riders were similar data geeks!
Climbing Monitor Pass, and smiling only because someone was there to snap a photo!
