hack

Sweet ... Tomorrow, time is tbd. A buddy of mine that I haven't seen in a decade plus will be back in town and he's doing some ungodly number of ascents out there. Might head out and join him for a couple. May put a sting in the legs for Oakland, but whatevs.

hack

Ill probably arrive @11. He'll be there all day.

aaronmcd

Tomorrow is Tour de fat! New Belgium bike/beer festival in SF. Always the best time; fun ride at 11, music, shows, beer, and dancing into the late afternoon! Runs right through 4:20 pm as well...

hack

Found OLH. Did 4 conversational paced ascents with a buddy that was doing 23 climbs of it today. Scenic, but surprised by the amount of vehicular traffic.

save10

23 climbs?

Blackdays

Did OLH a few weeks back - was a bit of a wake up call after a few weeks of lounging around the Presidio/doing Hawk Hill.

23 times is insane though - what was the motivation there?

hack

He was doing some kind of Everest challenge/climb.

save10

OT - the steelers torched my hapless 49ers which i'm sure you are quite aware. though not getting within 4 feet of Big Ben ever doesnt help

furiousferret

Although bad for linemen, not getting within 4 feet of Big Ben is good advice for for females.

Ygduf

I don't know what's worse, climbing OLH 23 times or descending it.

I'd much rather climb it 23x, to be honest.

who was it, strava link, and did he succeed?

save10

zing

mattm

The real question is can one really ever succeed when "everesting"?

Not to bust on hack's buddy too much.. that doesn't sound easy. I've done OLH about 3 times and I don't have a need to do it much more.

hack

Agreed on the descent. I was just rolling carbon clinchers and was a bit concerned with potential over heating of the rims. Never had to brake that much on a descent (windy, cars, bikes all over).

The effort was successful though:

Bike Ride Profile | Everesting Old La Honda near Woodside | Times and Records | Strava

TheKillerPenguin

Jesus

Ygduf

nobody descends that road. too much traffic from bikes going up it, so anytime one of the locals has to drive up it they are guaranteed to be on the wrong side of the 1.5-lane road anyway. Man 15 hours. I did doubles with 20k+ elevation and that was bad enough.

UmneyDurak

Yep. Descending that road is the suck. If one must use it for clmibing, just continue up Skyline to 84, take that down, at the bottom take a side road on the right, follow it turning right, and it will bring you back to OLH.

Have been off the bike for last 5 weeks. Yeah....

Ygduf

"if one must" ? some sort of climbing elitist? OLH is the best.

hack

I can't say I see the point in it and couldn't ever see myself wanting to try it. I did 4 ascents with him and that was plenty for me. Although, it was a bit monotonous and we were going at conversational pace, so it wasn't "hard", but again, I only did 4.

Super dedicated and driven guy with a strong cycling pedigree; nat'l track champ and rode for the US team in Colorado in the 90s. A big crash, huge jump in training, and the "performance enhancement" scene turned him off. After college, did ultra running and later on triathlon and now sounds like maybe contemplating racing bikes on the track again (renewed USAC license for first time since 2001 and got to keep his cat 1). It was cool riding with him since I hadn't seen him in 15+ years and way back then I thought bikes were dumb.

edit: since I'm new to the whole cycling thing, racing in particular, it's cool to pick his brain and hear about the racing back then and look at some of the guys he was racing against as a Jr.

hack

part of the whole everesting thing is that one must do the same route down as they go up, no loops

UmneyDurak

Ah. I would do kings then. The descent is less suicidal.

UmneyDurak

Contemplating whether to race next year or not. Maybe give supermoto racing a shot, and concentrate more on climbing.

hack

why not race climby races? University, Copperopolis, Challenge, hill climbs (New Years, Mt Tam, Fremont, Diablo, etc), and so on.

Ygduf

if you can compete in climby races, you can compete in any race. Unless you're exceptionally tiny.

globecanvas

Why?

UmneyDurak

Because I get dropped on first or second lap? I don't really see the point. I enjoy climby races even less then I do crits.

I can barely compete in none climby races. It took me what 7-8 years to make it to CAT3 with putting in 12-14 hours a week in training? That is kind of pathetic and tells volumes about my ability.