Either Heat or Fitness or Umunhum Did Me In

I’ve done Mt. Umunhum a number of times since the road had been been opened up to the top. However, this summer for some reason, I’ve had issues making it all the way to the top. The last few times was because I waited too long and by the time I started Umunhum, it was 12 noon, and it was already in the mid-90s. Since all these times, I was riding solo, I had the easy option of turning around.

This time, my friend Amanda, from ACTC, was co-leading the ride up Umunhum. So this would give me more motivation to finish it, knowing there is a group, and I didn’t want to let them down, but it was hard.

We first started with some warm up hills, Harwood (as if we didn’t have enough climbing to do). These were steep short pitches … Steep meaning 20+ %. While climbing, my immediate thought was, “I need to upgrade to a 12-30 or 12-32”.

It was cool, we stopped for 3 group pictures. Awesome way to keep everyone together.

This was in the middle of a residential street, so we had to make several attempts, and that was hilarious.

Earlier in the day Amanda made a comment that I looked slimmer. At that point, that seemed like a surprise, and maybe a curse?

I maybe it up Hicks fine (I wasn’t the last one), and yes, another group shot (but hopefully we won’t be baking too much making this shot).

On our climb up, I didn’t realize what little I had in the tank, as I quickly took my place in the back.

I didn’t bother to check what the temperature was, but I know I was suffering. I get past Bald Mountain, and after that, it just felt like the heat just ramped it up. I felt so weak, I couldn’t turn the crank. Since this so wide open, the shade was very few and far between. I ended up stopping 3 times, and each time was not just stopping … I ended up walking for a number of paces. I was so tempted to turn around, but I had to continue, with 10+ people waiting for me, and to take that group shot at the top.

Finally made it to the top, and was grateful for all the times this group re-grouped. It was awesome.

I’ve been in heat many times on other tough climbs, but never suffered like this. Maybe I need to upgrade my gearing? I did notice some others had lower gearing. Maybe I should have brought my triple and my Seven? Oh well, at least I made it once this summer.

Summer Fitness Competition at Work

In an effort to build morale, companies will organize some friendly competition between different groups of teams.  They count number of steps, and they even included an option to convert cycling miles into steps.  That’s cool … with all the miles that I do, that should be good for us.

Recording miles was a bit of a challenge though.  I have a fitbit, and it is able to calculate steps when I ride, but I have no idea how it calculates this.  The organized competition does have a direct calculation … cycling step = (miles/3)*2000.  When I compare the number of steps on fitbit, to the calculcation, the fitbit step is way off … by about 1000 to 2000 steps.  Damn, so I had to take the graph that fitbit has, and subtract the number of steps based on the time I used for my ride.  Yeah, that was a pain to do.

I eventually was able to get my steps calculated, and I ended up with the highest step count on the team.  However, there were other teams that blew everyone else away.  My largest amount was 51,000 steps, due to a 71 mile ride I did.  However, there were a couple of guys who had 90,000 and 70,000 step day.  I later found out these team had two members who were doing marathon runs every day.  WTH?  That’s just unfair.

Oh well … it did promote camaraderie, and team bonding, which is good.  Hopefully, it also encouraged others to be a little more healthy, or at least physically active.