I am not sure how many times I have climbed Metcalf on a bike, maybe close to a 100 times by now. Ann has heard me talk a lot about those rides, including the time when I was challenged by some guy in the bike club (but I beat him up by a few minutes). I have kept my time climbing that hill many times. I figured Ann was ready to tackle the hill because she is climbing so well, but figured it would be best to go up together on the tandem the first time. I was also curious how fast we could climb since tandems seem to have a big disadvantage when it comes to climbing.

We drove up to the bike trail head in Morgan Hill this morning and started from there. When we made it to Metcalf I started my stop watch at the marked line and we started up the hill faster than I expected. I was working hard but Ann must have also really kicked it into gear. Hers is our split times.

So we ended up with a time of 17:05, which I feel is a fast time. Many of the people that do the weekly Metcalf Mauler club ride don’t do it in as fast a time as that. My average heart rate was 161. As a comparision, here is the split for my climb this week on Tuesday on a single bike.

Although this was not a PR for the year, it was much faster than I usually do. To get the 13:35 time, I had to take my average heart rate up to 167. So the climb today on the tandem was at a lower average heart rate, making the time of 17:05 very good. We could probably have done it under 17 minutes if I had taken my average heart rate to the same as I did last Tuesday.

Here is the profile during the Metcalf climb portion of the ride.

Since the x-axis is time, instead of distance, the straight line for the elevation shows we were holding a constant climb rate in feet/minute. You can see my heart rate went into the red zone during most all of the climb. We don’t have the curve for Ann, but I am sure she was pushing her heart rate also.

We then went down the backside of Metcalf to San Felipe, then to Farnsworth. I then took Ann over to Hassler for another climb, then back on Heleyer Avenue. We rode through a new housing development, then the bike trail back to the car for a total of 37.4 miles. Our maximum speed on the ride was 37 mph, I think the fastest Ann has been on a bike. It was another fun tandem ride.

Categories: Cycling
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