Tasmania: hill repeats and Everesting

Weather apps

I’m all for objectivity but why is it that my weather app says 1˚ - feels like minus 2.7 ˚? Does it feel  that way if you are naked? Or if you have just got off a boat from Sri Lanka? Why doesn't it just say 1˚ but will freeze your backside off if you cycle down Elizabeth St at 7.30 am? Anyway, I did and it did. I've been wearing a 20-year old mountain bike jersey while I wait for a toasty new Assos jacket to arrive in the post and, believe me, it can’t come soon enough.

Joined the Coffee Crawlers on the Fish Shop ride. After half-an-hour it began to warm up and became the usual lovely ride along the Tamar in the weak winter morning sun: swans, ducks, early morning walkers – great! The ride was uneventful  and we ended up in Gloria Jeans as per usual for a coffee.

Hill repeats

White Hills from the top of the escarpment

So that being the warm up and it being a lovely day and nothing overly pressing happening at work, I continued on to White Hills for a set of hill repeats. The road up to White Hills rises 90 metres in 1.1 km at an average gradient of 8%, with sections up to 12%. I completed five reps at around 5:00 each, seated, 23 x 34, average cadence 69, average heart rate 151 for 450 metres of total ascent; six reps would have equaled the Col d’Eze, ten reps the Col du Vence from the promenade at Cagnes-sur-Mere and 19 reps the Col de la Madeleine. Despite this I felt quite good about the session until I returned home and read about Everesting.

Everesting

Everesting is climbing the equivalent of Everest’s 8,848 metres on your bike in a single ride. A woman has just done it by climbing Mt Buffalo eight times in eighteen hours for a total of 9,031 metres. Believe it or not, some guy did it last month by climbing Anderson Street on the Tan Track in Melbourne – wait for it – 328 times in 24 hours and six minutes. So that would be around 99 ascents of White Hills? – maybe next year.

Days total: 102km, 1,248 m climb and 3:58 riding time.

Wine

A cold evening so back to the Barossa for a 2008 Schild Estate Shiraz. Schild Estate is a family-owned company and make age-worthy wines of excellent value. This one cost me the grand sum of $13 four years ago: sweet blackberry fruit, integrated tannins and long finish. Not in any way over-ripe or flabby.