Three consecutive days of hard rides had cooked my legs, so yesterday called for an easy ride. On Bainbridge Island, any ride over a couple miles long is going to include hills, but I claim it’s possible to ride easily up just about any hill; it’s just a matter of how slow you need to ride.
To test my claim, I selected Baker Hill, one of the longer climbs on the island with a 10% grade. My litmus test for easy means riding while breathing only through my nose, which corresponds roughly to riding in heart rate zone 2. (I don’t wear a heart rate monitor.)
Strava reports that I climbed the west side of Baker Hill at an average speed of 3.2 miles per hour. That’s excruciatingly slow on a bike, about the same speed one could walk up the hill, but I had little difficulty riding at that speed and breathing only through my nose.
I have long claimed the primary challenge climbing any hill is mental. With the proper attitude, setting reasonable expectations, anyone should be able to climb any hill. The problem we often face is surrendering to expectations that we should be going faster, and when we try to do that we blow up and fail. Of course this is not just about cycling.
Full disclosure, there’s another hill on the south end of the island named Toe Jam Hill. It’s shorter than Baker Hill Road, but steeper, with a 23% grade at the start of the climb. I’ve tried riding easy up Toe Jam twice, and failed both times. The first time I almost crashed, when my front wheel lifted off the road.
