Solvang Biking - Day 5

Today we climbed into the mountains. While I only rode 49 miles, I climbed 6880’. When talking with my cycling friends, we will often refer to the climbing on a ride in feet of elevation gained per mile. 30’ and below is a flat ride. The range of 30’ - 70’ covers hilly rides. Rides with 70’ to 100’ have a lot of climbing. Anything over 100’ per mile is extremely tough. This ride came in at 141’ per mile. Almost all of this ride was either climbing or descending.

We started the day by driving about 30 minutes south of Solvang. Here we are at a park, getting ourselves ready for the day, putting bike computers on, making sure our water bottles are full, etc.

We began our ride with a short uphill, followed by this small descent. At the bottom, we started a 9 mile climb up the mountains in front of us.

Here is a photo of me at the top of that first climb. As you can see, the views along the spine of the mountain range were fabulous.

Off in the distance, Santa Barbara and the Pacific Ocean were visible.

After the big climb, we cycled about 15 miles out along the spine of the mountains going up and down with the terrain. Our route was an out-and-back, so coming back, all of our descents were climbs and our climbs became descents.

Eventually, I made it back to the initial climb which was now a wonderful 9 mile descent to the valley where we had started the ride. Here is a photo I took shortly before starting down the mountains.

Despite the weather being extremely hot this week, the cycling was lovely. My body is now quite tired, but that was one of the main objectives for this week. I want to start working myself back into better shape for my Paris to Istanbul bicycling trip this summer.