Words that scare me include: hill repeats, very steep grades and riding in the rain.

I did all three today.

Gibson is one of my favorite hills. It climbs just over 900 feet in three and three quarters miles. But what make this hill great is that the grade is always changing. You find very steep sections, some not so steep sections, a short flat and every a couple of short descents. This hill never gives you a chance to find and then stay in a rhythm. That is what makes it such a good training hill.

The back side of Orchard Heights is shorter, steeper and meaner. You climb 600 feet in 1.6 miles and suffer up grades in excess of 20 percent. This hill reaches into your gut, grabs hold and makes you scream in pain. I like it.

Today, I did a loop that goes up Gibson, down Orchard Heights and then does a short flatish loop before returning and climbing Orchard Heights. You then descend Orchard Heights to make a loop with Gibson. The loop is 20 miles long and right at 2,000 feet of elevation gain. I finished three loops for a total of 58.72 miles and 6,212 feet of elevation gain.

My ride plan for the day was a modified stairstep. I would ride the first loop at a medium effort, the second loop at a hard effort and the last loop very easy. I manage to follow the plan, mostly. The table below show my results for each of the climbs. You can see that I did hit the second Gibson climb hard, so hard that I had nothing left for the return climb up Orchard Heights.

Loop	Time	Avg Heart Rate	Avg Speed
Gibson	28:12	136	8.1
Orchard Heights	16:45	137	5.7
Gibson	25:57	149	8.7
Orchard Heights	17:53	138	5.3
Gibson	33:40	132	6.7
Orchard Heights	19:00	134	5.0

Weather

It was raining when I started and it rained throughout the ride. As I neared the ridge line on my first climb up Gibson, I could see the communications towers. But as the day wore on, the clouds lowered. The ridge line was clouded over on my second time up and I was riding within the clouds on my third and last climb up.

In addition, the wind picked up in the afternoon. There was no wind in the morning, but a strong south wind started blowing in the afternoon. In the few open areas on the climbs, the wind would push my bicycle giving me an opportunity to experiment with positions on the bike that would produce the most stability. My conclusion is the best position is with my foot down and weighted on the side of the bike that the wind was coming from.

Calories

During the five hour ride, I consumed three 24 oz bottles of a mixture of Perpetuem and Heed and two Chocolate Mint Cookie Crunch Balance Bars for a total of 1,120 calories – roughly 225 calories an hour. This felt find, but it seems a bit low. I think I will try to slowly increase my per hour calorie consumption to 300 per hour.