Quote Originally Posted by sara View Post
Unfortunately there is really no place I can ride that would just be an easy spin. Even my short 10-11 mile loop has about 850 ft. of climbing.
I have a lot of climbing here, too. The first thing I do when I turn off my street is go up hill, but I don't know how it compares to your . For my 12 mile standard ride, which I would typically do for a recovery, I start out at a 3% grade, which becomes 7.8% for a bit. Total climbing for that ride is about 600 feet. I used to think that it was impossible to go up that incline at a "recovery" pace. It just seemed that no matter what gear I was in, I'd be "working it", so might as well push harder and get it over with. However, I have learned that I can put it in a really easy gear, push fairly minimally and simply go really, really slow up that incline! But if the incline is a lot steeper, I don't know if that would still work for a recovery ride. Do you know what your incline percentage is?

I too am happy to meet someone with a similar ability. How fast do you ride? My "fast" ride today was 12 miles, with those inclines at 15.5 mph average. My last "long" ride was 25 miles and was a 14.9 average. I'm really motivated to get my speed up. I'm the slowest cyclist I personally know! I'm riding with a friend next week, who is a stronger rider. We've mostly only ridden tandem with our Dh's together. The only time we rode singles together was a short group ride where I was bringing up the rear and really working it, while she said it was a fairly easy ride for her! However, that was only my 2nd time out on my single and I know I'm already stronger since then, so I'm really curious how we'll do together. I'm sure she'll push me to do more than I normally would. She's already suggesting a really difficult ride. A 27 mile ride with a SERIOUS climb. I just did it for the first time on the tandem and can't even imagine doing it on my single yet ... but I'm actually thinking about going for it. We'll see!