Hot, bothered, happy

I hadn't been up Willunga Hill since I went down to Encounter Bay in early January so I thought I'd give it a another bash this morning. I took off just after 7am and headed up the Veloway. It was getting warm even then so it was pretty clear it was going to develop into a bit of a stinker of a day.

After a quick refreshment stop at Willunga and I headed up the hill. My best time is 21:08 up there and I was confident I could take a minute or so off it. When I reached the 1st km mark in around 7:30 I thought I was onto a good thing (considering the first km is the hardest). In the end I did it in 17:37 taking a huge 3 1/2 minutes off my best, which is far and away the biggest improvement I've ever had on a climb. I reckon I could have pushed a bit harder over the final third so I think I could get into the 16's. I'm pretty damn happy about that.

What goes up must, naturally enough, come down, so I decided to do the Penney's Hill Road descent for the first time in ages. It's a magnificent bit of road and I managed to do it in a tick over four minutes, which is my best effort there too.

The pines on the way to MV - always a haven on a hot day

Now all those personal bests are all well and good but by the time I'd worked my way back to the south end of the Veloway and stopped for a break in the tunnel, it was getting pretty damn hot and I was starting to feel pretty damn bothered. Up to that point I'd set a reasonably brisk pace but the trip home from there was fairly slow. The last half hour was particularly hard work and it became a struggle to go the distance. I clearly wasn't the only one feeling the heat - I passed a couple of groups stopped in the shade on the Veloway with a few people looking distinctly worse for wear. It was around 35 degrees at this stage (late morning) and quite humid with north winds so it was no surprise that my core temperature went up a bit. I jumped straight into a long cold shower with my gear on when I got home but it was still a good half hour before I stopped sweating.

The ride was 92km with 1200m of climbing and I was out for a bit under five hours which, in those conditions, is about my limit. Overall though, it seems that all the extra km's I've been doing over the past two or three months are starting to pay off. I feel stronger on the bike, I spend a lot more time on the big chainring (albeit a 50 tooth compact), I can push for longer out of the saddle on a climb and haven't cramped up for ages.