New hill: Zoo hill!

I've been so busy the last few days! I'm now in Germany (Munich) for a business trip, which is interesting and I'll write about that later, but right now I want to talk about conquering my nemesis.

The Zoo Hill is commonly known as the biggest climb around here. Read the description on BicycleClimbs.com for more details.

I had to ride really early Saturday morning - 6 a.m. - so I could get a couple of hours in before my flight to Germany. Amazingly, I had four people join me - Danielle, Matthew, Liz, and a new guy Thom. Thom has done Zoo Hill a bunch - so when we got to that part of our ride, I said we had four choices of the hill to climb to get back home.

1) Lakemont - 2 miles long, the easiest of the four
2) Somerset - the one we did three weeks ago that was 500 feet of gain over 1 mile
3) Montreux - the one Danielle and I did two weeks ago, 700 feet of gain over 1.2 miles
4) Zoo Hill

Because it was a dry, sunny morning, we voted...and opted for Zoo Hill, since Danielle, Liz and I have never done it.

I immediately got butterflies in my stomach. I was nervous mostly because I didn't know how steep for how long - I hadn't studied the map and grades or driven it, so I didn't know what to expect.

Thom told us it was steepest at the bottom, and once we got to the water tower, we were home free. He also told me that he'd been watching how I climb hills, and said I go out too fast and lose power before I reach the top. He suggested I slow down in the beginning, so I figured I'd try that.

Well, it is definitely extremely steep at the bottom. But the thing about this hill is, it actually levels out periodically - not completely flat and certainly not downhill, but level enough that I could recover a little before the next steep part.

A lot of it was just 6 mph climbing - tough to turn the pedals, but do-able - broken up by really steep, short sections where I could barely hold 4.2 mph, and a few sections where I could go to up 9 or 10 and recover a little. The very top has two more steep sections - but since Matthew and Thom were ahead, I could push a little harder knowing I was done.

Sort of. The road continues down, but to the top of the mountain, you have to turn left and continue to the end of a dead-end road.

Happily for me, that part wasn't too steep. But it was longer than I thought it would be - Thom had said 250 yards or so, but it was quite a bit more than that.

In all, I'd have to say Zoo Hill is easier than certain other hills around here - most notably Montreux and Somerset. Yeah, it's longer, and some sections are very, very steep, but it's less consistent than those other hills and therefore offers recovery. And man, just a minute of easy spinning makes a huge difference in my energy and ability to climb.

So I was on a humongous high for the rest of the ride - and most of the day, too. It was awesome!

Now there are a few more hills in Issaquah that I've got to get under my belt...but since I did the Zoo Hill, I can do any of them.