Vertical K in a Day – BionicOldGuy

Since yesterday was scheduled to be a longer ride, and I’m running out of days to meet the Strava climbing challenge, I decided to try for 1000 m of climbing in a day. Mountain runners call this a “vertical K”. I chose the biggest climb in our area, up to Henry Coe state Park, about 16 miles of climbing out East Dunne Ave. The last time I did this on a recumbent was probably over 30 years ago. I had no electric assist for that one, and climbing the last steep stretch known as “the wall” required pulling up on my clipped-in shoes on the pedals. I made it, but ended up with a bad shin overuse injury that took a couple of years to go away. I was hoping to avoid that this time: No clipped-in shoes but electric assist would. I made it just about to “the wall” but was running low on battery. I had to leave enough in reserve to kept home because there was still some climbing on the way back.

So I came up short of Henry Coe, but threw in some hills on the West Morgan Hill side to get enough climbing. Here is the ride summary from Strava. It’s the 1008 m climbing that I needed.