The route starts as a gradual uphill as you leave the Lake Ontario basin, perfect for throwing in some interval work. I would do 'attacks' for 2 and a half minutes and then spin easy for 5 minutes. I managed to get three of those in before approaching the Appleby Line climb. Id argue this climb is the most difficult climb in terms of steepness in all of Southern Ontario. While the resolution of the elevation picture fails to do justice, pitches hit as high as 12% at points. Unless you're running a compact crank and a 28t rear cog, i see no possible way to 'spin' up this hill.
The hill goes up straight and then curves toward the house in the woods on the top left corner of the picture.
This hill was dreadfully difficult. In the past its always been hard, but i was REALLY suffering. Ive got my work cut out for me in the next couple months.
I cruised around at the top for a few minutes making sure my heart hadn't stopped working, and then proceeded to descend and do the hill again. It hurt just as much the second time. You can really tell your body is working far from its ideal efficiency. Labored short breaths, pedal mashing etc.
The goal for the next couple months is to improve this aspect by training your body to buffer lactic acid much more effectively. Essentially this will allow me to push harder while hurting less.
After the second Appleby climb, I continued on to the 6th line climb which is deceptively hard because its gets harder as you go up, and the 'rest' at the top is actually a 3% grade.
After that, I was more or less done climbing the escarpment. There were still some short punchy drumlins that I tried to attack as best I could, but my legs were close to fried at this point.
This marks the most difficult ride Ive had so far this year. It was good to get some perspective as to specifically what I need to work on.
Depending on how I feel tomorrow, I may go on a ride with some buddies from Guelph. Then on Tuesday, its back to work, so Ive got the 70k commute back to the shop.
