San Diego Training Camp: Day One Wildcat Canyon

As promised, here is the first of the charts I said I would share from San Diego. We flew in the night before, Derek from Atlanta and myself from JFK. We landed within 5 minutes of eachother, got our baggage together, but only one of us got their bike! Mine was left behind.. must have been the karma of not being charged for my bike on the way out. Thought I got lucky... So they promised me it would be on the next flight.. and it was. I picked it up the following morning at 8:00 am.
We set out on this ride, not without doing some homework. The course was going to be hilly, we knew (everywhere in SD is rolling or quite hilly, the farther east you go) We weren't prepared for this though.. You can see that in the 28th minute we started to climb.. and continued to climb for the next 48 minutes, gaining 1308 vertical feet in 10 miles. Sounds like a pretty easy grade.. it was.. but for a first major road ride of the season, it was a bit much.. There are two charts because I pressed STOP by accident when we stopped for coffee in Ramona. I was quite chilly out by this time, and we thought of doubling back, but I insisted that we complete this infamous "Wildcat Canyon" ride as planned (see below for a link to a map) The return leg of our ride was as tough as the first, as you can see.. First a little 500 foot "roller" before another small rise and a FAST descent down into the valley. After a little bit of flat, we encountered another tough 4 mile climb which rose 1000 feet (little bit steeper than before- ouch!), before ending up near the top of the first climb of the day.
By the end of this ride, I was cramping up pretty bad, and did more harm than good to my right knee- my IT band was inflamed a tiny bit. I had to soft pedal it up the last little climb towards the end. We were pretty happy with our effort though. No messing around- we were serious about lifting boosting our LTs as fast as possible. Mission accomplished. 63 miles is a long ride for me, any time of year.
I must say.. after an hour's spin on the rollers tonight, I do feel stronger and more confidant than before this trip. Thanks for reading.
Next: Our foolish plans to ride to Borrego Springs..