There are several things I want to accomplish cycling wise
over the course of the new year, so I’m boldly setting a marker in what passes
for stone these days in the form of this post.
I will be headed to the big island of Hawaii in February, so
naturally, I will want to bring my bike with me and try to ride Mauna Kea. This is one of the biggest climbs in the
world, from sea level to ~14,000’ though we are staying at an AirBNB in Waimea,
which is on the northern half of the island but not at sea level. Given my poor form and mileage totals, I will
have to ramp up my mileage in a steady and sustainable way early in the
year. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make
it all the way to the top, the important part of the goal for me is to try hard
enough to be satisfied with the effort and preparation.
From there, I will have to come down from the summit, in the
words of Rene Daumal, back to the reality that it will still be cold and dreary
February in Seattle upon my return.
However, the days will be starting to lengthen, and after some recovery,
I will set my sights on having a good rest of the year riding. The goals for this being what eluded me in
2019, to build form steadily and sustainably.
I’ve been experimenting with a new tool in this regard, which is taking
and logging my orthostatic heart rate each morning to assess how rested or
tired I am. Over the month that I’ve
been self-assessing with this I’ve had the orthostatic rate range from a low of
6 when I felt really sick to a high of 40 after several healthy days of
rest. I’m still working on developing
the right ranges for myself but it seems like 20 is about the minimum it should
be to go out and ride.
I’m looking forward to the challenges of putting this new
knowledge into practice in 2020!
