Borland Road: Putting the Hill in Hillsborough

This hill may technically be in Chapel Hill, but in either case the point stands; the Piedmont is not flat. Before getting to the workout, I just wanted to post this picture from the middle of the ride. It was a gorgeous Thanksgiving Day here, even though it started of sort of wet and gray. By the time I left for the ride most of the clouds were gone and it was an excellent day to ride.

Now for the ride. This is the same route I did a few days back, but since the roads were wet I decided to do it in the opposite direction. Going down Borland Hill I routinely hit 35mph without pedaling, and I wasn't sure I wanted to try that on wet, leaf-covered roads, so I decided to make it a hill climb instead. Borland Road isn't really much of a climb compared to something like Alpe d'Huez, but for those of us not getting paid to ride it's still a pretty good effort.


Overall the ride was 15.2 miles long at an average of 16.9mph - I'm not entirely sure where the speedy downhill portions were, since it seems to be more uphill than not when you ride it in this direction. In any case it was good to get out and get a start on working off the Thanksgiving Day Feast.

I skipped a few days of blogging, but not of exercising. On Wednesday I did a 4 mile run at a 10:30/mile pace, which left me more winded than the previous 11:00/mile one, but which still felt good. Tuesday was swim day, and I got in 2,200yds. at an average pace of 2:06/100yds. (The workout included 250 yards of kicking, which my watch doesn't record. Given the speed at which I kick I think that's all for the best). This was faster than last week's swim, but it also consisted of all short segments of 200 yards or less; most of them were just 2 or 3 lengths of the pool. I think that practicing on a consistent basis is slowly helping my technique.

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