Remington Rd. Hillclimb, Ithaca (video)

Remington Rd. Hill Climb, Ithaca NY from Armin Heurich on Vimeo.

For cyclists looking for a great hill climb in the finger lakes region, this is one of my favorites. This route takes you on a 600 ft. vertical ascent in just under 2 miles, with twisty, well-maintained low-traffic roads and great views of Cayuga lake. It's also the most stealth exit from Ithaca to surrounding towns of Lansing and Dryden, where cycling can't be beat. I shot the footage from a car, and slowed the video down to simulate cycling speeds.


I shot the video footage in the fall of '09, at the tail end of a great cycling season. It's taken me a while to finally edit this together, and I'm hoping that it serves as inspiration for you cyclists waiting for the road biking season to begin. 

Big Dairies & King Ferry

As the king of hyperbole, I won't shy away from describing this ride as absolutely euphoric. It's November 15th here in Ithaca, and the high temperature on my ride was 67 degrees! Riding without a jacket in mid-November is most bizarre, but I'm most grateful to the cycling goddess for arranging such ideal conditions and facilitating the further extension of an already long season.

Today I passed the 2800 mile mark for the season—I carefully chose a route that would get me there, and since I haven't been up along the lake to the King Ferry area in a while, I chose that route. This was my first time on Ledyard Rd., and it is the perfect choice for heading east and turning back to Ithaca.

I'm so glad that I decided to bring the camera today. Usually I am reluctant to bring the camera along, since I am trying to get maximum miles in during my allotted cycling time, but today I had the luxury of some extra time.

As you can see, I saw some very noisy wild turkeys on Remington Rd., just a couple hundred feet from Boynton Middle School. The sun was only with me for the first half hour, then the skies darkened and I thought perhaps I'd encounter rain, but it just stayed overcast for the rest of the trip. With all of the trees bare, it was a great day to get shots of the lake in the distance, as well as old barns and some beautiful homes.

This route takes you through some very big dairy operations around King Ferry, Genoa, Venice and East Lansing, and I tried to imagine what the old farming days were like in this area. There are a few remnants from those days, but now, the only shiny and new-looking farms are huge, sprawling dairies. It's so sad that family farming is the exception, not the rule.

Drivers seemed to be less attentive toward cyclists now that it's mid-November, and on a couple of occasions, drivers almost turned into me while I was in an intersection. Good practice for the lungs (I don't shy away from shouting at drivers) and for the evil-eye-darting-glance, but moments like those are most unwelcome. Us cyclists aren't asking for much, just a little attention. Put those damn cell phones away, people, and watch the road!

You can also see that I was all about the data today. Regular odometer, heartrate cyclocomputer and GPS, not to mention the camera. I know that it seems like overkill, but I won't be using the heartrate unit as an odometer. I've read that it can easily get reset by accident, and I want a reliable odometer to keep track of my road miles. Furthermore, my basic meter has a thermometer, which is pretty handy. Still, I can't wait to get a new Garmin Edge with cadence, like a Garmin Edge 405 or 605. That way I can ditch the Polar unit and have my heartrate data integrated into my speed and elevation data. This will allow me to see how my heartrate changes during specific climbs. This would be very valuable information for training purposes. Too bad I'd have to shell out around $400...I'd much rather spend it on a new wheelset or something.

Speaking of heartrate information, I hit a max of 170 at the top of Ridge Rd. in Lansing. That was pretty cool. I averaged 144 BPM for 2 1/2 hours, which feels pretty damn good. I don't think that downhill skiing will come anywhere close. Sure, cross-country skiing would be similar, but I probably won't have many opportunities this winter. Who knows...snowshoeing might be a good middle ground.

My favorite part of today's ride was Gulf Rd. in Lansing. There's a short, steep climb where Gulf meets Conlon Rd., and it's a real pedal stomping heart pounding affair. That turn onto Conlon Rd. is so gratifying.

See the ride on Everytrail

Here's the data:

Distance: 46.13 miles

Elapsed time: 2 hours, 30 min.

Avg. speed: 18.5 mph

Max. speed: 46 mph (heading east on Ledyard toward 34)

Vertical ascent: 2566 ft.

Calories burned: 2431

Avg. BPM: 144

The Season That Never Ends

It was a bit too chilly for my before-work circuitous commute/workout, a 10-mile climb up through Cornell and Community Corners to the airport and back down again. The weather forecast was promising, however. It was 35 degrees when I headed off to school, but it was 60 degrees when I left work! Indian summer days like this are magical, and it the gloomiest of late winter days, it's really hard to imagine that days like this even exist.

I managed to get a 15 mile ride in, my favorite quick loop up to Terpening Corners via Remington, Oakcrest and Triphammer and down Rt. 34, the best descent close to downtown. What a gift! It was also my first ride with my Polar heartrate cyclocomputer. I don't know yet where I really should be, but I averaged 150 bpm for a 42 minute ride.