Old La Honda

I came into this weekend with no specific bicycling plans. It had been a while since I did a long ride (60 miles or more), but I did not think I had enough time to do one. Plus I wanted to do some yardwork at home and we have limited daylight this time of year.

I decided to just do a medium length ride. I did a loop from home, up Old La Honda Road and then back. I have done Old La Honda before, but had never timed myself on that particular stretch. I decided that I should do that this time. The 3.3 mile, moderately steep road is a benchmark measure for local cyclists.


Bay Area cyclist measure their time on this road and use it to determine what level of cyclist they are. In the 2006 Low-Key Hillclimb series, the median time was 20:24, with the fastest time being 16:33. You have to be a very strong bicyclist to do it in the former time, while the latter time is in the realm of actual racers.

I measured myself at just under 30 minutes, which is about where I would have expected. I need to seriously improve my conditioning to come close to the Low-Key median time. Maybe that will be one of my goals for next year.

My whole ride ended up being 42 miles, and I did it in just under 3 hours. This falls into my "moderate" length category.