Four Peaks

While most of my team was at a duathlon today, I did a long ride with two other team members who, like me, had decided to skip today's race. I thought we'd do something easy, but no, instead, we chose to do "Four Peaks" (also known as "Quatre Peaks" or just four big hills). I hadn't done this route with all of the hills in a while and, in fact, I'd never done it without actually having been told to. I found it surprisingly pleasant and not terribly difficult -- like I said last week, I'm starting to like hills! Here's the elevation map from my Garmin with each of the hills pointed out:


Although it's not the hardest hill, Joe Alon is, in my opinion, the most "annoying" by far. It never actually looks like you're going uphill, but you can sure feel it in your legs! Imagine riding on what appears to be a flat road, your legs burning like crazy in low gear, looking down at your watch and seeing a 15% grade climb! The 15% was probably off (the Garmin Forerunner isn't terribly accurate when it comes to elevation, especially "real time" readings), but it wasn't too far off, at least for that particular section of the climb. Goral is the easiest of the four (in fact, I found it very easy today, even though I was still just warming up) and my favorite is Sansana, which takes you right up into the forest, or the closest thing you can find to a forest here.

The only downside of today's ride was the wind, which made going downhill a bit scary (I could really feel it blowing me across the road). Oh, and the herd of goats crossing the street as I was coming down Eshkolot was a bit of a bother!