Cycling: Lavasa and My First Century Ride

My Sporterra Sport became a month old today. So far, it has run around 650kms. Quite a few long rides in those 650kms - twice to Lavasa and back (~100kms each), then twice over the Katraj Ghat (around 50kms each), and couple times to Pirangut and Mutha ghats (around 30-50kms each). I can feel the stamina and muscle improving. I can feel my heart, lungs and legs getting in better shape and getting stronger. This was not the case when I had just got the cycle though.

Since my last Lavasa climb, I had started cycling frequently. Fresh air and lack of traffic in the morning, opens up quite a few routes around Kothrud/Chandani-chowk area for cycling. One is along the bypass through the new Katraj Tunnel, take a u-turn at Shindewadi and take old Katraj Ghat - old tunnel - Katraj bypass - Pune bypass - chandani chowk: ~50kms. This route can be done other way round as well and that involves old Katraj Ghat climb which has quite a challenging gradient. Another is to Pirangut and back: ~30kms. If you have got time or start quite early in the morning, Mutha Ghat climb is even better and is around 50km ride.

One such Mutha ghat climb, which is around 50km ride, had taken me 3hrs for to-and-from journey and had given me a confidence boost about my improving edurance. I was feeling the improvement and was getting psyched up to tackle the grand-daddy of them all - Lavasa - again.

So I woke up one fine morning, did some stretches (important!) as usual, and started for Lavasa at around 5:30am. There were 2 goals: one was to reach the top in 3hrs and second was 5hrs of total to-and-fro timing. Given the experience of first time, both the goals looked tough and I was expecting around 3:30hrs for the top and 6hrs to-and-fro.  Also, this time I had Sports-Tracker as my ride tracker, and given its excellent power management, I was sure I would be able to lock in the whole ride's data without battery issues.

The sky had just started lightening a little when I reached Pirangut descent. This is one of the best descents out there, and it's here where I have clocked my top-speed of 60.4km, which I haven't been able to manage on the descent of any other ghats despite standing up. By the time I reached the point where Mutha Ghat starts, I had taken 2 breaks - one for ATM and another for buying an extra water bottle; just in case. The ghat climb was done without any amount of exertion. In fact I reached the cusp, when I was expecting further climb. I remembered my last time when I was huffing and puffing and desperately waiting for the top. I was in much better form and shape this time round.

View from Mutha Ghat Top down the Pirangut-side Valley

While climbing up Mutha, I saw couple of bikers speeding up and down the ghat perfecting their cornering skills and enjoying the adrenaline overall. Lack of traffic early in the morning, cool air, excellent road condition and the twisty nature of the Mutha ghat makes for a rider's heaven. No wonder these adrenaline-junkies, fully dressed up in protective gear, were whizzing up and down it.

Subsequent descent and Mutha town came by quickly. "Lavasa: 18km" read a board. 10kms more and I was at the Temghar wall. Saw a lot of school-children on the way to school. Oohs and aahs and laughter and comments passing would ensue when they would catch sight of me. The cycle indeed attracts a lot of attention, especially of the younger lot. And the older teenagers out of these school-goers are not always nice. Some of those jackasses pass quite nasty comments trying to attract attention of the girls (walking behind) and win brownies by deriding the urbanites. More power to you hillbilies.

At the Temghar Wall

Reached Temghar dam in next half an hour. Took one final break at the Temghar wall which marks the start of the much awaited Lavasa climb. Sip of water, a little stroll, stretches and I started up. Last time I had climbed, I had wondered if anybody would be able to do it in a single shot, without a break from Temghar wall to the Lavasa top. So this time round, the goal was to do exactly that - go up without a single stop.

I took it easy in the start, trying to conserve energy for that horrible Lavasa-4 to Lavasa-3 stretch. Noticed the same pair of Mutha riders (all helmets look the same), labouring up and down the slopes of Lavasa now. Cornering is a bit more challenging here due to switchbacks.

At Lavasa Finally

By the time I got to the Lavasa-4 milestone, a bit of exhaution had set in due to continuous climb. And boy, the Lavasa-4 to Lavasa-3 stretch was just as horrible, as brutal, as pure-inferno as it was the previous time. But this time, I somehow held up. There were few more leg muscles this time round, which allowed me to partially power through some of the trecherous climbs. I persisted without a stop. And finally, there it was - the cusp! It took me 40-45mins this time to cross the 8kms of climb. The total 'to' journey - from home to lavasa - took 2:36hrs -- 24mins shorter than the goal I had set. There was a tremendous sense of achievement.

On the top, I took some breakfast, and in 15-20mins left for home. The return journey was not much eventful apart from the Mutha and Pirangut climbs, which appeared more gruelling due to some level of exhaustion. On reaching Chandani Chowk, I realised I had done around 88kms and would need 12 more kms to complete a century. Took a detour along Warje, Nal Stop route and got back home after completing 100.7kms in 6:02hrs.

Here is the full GPS track of the ride; and here is the speed elevation profile of the route -

Interesting Correlation

The elevation profile of this Lavasa ride in Sport-Tracker struck as a familiar curve. Initially I thought of it as the impulse response profile of a 2nd order control system. But that curve has an envelope which reflects over X-axis. This elevation profile is on one side of x-axis, i.e it doesn't have a negative elevation. So not applicable.

Then I thought of it to be a sinusoid damped by Gaussian function. Still the Gaussian function curve dies pretty quickly and one doesn't get enough peaks before the sinusoid damps dead.

Finally after couple hours of mathematical and graph plotting jugglery, I could place this curve as - an exponentially damped up-shifted sinusoid, riding a standard normal Gaussian distribution curve. Here is the equation that I came up with -

And here is the graphical plot of the equation -

A Graph That Correlates with the Elevation Curve of Lavasa Route

You will agree that this plot shares a good deal of correlation with the elevation profile of the Lavasa ride. Interesting, isn't it?

Cycling: Lavasa Conquered

It was just a week since I had got the cycle. I had been on some initial training rides of 10-15kms daily, but never had been on a long ride before. The cycle was new, and the overall experience of riding it so far was way better than the one I used to have in my childhood with a Hero Jet first and then a Hercules MTB, Both of them were fixies with reversing paddles. This one on the other hand was a hybrid with gear, and tilting more towards road-bike category with tall gearing, lack of suspension and roadbike style saddle. Quite light, it raced with wind downhill and was not a big deal to drive up a climb, provided you chose the right gears. I was enjoying it so far and was itching to test myself on some mountainous ground. So Lavasa, being touted as quite a tough climb in the cycling community, was always on the back of mind as a challenge to take up as soon as possible.

On Sunday, 2nd Oct, I left home for Pirangut around 9am. It was not that hot, and even after reaching Pirangut, I didnt feel tired. So went on towards Mutha ghat. The idea was to turn back when it stops being pleasant. The Mutha ghat climb was quite an arduous one. Lack of training and you start feeling exhausted quite early. Sangli is laid out on a plain with hardly any elevation change throughout. So I was a total newbie to ghat-climbing ovrall, and naturally I struggled. I took couple of breaks and reached the top with quite a bit of effort.

The descent to Mutha town felt very pleasant due to the cool breeze that accompanies speed. On reaching Mutha, a roadside board announced Lavasa was mere 18kms from there. Too close to turn around from a tempting challenge. Lavasa, I had heard, was a pretty hard climb. I had been therer on bike and in car, but had never appreciated the toughness of the climb from a physical-energy perspective. So I marched on.

After pedalling for around 10kms, I reached Temghar dam. There was quite a bit of crowd in front of the Temghar wall. All weekend public. Loud music in the cars, trendy show-offs with slicks and goggles and fake accent, and quite a bit of fresh plastic garbage around. Not to mention the 'water-sports' going on in the released water. This waterfall and getting-wet fetish people have is beyond me sometimes. One drive on a rainy Sunday in the Tamhinis and you will understand why my cynicism borders on the lines of disgust.

Right after the Temghar wall started the real climb. From Temghar wall, Lavasa top is around 7-8 kms. All of that is energy sapping climb, with a kilometer of pleasant descent till the Lavasa gate once you reach the top, thrown in as a reward. In the first couple of kms itself I started realising how grim the climb was getting. It was gradually getting tougher and tougher. I had to take a lots of breaks - for water, for catching my breath, for stopping my lungs from exploding any moment and for keeping my leg muscles from tearing apart. There were quite a few on-lookers - bikes, cars, buses, tempos, who were craning their necks to have a look, with a combination of who's-this and what-the-heck questions written all over their faces. Some of them smiled, some waved, some of them had a cheerful word while passing by.

It was all misery nevertheless. Especially the climb between "Lavasa-4km" and "Lavasa-3kms" milestones was absolutely brutal on me. There were switchbacks which were inclined so terribly that if one would stop pedalling, he would start rolling down immeditely. Later on I figured, this particular climb is part of a stretch that gains 372 mtrs (~1220 feet) of height in mere 4.6kms! That's a freaking 8.1% gradient, and it kills. A point came when I couldnt take the bicycle over even a single climbing switchback without panting for breathe. These switchbacks were getting severe and I had to do something about it, since turning around was not an option, and I didnt want to push the bike even a centimeter to blot the final achievement. So I altered the riding pattern a bit. Rather than taking break just at any point, I would ride till the base of next intimidating enough climbing switchback, and then take a break for sometime. Would freshen up with a sip of water and then would 'attack' the climb with all the gathered energy. It worked.

Those 8kms of climb took me an insane 1.5hrs. By the time I reached the top, I was as miserable as a wet dog. Exhausted and hungry, I took a sumptious lunch at one of the hotels near the entry gate. Idled for about an hour, sitting on a chair outside, taking in the views and the movements, and wondering how in the world was I going to make it back to home. I had come till there alright, but home was still ~50kms from there; the only saving grace being there was no other Lavasa climb on the way back. Took a look at the GPS track from My Tracks android app which showed I took ~5hours for home-to-Lavasa journey. That was a long time, and it was a long way back home now. Unfortunately, the battery had depleted and I had to switch off tracking and the phone altogether, during the return journey.

Once the lunch was settled, I got back on the bicycle and started towards home. The Lavasa descent is not *that* pleasant due to the same dangerous switch-backs where one has to slow down or skid off the edge.

The reverse Mutha climb (towards Pune) is even more arduous, than the one coming from Pirangut. But climbed it without a single stop and took rest only after reaching the cusp of the ghat. Mutha descent is pleasant on both sides, and it doesnt take much time to Pirangut after that. The Pirangut ghat, while climbing towards Pune, is mighty exhausting. But did that without a rest too and took rest at the top. Small challenges like climbing ghats without a stop or timing the climbs make things interesting and take your mind off home and hunger.

By the time I reached home, it was 6pm and I was again very hungry and exhausted. I had left Lavasa around 2:45pm and that meant I took around 3:15hrs for journey back home.

Surprisingly, there were no pains apart from the exertion pains, which are actually pleasant in a way because they indicate evolving muscles. I had a fear that the knee pain I had developed during Katraj-Sinhagad trek would show its ugly head. But thanks probably to my prudence of maintaining good cadence throughout, no injury (re)occured.

Here is the GPS track (one way till Lavasa) on Sports-Tracker. And here is the speed and elevation profile along the route -



I had used My Tracks android app for tracking, and it recorded the GPX file well. But it was a battery hog and compared to it, Sports-Tracker offered much better features and eye-candy plotting (the one you are seeing above, is from Sports-Tracker). So I uploaded the GPX file from My Tracks to Sports-Tracker. I tried some other apps as well, including Endomondo, but chose Sports-Tracker finally, despite few of its irritating niggles (like slowy slow UI). So far, it hasn't crashed on me mid-ride, touch-wood.