The 10 Fingers of Death Ride

I work in San Mateo, which turns out to be the epicenter of a lot of very cool short and steep climbs. Since I bring my bike to work every day (and try to get out for rides 3 or 4 times during the weekdays), I decided earlier this year to map out an insane ride, where I manage to ride up 10 of the steepest roads I could find here in the San Mateo area.

Now, for those of us that ride a lot in the Santa Cruz mountains (which I do all the time, since I live in Scotts Valley), a typical ride just about anywhere will result in about 1,000 feet of climbing for every 10 miles that you ride, or 100 feet for every mile.

So, a typical 30-mile ride would be 3,000 feet of climbing, etc. - but I wanted to map out a tough ride where you would do closer to 150 feet of climbing for every mile you ride - about 50% more the typical ride you'd do in the Santa Cruz mountains.

And hence was born "The 10 Fingers of Death Ride" - an epic bike ride that, in only 42.6 miles does 6800 feet of climbing - about 160 feet of climbing for every mile - ouch!

There are 10 roads that are included in this insane ride - and it's partially insane because the climbing you do are not on these long, gentle grades (like Highway 9), but the climbing is done on shorter, steeper climbs - the kind that tend to average anywhere from 9% to 12% (and that's just the average!). These are roads that are like Jamison Creek, or Alba Rd, or Bohlman - On Orbit - Bohlman - but just not as long.

And here are the 10 roads (the "fingers", if you will), in their order of appearance on this insane ride:

1. Glendora / De Anza - 0.61 miles, 215 feet, 6.8% grade
2. Bunker Hill - 0.51 miles, 300 feet, 11.4% grade
3. Woodridge Rd - 0.51 miles, 290 feet, 11.0% grade
4. Tartan Trail Rd - 1.11 miles, 500 feet, 10.0% grade
5. Crestview Dr - 1.36 miles, 650 feet, 9.3% grade
6. Club Dr - 1.29 miles, 605 feet, 8.9% grade
7. Hastings Dr - 0.67 miles, 450 feet, 12.7% grade
8. Melendy Dr - 1.37 miles, 640 feet, 8.8% grade
9. Alameda de Las Pulgas - 0.75 miles, 340 feet, 8.6% grade
10. West Hillsdale Blvd - 0.51 miles, 300 feet, 12.0% grade

As you can see, this is not a ride for wimps! In fact, this is not a ride for anybody that has an ounce of sanity in their brain.

But, for any regular, crazy cyclist - a cyclotic, if you will (hee-hee!), this is a dream ride - one for the ages, one to tell your grandchildren about one day.

Now, I don't have the time to do this kind of ride during the regular workday week - I figured out this ride would take me about 3.5 hours to complete (Lance Armstrong could probably do it in about 2 hours!) - I have to limit my rides to somewhere between one and two hours. But one day, I'll do this ride on a weekend day - and hopefully, find a couple of other crazies to join me!

Is it possible to do this ride? Of course - in fact, to test it out, I decided to break it up into two rides that I could do during the weekdays, as part of my regular training rides that are based from where I work.

So, one day I did what I call the "Easy 5 Fingers of Death Ride", where I did the first 4 climbs of my insane ride, plus the last climb. It was about 20 miles and did 2800 feet of climbing and took me about 1.5 hours to complete - you can see the data from this ride right here.

Then, about a week later, I decided to tackle what I called the "Hard 5 Fingers of Death Ride" - basically, the last 5 climbs of the insane ride. It was about 22 miles and did 4000 feet of climbing, taking me about 2.0 hours to complete - and you can see the data for this ride right here.

Oh - and if you want to see a recording of the entire ride, where I first scoped it out by car, you can see the that data right here.

Okay, so who out there would like to join me one Saturday or Sunday to do this ride? The drinks are on me... :)