Down and Up the Ramp - Saturday 1st November '14

To add a bit of variety to our Saturday morning outing we revisited the old First Tuesday Time Trial aka Down and Up the Ramp that I used to organise back in 1999 and 2000.  This consists of starting from the gate at the top of the Ramp, haring down the Ramp, taking recording your time as you touch the woodwork above the forestry and then racing back up to the top.

Assuming that you don't fall over (no-one did, so far as I know) this can achieve several things:- a measure of your descending ability, a measure of your ascending ability, a comparison of these two (perhaps indicating where extra work is needed) and, most probably, sore quads.

The plot was to have a staggered start (to match the staggering at the finish) so that we'd all finish reasonably close together, but due in part to me inhaling toilet paper (no it hadn't been soaked in LSD - more details can be provided if required), folk had set off before I got there, so the start was a bit a bit (only a bit?) of a shambles.

Self recorded times (down, up, total and down/up %age):-

TM 8:21 15:50 24:11 52.7%

KLM 8:46 16:05 24:51 54.5%

Jim 10:01 14:59 25:00 66.9%

EtU 10:57 16:07 27:04 67.9%

YJ 15:29 16:03 31:32 94.7%

What does this tell us? Christa is the fastest descender and the fastest overall. Kev is nowhere near as slow on the descent as he reckons. Jim's a mean climber. I'm a bad all rounder and John needs to brush up on his descending skills. No-one managed sub 50% for their down/up ratio - but this can easily be achieved by going for it downhill, and then strolling casually up - but no-one would do this on purpose, would they?

Folks' electronic kit tells us the one way distance is 1.05 miles, so even downhill, only Christa managed a sub 8 minute mile.