It’s not the miles, it’s the feet

Cycling in our new Texas Hill Country neighborhood is not like cycling around West Texas. For one thing, there are, you know, hills. For another, there are really steep hills. And a lot of uphills. Plus, there’s the climbing.

I fired up MapMyRide yesterday in order to quantify exactly how much climbing was involved in our regular route. We’ve ridden it only twice, but it will be our regular route because it’s just the right combination of challenge and scenery.

Anyway, here’s what the iPhone app told us about the route: elevation gain — 300 feet.

The total elevation gain for the 11 mile ride isn’t as impressive as I anticipated; it felt more like 1000′. But a similar ride in Midland would probably have a gain of 50′ or less.

Besides providing a great workout, the other advantage of riding around here are the views. Like this one:

We’re overlooking Lake LBJ (Apple Head Island, to be exact). The downhill following this vantage point was as thrilling as the view from the top.

The bottom line is that we don’t measure our rides around here in terms of miles, but in terms of feet…uphill feet, that is.