Rouvy Indoor Cycling Alto de La Colladona

Here is an off the beaten path climb that I did a quick recon on for you. Think this one is just kind of a ramble on about a ton of things. Sit back enjoy the ride, add this route to your favourites list, lets get the “last pass” numbers up on this nice climb. Decent medium climb, just enough to test you and give you a bit of a challenge. Trust me you won’t be climbing for 3 hours in your pain cave.

Don’t forget to check out sixtyplustimetrialing blog!

Show Notes:

Alto de La Colladona: https://my.rouvy.com/virtual-routes/detail/55901

John Hallas Blog: https://sixtyplustimetrialling.wordpress.com/

Asturias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asturias

Cantabrian Mountains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantabrian_Mountains

Iberian Bears: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/travel/europe/following-in-the-footsteps-of-iberian-bears-in-spain-1.3865710

Just some general links for you to check out.

Hey Riders here’s a little video from a couple of days ago I decided to do some sightseeing just uh selecting my bike here was on the track madone we are in Spain Alta de la kodon so I went with the uh fesa Le welta bike the

Spectre uh bike had to purchase a few months back the lightest climbing bike on Ruby so what we’ve got here is uh we’re just going to shorten the name up video sped up as usual just to uh not take up your whole day when you’re watching these uh

Lalona the route is 10 km long with 517 M of climbing so 6.2 miles and say 1,600 ft of climbing nothing too killer but just enough to get a nice hard intense workout in start banking building up those climbing uh meters I know a lot of

People are doing that trying to go for their records and how much they can climb this year that’s right up my alley so I might start doing the same thing uh so browsing around our movie found this route sorry to say I’m also riding with

Um sorry I forgot to say is what I meant to say there uh I’m riding with four ghosts we’re in just ride mode 100% that’s the way to do it uh you’ll get a little bit of a draft at times you can see right now I’m getting draft up

On the top here I think I do change my map view a bit or sorry my camera view seems like I’m a little bit too far away uh but you know yeah here I am doing it right here I was looking at the challenges and nothing really inspired

Me to do anything I think I did this ride Saturday morning so I like to kind of tread on the beaten path go do my own thing sometimes I like to ride with people and other times I like to do my own thing so I found this route this is

In Northern Spain it’s in the province of aorus now Estus I found out is a self-governing principality and I’m like I don’t even know what that means means I know you’re kind of autonomous but you’re also part of Spain at the same time a little further reading and

Digging I read some stuff about asterus being conquered in 30 BC or something by Augustus during the Roman times asterus has been around forever so I get kind of why they’re like a self-governing area probably like a big historic uh B history here lots of kings and queens

From the old days but anyway enough about that so the route we’re doing today ladona goes from north to south we basically bict at a perpendicular angle the uh small range of mountains here called the canaban mountains hope I’m saying that right gave it my best shot so these Mountains run east west

Across the very North End of Spain kind of like right where it bumps into the Atlantic there what’s also interesting is that they call that part of the Atlantic the canaban sea I’ve never heard that sea before kind of think I know my geography but it’s a very local

Name to the Spaniards that live there so I think AAR uh aorus is rap beside like the bass country um these mountains too are really cool because they’re like a barrier to the really hot wind that comes out of the South so it it was saying online that this whole province

Of hisor is doesn’t suffer from the heat waves that the rest of Spain does that’s because these mountains just the way they’re positioned the geography of the mountains running East West kind of stops all the southern winds coming out of the Mediterranean and North Africa and they can’t get over top of the

Mountains leaving the weather on the North side uh cooler now I don’t know how cool it’s still Spain still probably quite hot there but I thought that was just a cool interesting fact uh so yeah this ride here you can see uh false flatty at the beginning and I’m just

Kind of getting out of the false flat stuff now so you know I’m looks like I’m about 3 km in and uh we’re just going to kind of start the climb now I’ve done a good job here holding my power around 270 Watts I thought let’s just ride it 3 watts per

Kilo not much of an endurance Rider hey we’re passing the tractor here hopefully there’s no cars coming the other way see the far farmers are out doing their thing uh couple things I want to say I’ve done a ton of commenting this week on the muckers races muckers worldwide

I’ve had such a blast doing that uh a lot of fun I’m going to try to do uh I’m will definitely be doing more I’m going to expand and do some other races if I can too as long as they fit my schedule um and by that I mean you know

We’re all in different time zones so some of these races are going off and it’s the middle of the night for me so if it’s a morning race in the UK it’s very hard for for me to cover uh but the muckers races at night were good for me

They’re right noon uh and I’ve been doing the videos as premieres the next day awesome to see everyone come into the live chat and give me feedback as to what I’m doing uh you know I’m really trying to grow the racing scene here I think the

Commentary adds a lot in fact you know I was watching I think it was stage five of the tour down under a few nights ago was on YouTube and it was Wonga Hill like probably the most exciting stage in the course and obviously because they’ve got the TV rights licensed out to

Different broadcasters they’re probably all getting the same feed and they’re doing their own their own audio like a French audio a Spanish audio an English audio well this one had no audio so all I could hear was like the people clapping their hands going by dog

Barking and to be honest it was the most boring thing I’ve ever seen in my life so it just kind of lets you know how much the audio comment commentary adds to a race I guess it would kind of be like going to a baseball game and having

No color commentary in the background no announcers just watching the guys throw the ball around hit the ball no hey this the background stat on this guy is blah blah blah you know those types of things so I’m hoping by doing this we can get more people involved in racing racing

Can become a bigger scene on Ruby cuz I think it’s it’s doing well but we can make it a lot better um so yeah we’re hanging out in Northern Spain here lots of great climbs one interesting fact I learned is Fernando Alonzo comes right from this

Area F1 driver uh probably one of my favorites I think he retired for a couple years and did a uh a show on Prime video and now he’s back racing which is pretty unbelievable Superstar driver of course uh yeah so if you like these videos you like the

Commentaries you know subscribe if you want it’s inside cycling world that’s my channel like comment but ideally the best thing you can do is probably like share with friends and stuff that’s a a huge way of supporting the channel the Channel’s growing really good right now

Uh seems like there’s a lot of interest people like what I’m doing but I’m just kind of doing this by the seat of my pants so I’m going to do some races I’m going to do some of these off the beaten path climbs hey and back to this off the

Beaten path climb here so this race sorry this ride route first came out in 2020 and I’m sure a ton of people that are long-term Ruby subscribers have probably done it but what I thought was really cool when I wrote it on Saturday which would have been January

20th found the route this looks pretty good it’s got nothing to do with the challenges I’m still going to get XP I’m still going to get coins you can see my XP accumulating in the top right corner right now the little green number 92 uh was that in all of January of 2024

There’s been four passes including mine so in 20 days only four people had found this course now to make it even worse two of those rode for only 8 minutes definitely not an 8 minute climb so they just kind of jumped on and jumped off so only two

People took their time to ride this really cool climb uh this would be a really good little route for potentially maybe it would be too long for our Sunday short races but it’s not that long it’s only 500 meters of climbing this is not going to take you hours to

Do uh you know there’s like seven eight percenters there’s quite a few Flats there’s places where the bigger stronger Riders can get away they might go get away at the beginning some of these uh smaller lightweight climbers you have to leave them as quick as you

Can uh yeah so you know just some thoughts on this uh I really like doing these off the beaten path ones I don’t know if this is a Hidden Gem could be I make up the rules right for this stuff these are my names uh but

If it’s not a Hidden Gem it’s definitely a classic that uh people need to revisit so I’m hoping by showing you this video you’ll get the urge to take this one on again as I said uh feel free to use my avatar just all you need to do is set up

A virtual partner in just ride um and pick out my name it’s on screen there Colin Emerson uh so yeah just do what you can like let’s get out there and get this ride going again it’s a really fun climb jumping to map mode here you can see how rugged the terrain

Is it’s all he I was doing some more research no idea and you know if you’re from Spain and you know the area really well I apologize I had no idea that there were still Bears floating around this part of the world there’s actually an Iberian bear which I think is a type

Of brown bear and you know it’s just a subspecies uh and uh super protected uh I think I saw something online that says if you get caught shooting and killing a bear it’s like a 300,000 Euro fine something like that um I think the estimated number left is

About 300 of these guys so they need to be protected and even better there’s wolves here but I never would have thought that I guess coming from Canada you think of Europe as being quite small uh compared to what we have here for space like bears and wolves are normal

Here um and I always think it’s crowded there but it’s amazing that those animals are still here in like in these mountains right here in these contaban uh again hope I said that right hey and I also want to point out something here too just a little shout

Out to one of the subscribers who I think has been here since the very beginning I wish I could find out when he subscribed because he’s been very supportive of my channel always dropping nice comments to me like just motivating things to keep me going his name is John halis uh John

Posted on the Ruby Facebook page on Saturday morning it was awesome post he’s put together uh a little spreadsheet of some really cool CLS to do in Europe so John has a uh a Blog yes some people still do read uh so it’s a Blog not a vlog

And uh it’s called I believe uh 60 plus time trialing and he’s got a ton of articles in there and so what he done is taken I think it’s Mountain High it’s all about climbing I think that’s what it’s called uh it’s a book anyways on the top 50

Climes in Europe so these are all the iconic climes the ones that you see at the the Jiro the VTA the tour to France and other races they’re all there and it’s a ton of climbing like I think the total climbing amount was like 800,000 M and the crazy thing

Is some people can do this I think John’s done all of these climbs before he did say in his article that he’s going to reclimb them so I’m just guessing he’s done it which is pretty impressive uh so if you go to his uh 60

Plus time tring and I will put a link in the bottom so when you look at the the video comments now I’m going to have something down below called show notes from now on so I’m going to try to compile like all the interesting things okay maybe just interesting to me

That I’ve talked about and give you little links there so maybe if you’re interested in learning more about it maybe the Bears maybe the Wolves the contaban aerus uh perhaps 60 plus time tring you can click on the link there and it’ll take you to where you need to go um I

Did check out uh the article more in detail yesterday and if you look in the bottom right hand corner on the main page of the article there’ll be a follow button it’s kind of like a subscribe button um and just as a uh I guess a personal request from me because John’s

Been so supportive of me if you could give John a follow there join his articles I think there’s a lot of great content to read about and he’s provided the spreadsheet for you to go do all these claims so he’s kind of gone and done something that I’ve always think

About doing I’ve made these spreadsheets before like I’m going to do all the climbs in this country whatever it may be or this area I go on Ruby I start compiling it all then I throw it out so he’s gone and collected all the clim so

You’re going to see the CL the name of the climb length climbing meters elevation and then the actual Ruby link and I think a few of them were only on full gas but you know do what you can right uh it’d be a pretty good challenge to take on like a real

Challenge uh I I I assume that all of them have videos maybe some are only map mode if they’re only map mode just do them I’ve done lot a few map mode rides on ruy once you get into it and you just kind of watch the terrain going by is

That’s all that’s available I think sometimes it’s very hard to get uh quality videos filmed you got to imagine someone has to be out here doing this like in this case you can just catch the shadow of the uh the camera car and this video is filmed at an awesome speed

Everything looks realistic to me it’s not too fast it’s not too slow remember C the playback speed is relative to how fast the video was filmed at too fast it’s not going to look good too slow it’s not going to look good so it has to

Be at almost a perfect speed now let’s imagine you’re doing that and you got a bunch of traffic you got construction on the road well okay that’s that one screwed up let’s try it again in a week from now when there’s no one on the road

So I don’t think it’s as easy to film as as we all like to believe it is uh just coming up to a little bit of a flat stretch here looks like the gradient is going to just back off a little bit and then uh just a little

Couple more kickers couple flats and we’ll be done uh I like to do these kinds of climbs because I know they’re generally let’s just say if I want a 45 to 50 minute workout this is what I’m looking for 5 to 600 M of climbing as long long as it’s not too

Steep uh so don’t be afraid of these numbers I know when I started on ruy I was horrified of climbing I would see climbs that would be uh sorry routes that would be defined as flat and they would have 230 M of climbing and I would

Just walk away like I can’t do that that’s too much climbing now it’s just like well that’s nothing so it’s just about being consistent on the bike and taking on these climbs and just doing them day after day after day and you will get stronger and stronger on the

The bike so again here we’re coming up to some steeper stuff you can see the profile on the bottom of the screen looks like we’ve climbed just over 400 m here so I know the end is near it’s at 11% but it’s not too bad here still maintaining right under 3 watts per

Kilo it’s looking pretty good here I got my four friends with me the four ghosties I find that you know I’ve said in a video earlier I never used to ride with the ghosts now I love riding with them it’s just a little bit of motivation and just that tiny tiny bit

Of watt savings whenever I can draft I’ll take it uh you know I I figure it’s real enough it’s not a huge draft it’s just a few Watts here and there but it’s motivating to just have you nearby hey awesome Land Cruiser on the side of the

Road there do you see it or is that a Land Rover I think I might have said that that name wrong like the ultimate it’s a Landy a Landy looked like a I don’t know if it was a 110 or not uh yeah awesome Vehicles you see a

Lot of them in this part of the world they kind of like the ultimate 4×4 I think maybe they’re just a little bit underpowered I I looked at buying one years ago British guy that moved to Canada military guy and said that on I think it was at our Cold Lake military testing

Ground it was the landies that were always on the move the uh the American trucks stuck in the ditches couldn’t get out the Landy would never get stuck though uh yeah I guess it’s a Land Rover isn’t it I think those are the ones that went the first vehicle that ever

Traveled all around the world like down through the Amazon there there’s that Crossing uh yeah I should remember all the stuff I got too much in my brain right now uh but yeah just Trucking along here moving away from my ghost a little bit again just uh just going to

Jump back again here check out John’s article oh cows on the road watch out for them 60 plus time trialing puts a lot of effort into it it’s obvious and I I can appreciate anyone that puts in effort into their passion obviously he’s very passionate what cycling so um why

Don’t we give him a little push and give him a little support and uh follow his uh articles his blog I think that’s pretty easy to do gives you a little late night reading and they look like they don’t look like long reads nice short little articles you can uh dig

Into so yeah there’s lots of these cool climbs that live out there on ruy land uh they’re just kind of Hidden Away you just got to do some digging I did put a video out maybe it was in December about using map search and that’s how I

Find all these things you’re not you’re not going to find these things generally just browsing through the main app you need to get into map search and just start looking around zoom in on an area zoom in on a country and see if there’s a video route there you know what I

Generally do is first search for all all routes then I’ll turn on the video filter okay cool that’s good how about AR routes that’s what I really want obviously this is an AR route have the avatars in front of you that’s the difference between an AR rot and a non AR you got

Avatars so you can turn virtual Partners on and see them on screen uh yeah so I’m just zooming in looking so what’s cool about this one too is there’s another uh good climb from the south side up to Ladon uh hope I said that right I

Couldn’t find the video I looked for a map route everything because kind of like when I find a climb I like to do I want to make sure I’ve kind of conquered it and I’ve said it before take the stelvio if you’ve done the stelvio there’s three routes to do

To say you’ve really conquered it uh there’s uh a route two routes in Italy and one route that comes from the Swiss side they’re all on Ruby you can find them they’re great to ride so I like to actually make myself little challenges where I kind of do all of them kind of

Mix it up a little bit right so we’re coming to the end Here not that far now we’re going to hit a little flat section we’ve almost done all the climbing again I appreciate I appreciate everyone watching these videos my name’s Colin Channel now is known as inside cycling World obviously because I do 100% of my cycling inside

Going to try to get out this year for a couple of little adventures if I can sign up for an event and go do it outside I’m going to capture it all and make some good videos about it but anyway inside cycling World Subs subscribe if you like the

Videos and uh we’ll see you again soon