Going Backwards

So today, my friend, Dennis Pedersen, and I joined the Noon Goon ride in Palo Alto. Our intent was to start out the ride with them, which includes a nice climb up Old La Honda (OLH). But at the top of OLH, we were intending to slide back down to the bottom of the hill and - oh, no! - do the climb - again!

So, you might be wondering - why the hell would we do that? Simple. Today was the official start of the off-season for us - and we both want to improve our climbing for races that we intend to do next year. We'll both do our fair share of crits and the flatter road races, but it would be nice to be able to hang with the main pack on some of the hillier road races, too - the ones that have significant climbs in them (in this case, "significant" means something more than a mile long, and gaining more than just a few hundred feet of elevation).

So Dennis proposed that we start doing a series of 2x20 climbing efforts - this is where you climb at about 90% of your max heartrate for 20 minutes - and you do it 2 times (hence, the "2x20" nomenclature). We'll be doing other hill-climbing feats of pain, too - like 4-minute hill repeats (5 or 6 of them - ouch!), and other equally horrific painful activities - all meant to make you stronger, of course ("That which does not kill you...yeah, yeah, yeah...") - and since climbing OLH takes a decent climber about 20 minutes (usually a little less), then doing OLH twice made total sense.

So we meet with the Noon Goons at precisely 12 Noon (that's partially how they get their nickname from me) - and head out for a nice, 25-minute warmup to the base of OLH. I was a little hesitant about doing this climb just once, mind you - I last climbed it about 2 months ago and did a PB (that's Personal Best, just to be clear) of about 23:18 or so. Not a great time, but good for me - and I was confident about 2 months ago that I could keep chipping away at that time and get it into the very low 20s by the end of this year. My modest goal for the year was 22:00 flat - and I was sure I could meet this goal - maybe even get it down into the 21:xx range. In fact, a time of 21:18 would have been perfect, since there's this guy, Lucas Pereira, who did 21:19 several years ago when he participated in the Low-Key Hill Climb series back in 1997 (see his personal cycling records here).

I always thought it would be great if I could, one day, match the records of Lucas Pereira, just because his time for various climbs were well beyond my capabilities just a few short years ago, when I first came across his Personal Cycling Records page. I'm sure that Lucas Pereira could care less that there is someone out there attempting to match his accomplishments - he even says this at the top of that page:

This page is mainly for my own use. The records are nothing special, but I figured I would write them down so that I don't forget.

Yeah, I know what you mean, Lucas - and that's how I feel about my own records (the PBs) - they're mostly just for my own benefit. But it's always fun to have someone that you are competing with - besides yourself - just to make the game a little more fun and interesting.

So when I did the Beat-the-Clock Canada Road Time Trial back at the end of May this year (see the results here), I was delighted with my time for the 10-mile TT - 26:14 - which translates to just under 23.0 mph !! Why was I delighted? Because I had done better than Lucas Pereira, who did a lesser version of this time trial on Canada Rd (a shorter, 7.6-mile version, but on the same road) - he did 19:58, which translates to just 22.8 mph - so I had gone a longer distance (2.4 miles longer), and averaged just a little faster speed! Woohoooo!!!

Now granted, there isn't much climbing in that time trial (just a few hundred feet), but it showed that I had made great progress, indeed! Lucas had also climbed Mt Diablo in 1:10:40 - and I had done that same climb in 1:15:30 just a couple of weeks before that Canada Rd time trial, with my friend, Ed (you can see a recording of that ride here) - and I wasn't even trying to go that hard that day - I estimated I could have ridden up Mt Diablo 5 to 7 minutes faster than that, which would put me right there with Lucas' time! Maybe even a little faster! Not only that, but another biking buddy of mine, Mike Tolaio, had climbed Mt Diablo in a best time of 1:09:35 - and so there was an excellent chance I could have done a better time than Mike - and he's someone that was always able to out-climb me on any given day. This year, I've been riding fairly consistently, but Mike has not (he's been devoting a lot of time to his son's baseball development).

So what is the point of all this? Well, getting back to Old La Honda and the ride we did today, I was feeling hesitant - mostly because I just knew it was going to be a painful ride up the climb - and not just because of the difficulty of doing the climb, but also because I have not been climbing much the last couple of months - I've been riding with the Noon Goons during the week, and then doing crits or flatter road races on the weekends, which are a ton of fun, but don't really help you climb any faster.

So today I found out the truth - I'm going backwards! My time up OLH today: 27:02 - almost 4 minutes slower than just 2 months ago! How can that be?

Well, it's not quite as bad as it sounds, at first. If you looked at my time when I was about 1/2 way up the climb, things were looking bright. True, my average heartrate was more like 95% of my max (close to 165 bpm) instead of the 90% rate I was supposed to target (about 157 bpm) - but my time at the 1.0-mile mark was just 6:45 - only 10 seconds slower than my PB time. At the 1/2 way point (mile 1.6), I was at 11:55, just 30 seconds off my PB time. So I was starting to slip, but not too much.

Then, my world blew up - or, at least, my legs blew up. Suddenly, I had that horrible feeling I was about to slow to a crawl - and, I did. At the next checkpoint, mile 2.0, I had a time of 15:50 - a full 1:30 slower than my PB, so I had just lost a full minute in just 0.4 of a mile - not a good sign! And, I knew the last 1.2 miles were going to be equally painful and slow - and, they were! At mile 2.2 (where you travel through these incredibly beautiful pair of redwoods - like a magical door), I was at 19:00, now I was 2:30 down - oh, no! - I had lost another minute! At the 3.0-mile mark, I was at 25:30, now down by 3:30 - oh, brother - I was losing time real quickly - was there a hole in the bottom of the hour glass? How could so much sand escape? Finally, I rounded the final bend and dropped dead at the mailboxes, with a final time of 27:02 - I had officially lost almost 4 minutes from my PB of 23:18 just 2 months ago, on August 1 (you can see a recording of that ride here). Horror of horrors!

Then, I had a bit of good luck - Dennis thought his head tube was a bit loose, and decided he didn't think it would be a good idea to do another climb up OLH. Well, I could have told him that - and I didn't need to pretend my head tube was loose, either - my legs had learned to "Just Say No!" - and they did! So, I didn't (do another climb, that is) - and Dennis kindly kept me company as I limped back to the start area. But we did get in a couple of practice lead-out sprints on the way back - I felt much better, once I was on semi-level ground again!

So what does this all mean? Have I progressed backwards that much in such a short time? Well, yes - and no - I definitely went out too hard, which I said I wasn't going to do - but I did, anyway. The lesson there is: Follow your plan - if you were smart enough to come up with a training plan, then try to at least follow the training plan! Otherwise, why make a plan? Why not just do random rides at random times on random days? So, I think I learned a good lesson here. I'm fairly certain that if I had just started out by working my way up to the 90% heartrate (about 157 bpm), and stayed there for the entire climb, I would have hit the 1/2 way point a little slower (like at about 12:30 or 12:45), but then finished a lot stronger, and would have only lost about 2 minutes from my PB, to finish at about 25 minutes or so.

Thus, I would have been down about 2 minutes, which is a lot more palatable than down by 4 minutes!

Oh, and my friend, Dennis? I had predicted that he would break 20 minutes, based on my observation of his performances over the last few months. And his time? 19:50. Boy, I'm getting awful good at predicting other people's performances - now it's time to work on my own! So congrats to Dennis - he is now officially in the "sub-20" crowd for OLH - and it seems that everyone who considers themselves an avid cyclist knows his/her time up OLH - it's a classic benchmark climb in the Bay Area. It's not the steepest climb (it averages about 7.5%), nor is it the longest (it's about 3.25 miles), but it does climb 1330 feet - and if you can do it in less than 20 minutes, you belong to a fairly elite club of cyclists - and I hope to be there by the Spring of next year, with a little help and encouragement from Dennis and his new training program for me, which will focus on a lot of climbing during the next 4 to 5 months, in preparation for some of the hillier road races next year.

So, I'm going backwards - but it's all about the journey, right? This has been a fun year - I got back into racing, which I hadn't done for 30 years - and I'm able to hang in for a lot of the Noon Goon rides, as well as crits and the flatter road races - and at age 53, that ain't too bad! I mean, I could be 60 pounds overweight and unable to ride around the block, which happens to describe me just 4 short years ago. So I'm not doing too bad - most of the weight is gone (and just why is that last 10 to 15 pounds so hard to drop, anyway?) - and my enthusiasm for biking is at an all-time high (too high, if you ask my family!).

And besides, next year, Dennis and I plan to be bona-fide mutants, tearing the legs off unsuspecting victims on a weekly basis...right, Dennis?

Yeah, right... :)