How NOT To Do A Climb

I did a ride today with a couple of my biking buddies, Ed and Sheila - and I had a lot of hopes that it would be a fun ride for me, even though I dreaded the fact that climbing up Highway 9 from Saratoga to Saratoga Gap was going to be a lot harder than normal.

Why would it be harder? Well, as you probably know from my recent posts, my climbing legs sort of did a disappearing act in the last couple of months, as I did a lot of shorter and flatter rides, even though they were often very fast rides (like 20 to 24 mph - mostly because I was doing training rides with the Noon Goons or actual races on the weekends and having a blast!).

But all those great climbing rides I was doing in the first half of this year were no longer a part of my weekly diet - and my recent attempts to do some long climbs resulted in total disasters!

We had planned to climb Highway 9 first, as a warmup climb - and then do one of the grand-daddys of climbs in the Bay Area, Bohlman - On Orbit - Bohlman (affectionately known as B-O-B). In fact, the Low Key Hillclimb (LKHC) series had just done the B-O-B climb yesterday (Saturday morning) - I didn't join them for a couple of reasons: One, I was taking my youngest son to surf team practice and two, I didn't want to embarras myself by being the last person to finish the climb, which would have most likely been the case!

So Ed and Sheila and I did a little 10-minute warmup from the Starbucks on Saratoga Rd, and when we got to the town of Saratoga, we warmed up a little stronger while going through the town, and when we hit the Bend-Of-Death after you get through the town (where there is a strong left-turn bend), we hit our timers and took off for the climb up Highway 9.

Now, I know that Ed has been getting himself into pretty good climbing shape lately, since he climbs up Sierra Rd near his home in Fremont about once or twice a week - and he also does a lot of mountain biking up Mission Peak, which keeps his legs used to climbing up a big hill.

But I haven't been quite so diligent, and it was interesting when we took off - I started out exactly right, going moderate, keeping my heartrate in the 140 to 150 bpm range (zone 3 for me, where my max heartrate is about 175 bpm). But as we hit those first little rollers on Highway 9, I started pushing a moderate/hard pace (150 to 160 bpm, or zone 4), and then pushed it up into the hard/hard pace (zone 5, above 160 bpm) - and by the time we got to the bridge at mile 2.1 (where Sanborn Rd meets Highway 9), I was 40 seconds FASTER than my PB time back in April of this year! I was cooking - and out there ahead of both Ed and Sheila.

But then, after that bridge, the road pitches up a little stronger, and I realized that I was just going too hard - Ed passed me up as I decided to consciously slow myself down a little - and I watched him pull away from me, which made me feel bad (since I was usually the first one to the top of Highway 9 when we used to ride together a couple of years ago). How depressing!

And, by the time I reached the big hairpin turn at mile 4.4, I was now down by 1:25 from my PB time (my PB on that climb back on April 25 of this year was 43:43).

Normally, being down by just a little over a minute, with just 2.4 miles left to climb would have been fine with me, since I'm 11 pounds heavier right now than when I got that PB back in April, and I haven't done too much climbing in the last 2 or 3 months.

But then, disaster hit - I just couldn't turn the pedals comfortably and get my heartrate back up to hard/hard - it was stuck in a moderate pace, hovering around 150 bpm - basically, I had blown up!

OMG!

And, in the next 2.4 miles, I lost almost 3 minutes PER MILE, losing another 7:15 of time - ugh!!! But, that's what happens when you blow - you just can't turn the pedals very well, and it's possible to lose a lot of time in a very short distance - and that is exactly what happened to me. Sigh.

So, in the end, I did a time of just 52:25, which was close to 9 minutes slower than my PB time of 43:43 just 6 short months ago - oh, brother!

The profile for my heartrate data on my PB ride in April was perfect - I started out moderate (140 to 150), rose to moderate/hard (150 to 159), then rose to hard/hard (160 to 170) for the last 2.4 miles.

To put that into concrete time, I did the last 2.4 miles in my April PB ride in just 17:15, my best ever (I would normally do this in about 19 to 20 minutes). My average heartrate for that last 2.4 miles was about 165 bpm.

For today's ride, I did that same 2.4 miles in 24:30 - quite a difference! My average heartrate for that last 2.4 miles today was only about 150 bpm.

Now, Ed did quite well today - his time for the 6.8 miles was about 44:30, just 45 seconds slower than my PB time of about 43:45 last April.

Ed was actually up by 45 seconds at the big hairpin turn (when you have 2.4 miles left) - and, as he said, his legs felt rather dead towards the end of the climb - he ended up doing that last 2.4 miles in 18:45, which is still an excellent time - but was 1:30 slower than my PB time, which is why he ended up 45 seconds slower than my PB time today.

The bottom line? When you start a climb, you need to stay well within yourself - especially in the first half of a longer climb, so you have something left for that last half.

You also need to keep your weight down, by monitoring it daily - and if you see it starting to creep up, it's time to put the brakes on those second helpings and cut back!

Today, I went out so fast, I was almost a minute faster than my PB ride back in April, which is ridiculous, since I'm not in the same climbing shape - I should have paced myself so I was staying consistently below my PB pace from last April - and if I had done that, I would probably have had a more consistent and stronger second half for today's climb - and not lost so much time so quickly in that last couple of miles.

I think if I had done the climb properly, I would have been about 2 minutes down at the hairpin turn (28:30), and then done about 19:30 for the last 2.4 miles, for a total time of 48:00 - this would have still have been about 4 minutes slower than my PB back in April, but I'd consider that a relative success, since my extra 11 pounds is probably responsible for an additional loss of about 3 minutes ( every 2.2 pounds extra slows you down 3 seconds per kilometer on a moderate 5% climb - so the 11-kilometer climb of Highway 9 translates to an extra 165 seconds for me, almost 3 minutes!).

So, taking the 11 pounds off my body and attacking the climb properly would get me to within 1 minute of my PB time, and would allow me to just about match Ed's time from today.

I'll have a chance to test this theory in early December, when I plan to have lost the extra 11 pounds... :)

And I think I'll try to climb Highway 9 again this week, and attack it like I did when I did my PB ride back in April, and see if I can get anywhere close to the 48:00 time that I should have done for today's ride.

Boy, sometimes your best laid plans...