What A Difference A Day Makes !

Good news - I'm back in the game - on this morning's ride with one of my biking buddies, Ed, I did the Hwy 9 climb in 48:05 - about 4:20 faster than just a few days ago (when I did 52:25) - Wooohooo!!

Interestingly, my average heartrate was identical on both climbs - 153 bpm !!

The difference? Pacing. I approached the climb much like I did my PB ride of Hwy 9 back in late April of this year - where I started out much easier, then started pushing harder after hitting the halfway mark of the climb (in terms of time, not distance).

So, comparing my splits today with my PB ride back in April, I was only 2 minutes down at the half-way mark (22:00 in April, and 24:00 today) - then I pushed the pace harder for the second half, when it gets a little steeper on average, and saw my heartrate steadily rise up, just like on my PB ride.

So, for the second half, my PB ride was done in 21:43 (for a total time of 43:43) and today I did that second half in 24:05, losing just a little over 2 more minutes from my PB time back in April.

And when I did that PB ride in April, I weighed 11 pounds less than today - according to Joe Friel, that ll pounds (5 kg) is worth 15 seconds per kilometer, and the Hwy 9 climb is 11 kilometers, so my weight penalized me 165 seconds, or almost 3 minutes!

So, subtracting 2:45 (165 seconds) from today's time of 48:05, you get 45:20 - which is my theoretical time on today's climb if my weight were the same as last April.

And 45:20 is only about 1:30 slower than my PB time back in April. Of course, I need to lose the weight to turn that theoretical time into a real time!

Bottom line? I don't feel quite so bad now.

Oh - more good news! Yesterday's disaster on Page Mill? It appears I had a slow leak in my rear tire! When I met Ed this morning and got my bike out of my car, my rear tire was totally flat! I took out the tube and pumped it up quite a bit, looking for the leak, which we could not find. So I tossed the tube into the back of my car, and when we got back from our ride this morning, the tube's pressure was down quite a bit!

So it looks like I was climbing up Page Mill with a bum rear tire - I hadn't even thought about having a slow leak after I got to the top and saw my horrible time of 1:01:15 (which was about 8 minutes slower than my time last week).

I guess I should have realized that something was wrong, because my descent back to my car took quite a bit longer than when Dennis and I did the descent last week.

Duh!

So now I'm all psyched up again about getting myself back on track with my climbing program. I've decided I'm going to try and mimic the training I did back in the earlier part of this year, when I really did a good job of improving my climbing.

Back then, I did a lot of rides for fun, but I made a point of hitting a lot of shorter climbs, some mild, and some quite steep - where I would turn on the after-jets and burn it up the climb - these climbs were often just 1/2 mile to 1 mile in length - so the climbs took anywhere from 3 or 4 minutes to 12 minutes (Crestview Rd is one of those harder ones - 1.36 miles, but 650 feet of climbing - ouch!).

Then, I started mixing in longer climbs (like Hwy 9 or Old La Honda or Kings Mtn Rd) and would then push it up those climbs - but only after getting in some "base" climbing on the shorter stuff.

Plus, I rode just about every day - doing lots of climbing most days. It's just that some days, my climbs would be "fun climbs", where I went at a very mellow pace, kind of like a cycling tourist - looking around and checking out the scenery, instead of suffering and doing that "blank stare" at the pavement in front of you, wondering when the pain and suffering would mercifully come to an end... :)

So that's what I'm going to do for the next couple of months. And this is a good plan, too, as I need to re-discover how fun cycling can be, but still mix in some useful training days, to keep improving on my climbing, which is my weakest area.

Another bonus about focusing on the shorter (and often steeper) climbs - the first race of next season is the San Bruno Hillclimb, on New Year's Day. I want to do that race - and focusing on the short, steep climbs will help, since that hillclimb is not super long - it's just 3.7 miles, and averages about 7% for the grade. This makes is similar to Old La Honda.

In fact, your theoretical time on the San Bruno Hillclimb should be within 30 seconds to a minute of your time on Old La Honda.

I haven't decided what my target time will be for the San Bruno Hillclimb - it will mostly depend on how I am progressing as we get near Christmas. I'll have plenty of data from my local training rides to see where I am at - hopefully, I will be getting close to my various PBs that I established earlier this year (in April, May, and June).

All I know is that after yesterday's disastrous climb up Page Mill Rd, I was going to call Ed and tell him I wanted to bail on this mornings ride - in fact, I was thinking about bailing on riding for the rest of this year!

But I'm glad I didn't bail - and I'm glad I decided to guts it out and do today's ride up Hwy 9, which gave me faith again that things aren't always as bad as they seem sometimes...

Yep, what a difference a day makes!