10th
That bloody hill
I’ve watched both Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico tonight so I’ve nothing left to do but think about my own cycling racing.
Hog Hill where I’ve raced the last two races has as you might expect from the name a steep hill at the end of every lap. I find this hill very very difficult. Ascent has a guess at your power output from all the info it gets from your Garmin so I thought I’d have a look at what it thinks I did on the hill each lap.
- Average 421 watts, Peak 605 watts
- Average 315 watts, Peak 493 watts
- Average 265 watts, Peak 577 watts
- Average 254 watts, Peak 521 watts
- Average 274 watts, Peak 777 watts
- Average 243 watts, Peak 396 watts
- Average 259 watts, Peak 548 watts
- Average 242 watts, Peak 466 watts
- Average 258 watts, Peak 533 watts
- Average 235 watts, Peak 528 watts
- Average 223 watts, Peak 516 watts
- Average 248 watts, Peak 535 watts
- Average 258 watts, Peak 517 watts
- Average 281 watts, Peak 611 watts
Seems to me in order to stay with the front guys I need to be able to ride at around 350 watts for about 2 minutes (I included the drag to the bottom of the hill in my numbers), recover in 2 minutes and then do it again 14 times. If I can do it twice then it should be simple enough to train for it by raising my FTP (general goal) and doing higher intensity work with 2 minute intervals.
The higher output on the last lap interests me. Calleva from our tema commented at how strong I finished, I was aware of feeling better on the last climb than I was in the middle. I don’t know if it’s psychological or what, but maybe just trying harder is all I need.
