Mt Diablo Hillclimb 6/22

Course: 10k / 6.2mi up north side of Mt. Diablo to ranger station. 1740ft of elevation gain. First 1.5mi is rollers, then the real climb starts. 
Results: http://www.c4racing.org/www/hillclimb/diablo8.html#Elite%20cat.4
Mice in attendance: Paul Page Hanson + me

I wanted to get out and do the hillclimb as a test of my fitness and as practice for time trialing in general. Though I was thinking of doing the Dunlap TT a few weeks ago and did a team TT years ago, I've never done much time trial practice and have had a historically poor assessment of my ability to go truly hard in long solo efforts. So it's something for me to work on. Bonus: The power-based regime I'm following needs uses TTs as periodic tests to update the LT number for training zones. Been neglecting that, so putting this on the schedule made it unavoidable. 

Last Sunday, I came over and pre-rode the climb with Mateo. I did it twice and came in at around 35 minutes in the second time up doing moderately hard tempo. I was hoping that with race motivation and fresher legs (the day after a crit rather than the day after Pescadero), I could come in at 30 minutes or less. I'd read up a bit on TT pacing and planned to do negative splits, dividing the course into thirds and going progressively harder. 


I started with the first wave, just after 8am. A TT newbie, I was pleased to see they had a starting ramp and a holder/pusher, so it was easy to get a clean start. I sprinted out of the gate and got rolling at a pretty good clip on the rollers, not wanting to lose time from the get-go. But I did consciously ease off on some of the rollers so as not to overcook it too early. Once on the climb, I found a comfortable high-cadence pace for the steady parts of the climb (6-7%) and powered up steep sections (up to 15% they said, probably in corners). 

When a guy caught me 9 minutes into the race, I was impressed. He started some 2 minutes behind me and was really hauling, easily winning the 4s and earning 7th overall with 25:45. I also got caught right near the top by the guy who started 30 seconds behind him. I caught my minute man around two-thirds of the way up. 

I didn't really succeed in pushing the pace harder in the last third, power-wise. I didn't feel like I had the legs to match the lungs. I was pretty surprised that my average heartrate today was 6bpm lower than yesterday's 37 minute crit--but probably because I didn't really get it up that quickly in the first 10 min. Apples and oranges, I guess. It seems like learning to suffer smart is what time trialing is all about. Afterwards, Paul was talking about over-and-under-LT time trial pacing, alternating between going a few beats above LT for brief bits, then recovering just below threshold.


Times: 
Sam: 30:34 (12th in E4 category)
Paul: 29:22 (11th in Open 45+ category)


Power Test: 307 watts average for 30 minutes (4.2W / kg). Without doing a TT effort, I haven't seen this sort of sustained number, but I was expecting right around 300 based on shorter efforts.


Afterwards, to take advantage of being out in the East Bay and to fill the time until Paul would be done (his group left after 11am), I went for a 40 mile ride through the hills north of Walnut Creek. A beautiful loop: Reliez Valley Road to Bear Creek Rd, then back through Orinda. Reliez Valley road was exceptional, with smooth pavement, welcome shade from all the trees, and steady rollers. And I wanted to try the 3 bears, since it's been a while and I didn't get to any of the Berkeley Hills RR recon rides. East of the Berkeley Hills is truly a great area for riding.