I have the fortune of living on the side of a small mountain, it makes for good views, interesting weather, and great bike riding. On any ride I take from home, I have to do plenty of climbing, either on the way out, coming back, or both. Some of my favorite rides take me up and down the mountain at the beginning and end of my ride, just like my Flint Hill Loop. That is one of my benchmark routes, I like to ride it periodically as if it were a time trial to gauge my fitness. I love climbing, and at 135 lbs it is definitely my cycling strength, I only wish the hills around here were longer, it is difficult to find any climbs more then about a mile long.
So anyway, my best ride so far this summer was somewhere around 70 minutes, but today clocked in under 63 minutes (18.4 average), a sudden improvement. I'll document it here for the sake of future comparison. My average HR was 167, 34 minutes in zone, 8 minutes below, and 21 minutes above. I always try and maintain as high a speed as possible on each of the climbs, out and back.
If I'm doing well, I can sustain over 10 mph for the entire climb. On the way back, I frequently pop near the top of the last climb, it kicks up to a max of 11%.
Today I held between 10.5 and 11 mph for the entire climb up, including the 11% section where my heart rate was hovering around 185-189 bpm. According to a bike power calculator, that was roughly 400 watts for the minute or so it took to cover that section of the mountain.
Not bad, that felt like the absolute maximum that my body could do for 60 seconds without exploding. Man, that was fun.
Really, this ride was what I needed to give my season a good kick of energy for the final weeks of road racing. I had been winding down, feeling like I didn't have much to motivate my training. Now I feel like I can see the fruits of my efforts and I'm ready to give final hurrah to the 2009 racing season.
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