Strava shootout, Rapha 500, and Diabolical climbing

Diabolical double oak climbing profile. Each red box represents a climb/hill of at least 0.25 miles long and average gradient >5%. Each blue box is a downhill at least 0.25 miles long and >5% gradient.

Yesterday was the first day of the Rapha 500 challenge (ride 500km Dec 23-31). I’m hoping to knock out all of it in just four days (85 miles yesterday, 93 miles today including a KOM on the BBL ride, 30-40 miles tomorrow, and 135 miles on Monday riding from Birmingham up to a spot near the interstate in Hartselle where Kristine will pick me up for the rest of our trip up to Wisconsin). Yesterday was also the day that I picked to put in my effort on this week’s Strava KOM shootout climb – Oakdale. My friend Warren St John was back home visiting from New York, and we got in a good short climbing ride on Thursday ahead of a much longer, and more diabolical climbing ride on Friday (yesterday). Basically, I looked at the topo map and tried to direct us to wherever the contour lines were closest together (i.e., the steepest hills I could find). This was all on the way out to the Double Oak Way climb which is 3 miles long with gradients exceeding 20% in several places and maxing out at 25% in one spot. We didn’t finish the Double Oak climb, however, because some hunters or Alabama power workers were at the gate and turned us around. That’s ok, though, because it was still well over 11,000 ft of climbing packed into a difficult 85 miles.

Making the ride even harder, I did my max effort on the Oakdale KOM – 7’07″ at an average heart rate of 179bpm towards the beginning of the ride. Here is my heartrate and strava-calculated power data for the climb –

Oakdale KOM heartrate, Strava calculated power, speed, and elevation Here is the link to an interactive version of the Strava data – http://app.strava.com/rides/2848502

And finally, here is the detailed topocreator map of the route.

Oakdale Double Oak lots of climbing

Alabama topography annotated

Click on the map for a huge (7.2MB) detailed annotated map with a few major Alabama mountains annotated.

When I was looking at the state map of Alabama that I had made using topocreator, I noticed how you can see that the Smoke Ridge climb is connected to Skyball from the Tour de Cullman. I was inspired to make maps for both my Sunday Adventure to Smoke Rise and also for the Tour de Cullman. Enjoy!

Topocreator map of the Smoke Rise route with major Alabama mountains annotated. Click the map for a medium version (2MB) or click this link for a really huge detailed version (16MB)

Tour de Cullman annotated mountains. Click the map for a medium version (3MB) or click this link for a really huge detailed version (12MB)

Sunday Adventure

Summary
Wow, what a great adventure yesterday was! We had tickets for the Andrew Peterson Christmas concert “Behold the Lamb” last night at the Ryman Center in Nashville and went on a fun double date with my cousins in Nashville. I left right after my daughter sang in a trio at Lakeside in the morning church service and rode north to Smoke Rise, AL where Kristine picked me up to drive the rest of the way to Nashville in time for the concert. The drive was highlighted by a u-turn on I-65 which had been blocked from an accident and then AWESOME rally car driving with Kristine as the navigator calling out distances to turns on very narrow country roads following my GPS set on bicycle directions. After a great dinner at Demos with Richard and Christy, an AMAZING concert, and a three hour drive back to Birmingham we were home by 2AM.

The Details
Analise was singing in a trio at the 10:30 church service at Lakeside so my original plans to ride from Birmingham to Huntsville and have Kristine pick me up got shortened to riding from Birmingham to Smoke Rise – a rural community south of Cullman atop the same ridge line as the finishing climb for the Tour de Cullman. I went ahead and rode to Lakeside so that I could leave straight from there after Analise finished singing and still make it to Smoke Rise in time for Kristine to pick me up to drive the rest of the way to Nashville.

The route was amazing. Check out the annotated topocreator maps of the route below the picture gallery. Low traffic, lots of great climbing, nearly half the route on roads I have never ridden before, and some fun adventure to boot! Adventure highlights from the bike ride include:

• Exploring a neighborhood abandoned years ago after the streets were built but before any houses were built
• Getting stung by a wasp or yellow jacket on my head just above my ear
• Exploring new roads
• The cool boat landing climb up from the Warrior river
• And finally the Smoke Rise climb and descent

Probably the most adventuresome thing that happened on our drive up to Nashville was an accident that blocked the interstate causing us to do some rally car driving through the rural Tennessee countryside between exit 22 and exit 27. What I mean by rally car driving is that I set my GPS to biking directions and asked it to give us directions to the next exit, which it did by taking us on these really small, sometimes gravel roads. There were lots of sudden turns so I put the GPS on the screen which shows distances to the next turn, and Kristine counted down the distance to the next turn, which means we could drive fast without worrying about missing a turn. It was absolutely awesome because the terrain was really steep and there were a bunch of turns. I was careful though to slow down at any blind spots in case there were any cyclists, horses, people, or cars just around the corner. We saw nobody!

There’s a lot more I could say about the ride, but I’ll just leave this post with a lot of pictures. Most of these were taken while riding, which is not easy with an iphone.

Analise and the children’s choir at Lakeside Baptist Church

Departing from Lakeside after stopping back at the car to drop off my clothes and shoes and reload my pockets with food.

An abandoned bridge near Whole Foods in Mountain Brook – this road helps avoid a short stretch of 280 and gives you about 35 extra feet of climbing

One of the many roller coaster hills in Mountain Brook, this one is near Whole Foods

You can see Bald Rock Mountain (the highest pt in Birmingham at just under 1600ft) and a number of the southeastern ridges from this descent off of N Woodridge Rd

This was how verified that what I was seeing really was Bald Rock. I was pretty sure on my ride but I wanted to double check using Google Maps.

Annotated view of four of the southeastern ridges .

Climbing back up after doing the South Brookwood roller coaster which is WAY too fast (45+mph) to try and take a picture with an iph

The roller coaster climb up different portion of N Woodridge which turns into Spring Valley Rd

This roller coaster picture didn’t turn out too well because this is on the descent looking down doesn’t give you the right perspective of how steep the climb coming out of the corner is. This was taken with no-hands on the bar descending at close to 25mph

Yes, I did make the turn onto the I-20 West on ramp, but it was only to take the cutover to Oporto Madrid Blvd which splits off the on ramp before reaching the interstate

The view of the Gate City / East Lake hill which Oporto-Madrid Blvd skirts around on its way to Ruffner Mountain. The route I created took me straight up and over the hill on a nice 26% one lane road

After crossing the Gate City hill and making it through East Lake, the road I was on went right by the Southern Museum of Flight, which is really cool for cyclists because so many of the planes are lined up along on the road outside the museum.

That is a large jet fighter!

Can you find the stealth bomber in this picture?

Can you see the stealth bomber now? This is the accidental usage of the “finger over the camera lens” cloaking technology

This army crane helicopter is really fascinating.

Mig 21 jet fighter – I wonder how we got it from the Russians – a jet exchange program?

Annotated view of the airport and downtown Birmingham

This plane had taken off from the airport and was flying right towards me before starting to turn.

Trying to take a picture of the bee/yellow jacket/wasp sting

For some reason I found this yield sign at the train tracks funny and ironic. I guess they realized that nobody would stop at a stop sign so they changed it to a yield sign to remind you that the train has the right-of-way? It reminded me of the sign you sometimes see at airports “yield to airplanes”.

View of the pointy mountains north of Trussville – Pine Mountain and Spring Mountain are back behind these front hills.

The Church St climb into warrior from the bridge crossing the Warrior River

View from the Warrior River bridge of the boat ramp climb

View of an abandoned railroad bridge to the southwest

You can start this climb from in the river. I did!

Ready, set, go! You want to make sure not to apply too much force and spin out with a wet rear tire.

Looking up the start of the boat ramp from directly underneath the bridge

A very peaceful looking Warrior river

It is amazing how many places were affected by small tornadoes during the April 27th storms. This is on the north end of the town of Warrior. Even if you have never ridden this stretch of road, you can tell that this is tornado damage because the tree ratio isn’t correct for the area (i.e., there should be a lot more trees) and that some of the trees are damaged and/or dead. Plus the blue tarps on the house behind the bus also indicate that a small tornado came through here.

The name of this road is Grandview Trail. This part overlooks the interstate which is too far down to be seen, but I could hear the cars. The ridge on the other side of valley is on the other side of the interstate.

This section here was the steepest part of the climb at right about 20% gradient.

One last roller to get to the top of the Smoke Rise climb.

Annotated view from the Smoke Rise high pt looking southeast

View from Smoke Rise high pt looking north towards Cullman and Hartselle

The intersection visible in this picture is Valley Trail. I was looking forward to this descent at the end of my ride, and it was really fast and fun – but shorter than I expected

Nearing the end of Andrew Peterson’s “Behold the Lamb” Christmas concert

Downtown Nashville after the concert

topocreator map of the route

BBL Sterrett 2011-12-10 at 20x normal speed (320mph avg speed)

So this is what BBL looks like at 20x speed (roughly 300-400mph … sometimes faster, sometimes slower depending on whether we are going uphill or downhill). This also includes my ride to/from the start of BBL. BBL itself starts at 2:15, the Sterrett attack zone starts at 8:32 and finishes at 8:52. The climb up Vandiver starts at 10:20 and the descent down the other side finishes at 10:58. Chris, Morgan, and I climb Karl Daly at 13:38 and then one of my crazy climbing routes through Irondale and Mountain Brook starts right after the Grants Mill descent at 14:10. Fun 280 section from 15:40 until 15:50, Smyer climb at 15:55, Vesclub descent at 16:40, Panorama Dr at 17:20, South Cove descent at 17:32

Strava KOM shootout

Scroll to minute 7:30 and watch the Altaloma descent, South Cove KOM climb (at 7:45), Panorama (at 8:06), Renfro Descent (at 8:32), and a second descent down Altaloma (at 8:42).

It all started with my teammate Nichole and her husband Paul posting the following comments on my Facebook page -

Nichole got right to work on it and did a search on Strava to download all the climbs in Birmingham along with the fastest time and number of times ridden. From that selection of climbs, Nichole and Paul narrowed it down to a nice variety of climbs of varying lengths and steepness. I put together a website using the Strava API so that all somebody has to do is copy the Strava URL for their effort on the climb to have it recorded alongside everyone else.

Strava KOM shootout Tria Cycling p/b DonohooAuto.com screenshot

This week’s climb, South Cove Dr, starts less than 1 mile from my house as the crow flies, 1369.4664 meters to be exact. I’ll give it the steepest climb in Birmingham designation given that you can hit nearly 60mph on the descent (and it is only 0.2 miles long). I do know of a few climbs that have higher max gradients, but none of them sustain those max gradients for as long as South Cove sustains its max.

Two more things to emphasize how steep this climb is:

1) As I was doing a max effort on it today, I kept on pulling the front wheel off the ground slightly on every pedal stroke and had to back off on how hard I was pulling on the bars
2) This climb is 1/4th the length of the Pumphouse climb, yet climbs 30 feet higher, and would take longer than Pumphouse with similarly applied power on both climbs
3) Minimum of 385 watts not to fall over through the steepest section (see the ibike data from a ride from February earlier this year and elevation profile below) -

---------South Cove Dr Monster---------
Dist:        0.22 mi (0:02:50)
Climbing:     229 ft
Energy:      52.0 kJ
Cals Burn:   49.7 kcal
Braking:      0.0 kJ (0.0%)
          Min   Avg    Max
Power     226  306.0   403  W
Aero        0   10.9    17  W
Rolling     5    6.3    10  W
Gravity   198  291.0   385  W
Speed     3.5    4.8   7.6  mi/h
Elev       512    634   740  ft
Slope     9.0  18.01  24.3  %
Caden      31   41.3    65  rpm
HR        132  158.3   165  bpm
NP 309 W; IF 1.114; TSS 5.9

South Cove Dr – less than a mile from my house, this climb has the highest average gradient of the monsters.

Here is a 3D annotated view of the climb: contour intervals are 40ft

3D view of the south cove dr climb

3D view of the entire route – including warmup before attempting the KOM

Super hi-res topoCreator map of the entire route (5MB)