More spring climbing for the Specialized Climbing Challenge on Strava

Chasing Josiah up the hill at the end of my ride – wearing @strava bibs and #southerncx jersey
iBike data annotated at peaks (click to enlarge)
Today was an easy day with a big criterium tomorrow in Dothan. I spent most of the ride looking for good hills in the shade to do repeats on. The nice thing about the hills through neighborhoods like Bluff Park and Green Valley is that you can practice criterium cornering using gravity to help you accelerate up to crit speed rather than wearing yourself out trying to punch it up to 30mph to head into a corner. The course tomorrow has a pretty good hill so that will make for a bit of climbing, but I’m likely to be even farther behind Robin who is crushing the climbing over in England. Jeremy in France is catching up with his climbing in the Alps, and Guido from Australia is not too far behind. That’s four riders in three different continents pushing hard in the Strava virtual competition. That’s the beauty of Strava — bringing riders from all over for virtual competition.

Rolling climb up into Bluff Park vs more direct route on the descent. That is the way to maximize climbing – spend as little time on the descents as possible (typically by picking the really steep descents and going really fast)

54.9 miles to climb 10,000 ft.

Max speeds – the 46.9mph one is coming down off of Bluff Park (see green/back elevation profile screenshot). The 58.0mph is S Cove Dr.

Elevation profile late in the ride – partial descent down from Bluff Park on the left and the Renfroe climb and S Cove Dr descent on the right side of the profile

Complete ride stats – showing climbing ratio

Complete ride stats – showing max speed, average speed, and average heartrate

Lots of climbing stats

Today was quite a combination of rides — hitting a new personal record of shortest distance to 5,000′ of vertical gain on the way into work and then hitting 5,000′ ft again in less than 30 miles on the way home from work. Both rides were pretty slow with lots of weaving on the steep parts and several roller coaster repeats. The best thing about the roller coaster repeats is that they are insanely fast in the 53×11 on the descents and then nearly instantly into the 39×28 — that’s a lot of wear and tear on the derailleurs. No wonder I have broken three front and one rear derailleur in the past year and snapped several cables.

Morning ride (annotated) – click to enlarge

Afternoon ride topocreator map – annotated – click to enlarge

Annotated ibike data from morning ride (click to enlarge)

Annotated ibike data from afternoon ride (click to enlarge)

Finally, here are the garmin screenshots:

skyland dr rollers in the morning

one to two climbing ratio plus opposite maxed out acceleration (this is on the s brookwood roller coaster)

new record 5,000′ vertical feet in 23.7 miles

26 miles to climb one vertical mile (5280′)

one to two climbing ratio on top of vestavia dr late in my morning commute

morning ride – ride stats, temp, max speed, avg speed, avg heartrate, distance

morning ride – climbing ratio

Fast max speeds in the afternoon (annotated)

Elevation profile with max speeds indicated

Less than 30 miles to 5,000 ft of climbing on my afternoon commute

Afternoon commute ride stats – climbing ratio

Tour de Tuscaloosa Power Data

First, before the power data – here’s a video that my wife got of the Pro/1/2 criterium finish Saturday night where I got 5th in the race, 4th in the field sprint.

And now for the data – first the summary data, splits, and HR/Power graph for the criterium and the road race.

2012 Tour de Tuscaloosa Criterium Pro/1/2 lap splits
				Power				
Lap	Time	Miles	Avg	xPow	Max	HR	MPH
1	2:58	1.2	245	259	871	155	25.2
2	2:53	1.2	291	286	879	164	25.7
3	2:41	1.2	353	385	996	176	27.8
4	2:53	1.3	324	331	821	180	26
5	2:59	1.3	305	313	997	175	25.2
6	2:47	1.3	223	229	814	167	27
7	2:45	1.2	284	303	941	174	27.4
8	2:54	1.2	274	285	840	170	25.7
9	2:50	1.2	269	294	856	174	26.2
10	2:53	1.3	282	310	932	172	26.1
11	2:56	1.2	310	382	877	175	25.5
12	3:01	1.2	267	288	831	177	24.8
13	3:04	1.2	208	221	720	160	24.3
14	2:54	1.2	218	233	736	159	25.6
15	2:58	1.2	232	229	727	163	25.2
16	2:48	1.2	262	271	790	170	26.5
17	2:57	1.3	248	254	920	167	25.5
18	2:36	1.2	353	352	925	179	28.8
Total	52:01	22.5	274	312	997	170	26

Annotated heartrate and power data from Saturday’s Pro/1/2 criterium (click to enlarge)

2012 Tour de Tuscaloosa Road Race Pro/1/2 lap splits
				Power				
Lap	Time	Miles	Avg	xPow	Max	HR	MPH
1	22:04	9.6	274	305	963	161	26.1
2	21:41	9.6	262	281	801	157	26.6
3	21:45	9.6	292	310	808	166	26.5
4	22:35	9.6	254	273	641	155	25.6
5	23:17	9.6	257	276	604	153	24.8
6	23:28	9.6	254	268	697	152	24.5
7	18:41	8.0	313	332	950	166	25.8
Total	2:34:57	66.1	270	295	963	158	25.6

Annotated heartrate and power data for the road race (click to enlarge)

Now for the detailed data graphs and plots … first the critical power curves for both the criterium and the road race. I tied one power record in the criterium, and I set three new personal power records for the road race as indicated on the graphs.

Pro/1/2 criterium critical power curve (click to enlarge)

Pro/1/2 road race critical power curve (click to enlarge)

Here are the pedal force / pedal velocity graphs which highlight the different amount of force being applied to the pedals at different cadences.

Pro/1/2 criterium pedal force vs pedal velocity (click to enlarge)

Pro/1/2 road race pedal force vs pedal velocity (click to enlarge)

And finally here are the power maps for the two courses:

Pro/1/2 criterium power map (click to enlarge)

Pro/1/2 road race power map (click to enlarge)

Tour de Tuscaloosa Road Race

(You will want to watch this video below with the volume turned down – I love my fanatical wife! This is me winning the 2012 Alabama State Road Race Championships (Pro/1/2) today at the Tour de Tuscloosa)

Quick thanks and shout out
Thanks to all my teammates today. We ended up winning the state championship medals in 3 categories – me (Cat 1), Justin Bynum (Cat 2), Kevin Paulik (Cat 3). Kudos also to two other riders from Birmingham taking the Cat 4 (Jason Kellen) and Cat 5 (Boris Simmonds) medals.

Race Summary
The Pro/1/2 race had about 60 in it with lots of strong teams. I attacked hard when we reached the bottom of the first hill on the course about 1/2 mile into the race. Stuart Lamp (Nashvillecyclist.com) came with me initially but then ended up pulling a hamstring before the top. Jan Kolar (HomeSmart/L5flyers) bridged up to me across the top and the two of us drilled it. Behind, a group of six had formed and caught us shortly before Sam Sutton Hill (short and steep). Our group of 8 worked moderately well together, and we were flying! But some riders were struggling and I felt our pace was going to drop soon so I attacked again on the third lap at the same spot where I had attacked at the beginning of the race and again only Jan Kolar was able to respond and come with me. He asked me “Are you sure you want to do this?”. I looked back and saw Andy Crater coming across and said “Yes, let’s go!”. Andy joined us and we were rolling hard with Emile Abraham leading the chase behind. We hit the Sam Sutton Hill with maybe a 5-10 second gap – which Emile crossed solo to us like the hill wasn’t even there. Once it was the four of us, we were gone.

We worked well together, and it was clear that a very interesting race was playing out behind us based on the time splits we were getting from the moto official. It’s the first time I’ve heard “3 minutes to the field – it’s crazy back there” as a time split. This was after we had gotten a time split of 2’30″ to a break of thirteen, 3’30″ to the field. Half a lap later, we got the “it’s crazy back there” time split. Then we didn’t get any time splits for about 2 full laps (20 miles) until we got a time split of 3’30″ to the field. We thought everything was great until maybe half a lap later when we got a time split of 2’30″ to a chase group of six. Then a lap later we got a time split of 1’30″ with a little more than one lap to go. By the top of the feedzone hill we had gotten a few more time splits (apparently the moto ref was bouncing back and forth b/t our group and the chase) and the gap went very quickly from 1’30″ to 1’00″ to 50″ to 45″. We were in full blown panic mode at this point and drilled it hard pretty much the entire last lap.

Andy Crater came into the last corner first and attacked hard on the short steep kicker section of the feedzone hill. Emile and I quickly chased up to him with Jan coming off our group. Andy sat up as soon as he was caught and neither Emile or I came around so our pace dropped to 14mph. Jan crawled his way back up to us. I was afraid of the chase group catching us at that pace, so I went back to the front and ramped the pace back up to 21mph across the false flat in the middle of the hill. As we got closer to the top, I knew that I had to attack hard on the hill because Andy and Emile would easily beat me in the flat sprint across the top. So right as we reached the steepest part of the climb when I was still on the front and our pace had dropped back down to 14mph again, I jumped hard from the front and immediately got back up to 21mph and kept it above 20mph for nearly the rest of the hill. This was enough to get a big enough gap to ease up at the 250 meter to go sign and come into the finish line solo. With my wife and kids there cheering frantically, it has to be one of the sweetest wins in nearly 20 years of bike racing.

Behind us, I found out after the race that it was Joey Rosskopf and Frank Travieso driving the six man group also containing my teammate Pat Allison. Pat ended up fourth in that group for 8th in the race, which was the 3rd place Alabama rider (bronze medal). My teammate, Justin Bynum, finished in the second chase group for 17th in the race, but he was the 1st place Alabama Cat 2 rider to take the gold medal.

After our race was over, my other teammate Kevin Pawlik took the gold medal in the Cat 3 race.

What a great day for Tria Cycling p/b DonohooAuto.com and Infinity Med-i-spa!

Pro/1/2 field leaving lake lurleen state park

Josiah with the chalk on the feedzone hill

Our final four-man break with one lap to go. We definitely needed encouragement as the chase group was bearing down on us.

Me with Josiah and Analise shortly after the finish

Me and Jan Kolar – “Let’s shake and bake, baby!”

Rehashing the race in beautiful Alabama

I had to get a picture that says “Pro state champ” even if I really was only the “Cat 1 state champ”

The Alabama State Championship podium – Josiah said he wants to wear the medal to school tomorrow

Josiah and Analise on our hike through the park while waiting for the awards ceremony.

Tour de Tuscaloosa Criterium

Criterium race summary
First criterium of the year – fast, strong field – happy with a top 5 finish. I went with a good break on the second or third lap, but I was outnumbered with some really good sprinters – I believe Andy Crater, Emile Abraham, and Frank Travieso were all in this break so I wasn’t very committed to it knowing that I wouldn’t stand a chance in the sprint against those guys. When we got caught, my teammate Pat Allison launched himself into the next move. A couple laps later, they were caught just as Joey Rosskopf (Team Type I Sanofi) and Oscar Clark (United Healthcare of Georgia) slipped away in a perfectly timed attack. I missed the move, but I was near enough to the front by the bottom of the hill to attack to try to bridge. This didn’t work as I never got a good gap and just ended up pulling the field for the last third of a lap. On the next lap, Frank Travieso (Team Coco’s) attacked hard and got a gap solo. I attacked and bridged up to him right as we caught Johnny Brizzard (Subaru) who had also been off the front chasing. We were closing in on the leaders, but the field was closing in on us so we gave up the chase. At this point, I was pretty cooked and slid to the back part of the field with maybe 6 or 7 long laps left in the race. When I saw three laps to go, I started moving up and made it up close to the front by the bottom of the hill on the last lap. Frank Travieso launched like a missile at the bottom of the hill – which then detonated the field as everyone panicked to try to catch him. I ended up in good position by the top of the hill but still maybe 10 riders back from the front. I swung out a little left and attacked to move up. A second or two later, three riders moved over in front of me to start their sprint before the second to last turn. I immediately latched onto this mini-train and came around the last two turns in 4th position in the field and ended up passing one rider to take 5th for the race – with Joey up the road taking a solo win and Frank just ahead of the field taking 2nd. My teammate Pat Allison came in just behind me for 6th. Kristine did some amazing cheering and got a good video of the finish and some from earlier in the race – will post these tomorrow after the road race.