Epic Skyway Epic

Quick summary – 2nd place behind Adam Gaubert from Texas although I did snag the $100 bill for the KOM at the top of one of only eleven Cat 2 climbs (currently) in Alabama. Sometimes the stats don’t do a race justice, but here they are: 60ish miles in just under 4 hours, 8 minutes. I didn’t have a wheel speed sensor so I’m guessing I must have lost satellite a few times to come up under 60 miles. It felt like 100+ miles, though.

Heartrate summary for the skyway epic

2012 Skyway Epic annotated heartrate data

The details – what an amazing job Brent did start to finish with this race. The mass start was creative with all 60+ riders lined up at the end of the boat dock area giving us plenty of room to charge all the way up the entrance area to a grassy cordoned off chute which led into the single track. Adam Gaubert, Jeff Clayton, and Lennie Moon (Team Momentum) entered in the single track in that order. Behind them I believe it was David Darden (BiciCoop), maybe one or two other riders, Ed Merritt (BiciCoop), and then me (Tria Cycling p/b DonohooAuto.com and Infinty Med-i-spa). I was able to keep up no problem through the single track, but Adam and Jeff were destroying the singletrack and had quite a lead by the end.

As soon as we made it out of the singletrack onto the dam, I attacked hard to start to close the gap to the leaders. I passed Lennie and David on the climb after the dam and continued to drive it hard onto Wiregrass Rd (dirt/gravel forest road). After a mile or two, I could see the leaders up ahead and I was closing pretty fast. Once I caught onto the back of them, we entered into a pretty good 3-way rotation going into the bottom of the climb. I took a hard pull and got a gap about 1/3rd of the way up the climb so I drilled it. The climb was long, though, and once we hit the skyway portion of the climb, the road was much rougher and I had problems finding a good line so Adam was closing in on me. Thankfully, the climb leveled out a bit and got smoother shortly before the top so I was able to lock out the front suspension, stand up and give it one more burst to reach the KOM first and grab the $100 bill.

The effort for the KOM really cost me, though, as I was cooked. I stopped to stuff the $100 deep down in my jersey pocket, and Adam flew by me while I was stopped. I got started again and went through the most challenging part of the course at maybe twice the speed that I had gone when I pre-rode the course in February. But Adam continued to put time on me all the way to the turnaround. It looked like he was 30 seconds or so ahead of me by the turnaround. I still had a bottle and a half of gatorade so I just stopped briefly to grab the proof necklace before setting off in pursuit of Adam. I was hoping that I could catch him on the climb so I could follow his line through all the rough sections – but it wasn’t to be. It was awesome as all the outbound racers were shouting encouragement and giving me time splits to Adam. It started out as 30 second time splits, but eventually it went up into the minute or 2 minute range. I believe he had 3 minutes by the bottom of the
descent back down the KOM climb.

I think I kept the gap there until close to the end where he still had 3 minutes at the last aid station. I stopped there to get some cold coke, banana, and water. This was a very important stop because I really couldn’t figure out how to eat or drink during the singletrack sections so I did that last 10 miles with only one or two sips of water. It was in this last singletrack section that Jeff Clayton (Georgia Neurological Institute) came flying up to me out of nowhere. I immediately let him by thinking that I could hop on his wheel and follow his lines. This lasted for LESS THAN 5 SECONDS as I lost it on the very first turn crashing hard. My bars were stuck on the wrong side of the top tube and it took a few seconds to yank them back across the top tube (I’m glad I went with aluminum instead of carbon fiber).

I had already resigned myself to riding as hard as possible to try to finish on the last step of the podium when on the next hill I started to come up on Jeff pretty fast … my first thought was that he must have popped himself trying to distance me, but then I realized that he had a completely flat rear tire. I came around him thinking that he would have no problem stopping to change the tire and then catching back up to me again. So I could never really let up off the pace … but as it turns out, Jeff couldn’t get the tire to hold air so he had to ride in the last several miles on the flat – and yet he still held on for third!

Kristine snagged a few videos … one of me coming out of the final singletrack and another of me finishing a minute or two later and one of Josiah asking if I was in this race … good stuff!

Highland Rim Classic – Day 2

Race summary – 2nd place in the race today to take 2nd place in the omnium. Chris Brown (Litespeed – BMW) took the win again today after emerging together with me in a late 2-man move when the fireworks of the end game began at mile 103 in the first of NINE attacks made over a span of five miles from mile 103 to mile 108. I was lucky to be able to grab and hold Chris’s wheel to the end of the race at mile 113 where he easily took the sprint … this race is officially the longest race I have ever done.

The details – I was sitting 3rd in the omnium behind Stephen Bassett (Texas Roadhouse) and Chris. I knew that the race would be long so I wanted to make it a race of survival. Unfortunately, I did a lot of work on the first of two long laps that probably wore me out more than it did anyone else. I got into an early two man move when I jumped with Jon Hart (Friends of the Great Smokies) a mile or two after the neutral zone. We worked hard drilling it at just below threshold all the way to climb. John came off on the climb, and I knew that I couldn’t hold an 80 mile solo break so I eased up the climb waiting for what was left of the field to catch up.

At this point, our pace really dropped and I was worried of two things: 1) the race taking so long that we would all die of dehydration 2) people getting an easy ride to the finish and then outsprinting me at the end. The first concern was no problem because there was good neutral water support in the feedzone and I was able to get 3 bottles on one lap and 2 bottles on another lap – combined with the 3 bottles I started with made for 8 bottles completely drained by the end. Regarding concern #2, I attacked a couple times hoping to get somebody to go with me to share the work, but ended up riding off the front both times.

The chase – A mile or two after the feedzone, Jon Hart rode off the front again and would eventually amass a maximum lead of 3’30″. Behind him, Chris Brown and I did a lot of the work for the first 15-20 miles of the chase, with Bradley Spears (Sonic) also contributing and the Texas Roadhouse duo making some contributions as well. Two of John’s teammates were able to sit in and rest since they had their teammate up the road. Eventually, once the gap reached 3’30″, the Texas Roadhouse duo started working harder and more frequently — particularly Stephen’s teammate Andrew Dillman who stepped up to do more work while Stephen waited for the climb.

The climb – Chris was on the front leading into the climb and when we turned to go up the steep part, he lifted the pace substantially. We reached the first step of the stair-stepper climb and the pace eased off a bit, but when we reached the next steep part Stephen put in a very hard attack. Chris countered this move lifting the pace again, but by this point we were going fast enough that we were near the top of the Cat 3 climb. I held on, but was really spent by the top of the climb. We ended up losing 1 or 2 from our group and Chris pushed the pace hard across the top to make sure that we stayed away.

The chase, part 2, and the fireworks of the end game – A mile or two after we reached the top, John’s teammate Jeff McGrane attacked and got away solo. Chris, Andrew, Stephen, and I got into a good rotation and after 20 miles of chasing finally caught Jeff. Chris put in a strong attack immediately and then when he was caught, somebody else (it may have been Chris again) attacked again. This ended up shelling Stephen’s teammate Andrew. Five attacks later (it could have been by aliens for all I know considering how delirious I was at the time — but the attacks are clearly visible in the power data), and we had lost Stephen. Then Jeff put in another attack, which Chris countered and that is when we lost Jeff leaving just Chris and me for the 3 mile descent and 2 mile gradual rise to the finish. We traded pace on the descent and stayed away to the finish where Chris took the sprint.

With the ride back to the start at Cumberland Caverns, I ended up with nearly 200K of racing and riding today to cap off a 466 mile week. Tired. Here is all the data!

Heartrate summary

Annotated attacks that comprised the end-game from today’s race … doesn’t include the finishing sprint. Click to enlarge

Annotated plot of heartrate and power (30sec smoothing) – click to enlarge.

We could call this pedal force vs pedal velocity graph “the blob” – click to enlarge

New power records from the road race

Highland Rim Classic – Day 1

Sometimes it’s more about the adventure than the race (although the race was really good, too). Today was a day like that – from the long drive on beautiful country roads to the climb that I wanted to do on my warm-up taking a bit longer than expected leaving me less than 5 minutes to refill water bottles and shoot over to the line before the start. So, I’ve included some pictures and video from the drive up and the festivities surrounding the race.

About the race – Chris Brown (Litespeed-BMW) took the win solo lapping the field along the way, and I came out on the losing end of a photo finish sprint for 2nd place to a very strong 16 year old – Stephen Bassett (Texas Roadhouse). I missed Chris’s move and spent a few laps chasing just a couple seconds behind him but I couldn’t close the gap and nearly blew up in the process. I eventually sat up and waited for the field. In the end game, there were five of us left to sprint it out. I attacked hard going into the next to last turn and held it until the finish … well, exactly two inches before the finish.

I hit an all-time new record max HR of 199 in the final sprint … here is all the data:

McMinnville Crit power and heartrate data

Lap	Avg Spd		Avg Pow	Avg HR	Time
1	23.3mi/h	 388W	 162bpm	0:01:04
2	24.9mi/h	 221W	 173bpm	0:01:00
3	23.7mi/h	 197W	 168bpm	0:01:03
4	23.3mi/h	 227W	 166bpm	0:01:04
5	25.3mi/h	 315W	 168bpm	0:00:59
6	28.2mi/h	 441W	 185bpm	0:00:53
7	27.1mi/h	 310W	 191bpm	0:00:55
8	26.2mi/h	 324W	 189bpm	0:00:57
9	25.3mi/h	 295W	 188bpm	0:00:59
10	24.5mi/h	 254W	 182bpm	0:01:01
11	24.9mi/h	 269W	 180bpm	0:01:00
12	25.3mi/h	 251W	 179bpm	0:00:59
13	24.5mi/h	 250W	 178bpm	0:01:01
14	26.6mi/h	 251W	 178bpm	0:00:56
15	24.5mi/h	 256W	 178bpm	0:01:01
16	24.9mi/h	 265W	 180bpm	0:01:00
17	25.7mi/h	 258W	 182bpm	0:00:58
18	25.3mi/h	 221W	 181bpm	0:00:59
19	24.9mi/h	 228W	 179bpm	0:01:00
20	24.1mi/h	 212W	 177bpm	0:01:02
21	24.5mi/h	 269W	 176bpm	0:01:01
22	25.7mi/h	 295W	 181bpm	0:00:58
23	24.9mi/h	 301W	 182bpm	0:01:00
24	24.1mi/h	 170W	 183bpm	0:01:02
25	27.6mi/h	 478W	 188bpm	0:00:54
26	27.6mi/h	 362W	 194bpm	0:00:54
27	26.6mi/h	 353W	 195bpm	0:00:56
28	23.0mi/h	 208W	 190bpm	0:01:05
29	22.6mi/h	 262W	 178bpm	0:01:06
30	23.7mi/h	 188W	 173bpm	0:01:03
31	24.1mi/h	 270W	 171bpm	0:01:02
32	24.1mi/h	 215W	 174bpm	0:01:02
33	23.3mi/h	 262W	 173bpm	0:01:04
34	24.5mi/h	 218W	 175bpm	0:01:01
35	25.3mi/h	 243W	 178bpm	0:00:59
36	23.3mi/h	 227W	 177bpm	0:01:04
37	24.5mi/h	 255W	 177bpm	0:01:01
38	23.7mi/h	 232W	 180bpm	0:01:03
39	24.5mi/h	 268W	 182bpm	0:01:01
40	22.3mi/h	 208W	 180bpm	0:01:07
41	21.9mi/h	 213W	 176bpm	0:01:08
42	24.5mi/h	 320W	 176bpm	0:01:01
43	26.2mi/h	 321W	 188bpm	0:00:57
44	24.9mi/h	 295W	 192bpm	0:01:00
45	24.1mi/h	 273W	 188bpm	0:01:02
46	21.3mi/h	 211W	 182bpm	0:01:10
47	22.6mi/h	 229W	 175bpm	0:01:06
48	24.1mi/h	 262W	 177bpm	0:01:02
49	24.1mi/h	 251W	 181bpm	0:01:02
50	23.3mi/h	 251W	 178bpm	0:01:04
51	24.1mi/h	 227W	 177bpm	0:01:02
52	23.7mi/h	 229W	 179bpm	0:01:03
53	23.0mi/h	 216W	 177bpm	0:01:05
54	24.1mi/h	 293W	 177bpm	0:01:02
55	23.0mi/h	 196W	 183bpm	0:01:05
56	23.0mi/h	 217W	 175bpm	0:01:05
57	25.3mi/h	 341W	 180bpm	0:00:59
58	23.0mi/h	 287W	 188bpm	0:01:05
59	29.3mi/h	 492W	 193bpm	0:00:51

Here’s videos and pics from the drive-up.

Band playing as part of the festival:

Driving past the huntsville space and rocket center:

Fog coming off the Warrior River just north of Birmingham

Rockets at the rocket center – one is standing, the other is inside the building separated into its stages

Auction near the Tennessee border

Auction near the Tennessee border

Cheap gas!

Band playing while riders warm-up

Athens Twilight 2012 vs Sunny King 2012 power and heartrate data

Well, the results are in, and below is this year’s side-by-side comparison of two very popular pro criteriums (Sunny King and Athens Terrapin Twilight). I still don’t know how to decide which race is harder … so y’all look at the data and make some comments about how you interpret it. Thanks! This year’s races were held on back-to-back weekends with Sunny King held in Anniston, Alabama on Saturday, April 21st at 7:30PM and Athens Twilight held in Athens, Georgia on Saturday, April 28th at 9:00PM.

Summary Data

		Sunny King	Athens Twilight
Time		1:30:14		1:41:19
Distance	41.6 mi.	47.6 mi.
Avg Speed	27.7 mph	28.2 mph
Max Speed	36 mph		36 mph
Avg HR		176		174
Max HR		187		189
Avg Power	269		245
Max Power	1013		1088
Placing		26th		20th

Heartrate Zones

		Sunny King	Athens Twilight
Zone 5 (175+)	0:58:45		0:54:04
Zone 4 (155+)	0:31:15		0:46:50

Some notes about the data … first, it was really windy for this year’s Sunny King criterium, which partially explains the higher power / lower average speed. But a bigger factor in the Watts vs Speed differences between the races is that in Athens you have a long stretch of the course where you rest … from the downhill going into Turn 3 all the way through Turn 4. The only place to rest on the Sunny King course is about 3 or 4 seconds as you brake hard into Turn #3.

Here are the power maps … note that for the Sunny King race there is a lot more time to warm up on the course so a lot of the purple lines are from my warm-up laps.

2012 Sunny King Criterium – Pro men power map (click to enlarge)

2012 Athens Terrapin Twilight Criterium – Pro men power map (click to enlarge)

Here is a side-by-side on the lap data for the two races showing avg power, max power, and avg heartrate. Sunny King is on a slightly longer course so there is only 60 laps as compared to 80 laps for the Athens Twilight race.

	Avg power	Max power	Avg heartrate	
Lap	Sunny	Athens	Sunny	Athens	Sunny	Athens
1	367	330	897	820	159	168
2	317	267	948	827	173	172
3	279	270	839	975	173	173
4	236	305	767	851	172	177
5	282	257	970	895	174	178
6	316	256	900	845	177	176
7	272	234	855	890	179	173
8	303	243	1013	919	180	173
9	238	258	934	891	179	174
10	268	231	822	860	175	176
11	253	272	917	873	176	178
12	260	271	804	918	176	179
13	271	284	820	931	177	179
14	282	250	928	821	180	182
15	265	249	814	973	177	179
16	289	280	853	917	177	180
17	246	234	780	901	179	179
18	276	268	879	876	175	179
19	256	261	874	884	174	179
20	326	236	935	934	180	179
21	260	249	884	903	180	179
22	252	262	945	864	176	178
23	251	234	717	897	175	177
24	256	262	807	896	177	179
25	246	244	852	920	177	178
26	289	256	916	976	178	178
27	291	238	872	903	179	177
28	295	226	827	790	179	175
29	250	216	870	794	178	175
30	272	235	882	706	174	175
31	274	239	898	885	175	176
32	249	253	910	875	176	177
33	250	260	679	900	176	178
34	252	247	735	933	172	177
35	233	218	821	885	170	176
36	265	257	897	883	175	172
37	240	232	869	842	169	178
38	247	232	855	881	171	172
39	274	222	896	832	174	173
40	260	241	657	856	175	172
41	258	262	789	930	171	176
42	261	228	893	820	175	176
43	276	224	900	800	176	171
44	259	215	812	862	174	169
45	242	267	900	775	174	172
46	251	244	825	755	174	174
47	242	229	793	817	175	169
48	247	214	744	851	171	169
49	266	191	720	813	176	171
50	276	246	880	821	176	166
51	238	225	744	775	178	170
52	294	251	873	868	179	171
53	269	240	819	844	178	170
54	253	259	825	802	178	172
55	246	214	788	816	174	171
56	277	280	791	842	177	171
57	278	325	886	971	179	181
58	264	202	965	783	177	174
59	322	243	867	701	181	169
60	330	212	744	743	185	170
61		224		852		167
62		232		816		169
63		244		832		173
64		245		885		173
65		261		731		172
66		232		827		172
67		238		876		173
68		244		846		173
69		239		854		174
70		212		817		173
71		236		879		172
72		253		875		174
73		243		812		176
74		261		782		174
75		280		865		175
76		254		919		178
77		226		827		176
78		284		850		176
79		276		922		180
80		363		1088		184

Strava Climbing Challenge Wrap-up

March 15th – April 30th – 96 rides, 3084 miles and 468,661 feet of climbing – the Strava Specialized Climbing Challenge is done.

Last year I climbed a lot because I really like climbing (and descending). This year in this climbing competition, I was driven by a desire to win so I climbed more and rode much more than I have ever ridden before. Jeremy Philippe still has a chance to win if he has any more rides that he hasn’t uploaded yet, and if he does win then he deserves it because all of his climbing was on real mountain climbs in the French Alpes. Earlier in the competition, it was a race to see who could get to the prescribed climbing total 105,312feet first, and Robin Squire in England came out on top there reaching the total in an amazing 9 days. My climbing has been on the short, steep (sometimes super steep) climbs in the southern suburbs of Birmingham. Almost all of my climbing has been on three different ridge lines with hundreds of different roads criss-crossing through neighborhoods on the sides of the hills – see maps below showing only the 96 rides that counted towards the climbing challenge.

Birmingham climbing – routes overlaid on top of each other – darker blue means more times ridden – click to enlarge

Birmingham zoomed out with double oak way ridge line (click to enlarge)

Climbing challenge – rides in three states

The nice side effect of all this riding and climbing is that my racing has gotten even better as well. I assumed that there would be a trade-off as I bumped up the volume, my high end intensity would tank. But this didn’t happen – instead, I tied an all-time max heartrate at the end of a 422 mile week racing the Mississippi Gran Prix. Then the next week, I finished 26th in a really tough Sunny King criterium with some of the best criterium pros in the country near the end of a 475 mile week. Then towards the end of 510 mile week on the 75th mile of the day I finished in the top 20 (20th) of the Athens Terrapin Twilight criterium. I think there really is something to a term that a friend of mine coined – terrain based training (thanks Warren!) The secret is one word – recovery. Terrain forces you to go easy. If your legs are shredded from racing, then when you climb a hill you have to go so slow that it gives your legs a chance to recover. Whereas if you are on flatter terrain with smaller hills, then you might be tempted to punch it up a hill or maintain a fast speed if it is flat. If you are climbing a 15% grade, then it is easy to go 3-5mph and weave up the entire climb, and there is no mental pressure to go even the slightest bit faster. Plus you have a downhill coming up soon where you can coast, soft pedal, or tuck-and-fly instead of having to keep on pedaling on a long mountain descent or on flat roads. I’m going to write up some more about my training strategies in another post.

For now, here are some highlights/timeline from the final day of the challenge:

• 7:30AM – walk the kids to school
• 8:15AM – first ride – commute to samford with mind-numbing 25 repeats of skyland dr – 40+mph to 5mph each repeat
• 9:20AM – teach languages and theory course at samford
• 10:30AM – help student with senior project
• 11:30AM – second ride – run into Mark Fisher (almost literally) while doing more repeats on skyland – ride together doing some of my favorite climbs/descents in vestavia
• 2:50PM – finish second ride and pick up kids from school (literally – see photo below)
• 3:15PM – third ride – combine mountain brook climbing route with hoover – bluff park climbing route – new max speed coming back down from bluff park
• 6:45PM – finish third ride, shower, and go on date with kristine while grandparents babysit the kids – firebirds for dinner, world market, barnes and noble coffee, awesome
• 9:30PM – upload data – see that Jeremy hasn’t uploaded any more rides – start to get paranoid
• 10:45PM – fourth ride – laps in the dark, tired but full of adrenaline, hammer out 30 laps
• 11:50PM – upload last ride and screenshots, for some reason i really wanted to get all my data uploaded before midnight

Kristine got a video of Analise and Josiah running with me up the hill to our house on what I thought was going to be my last ride of the day. See video below:

Riding with Josiah after school at the end of my second ride of the day.

Between my third and fourth rides, Kristine and I had an awesome date night.