I did some additional research on the subject of how to be a faster climber.  There are three keys including 1) mental attitude, 2) light body weight and 3) smart tactics.   While some cyclists will want to avoid some tough climbs, I seek them out.  My weight is also down, although not as low as it was last fall when I was getting ready for the Everest Challenge.  So what is left is tactics.  Here are a few that I am thinking about:

Use the right gearing

I do almost all my cycling with a double crank.  Although I have put on a 12-27 cassette, it does not seem quite enough on some of the real steep hills.  Sure I am able to make it up every hill, but when the grade gets too steep, my cadence really dips.  If a pro cyclists goes up in a 39/21, with their speed of travel, they may have a cadence of over 80 rpm.  It has been shown that while climbing, a cadence of 80-90 will result in a faster climb time.  The slower you climb, the lower the gearing you need to keep that type of cadence.  It is time I move to a compact crank. With the ability to use a lower gear that will give me the option to remain seated more.  I know when I stand my heart rate climbs.  Although I find standing frequently a help with my legs, too much standing would not lead to the best time.

Avoid Going too Hard too Early

Last Wednesday I did a climb up Henry Coe with some cycling buddies.  Fairly early in the climb I was taking the pace up to see who was going to be able to hang with me.  My pulse rate was now over 170, well above my lactate threshold.  Since one other rider kept up, I had no choice but to keep the pace to see who would last the longest.  He finally dropped off the back but I had to keep driving long enough to form a gap.  But by then I was too expended and my overall time suffered.  I was surprised at the end of the climb that he was only a minute behind me.  You can see this on the attached series of charts, the top one being last week and the other two from an actual race on the same climb during the last two years.  Click on the chart to view enlarged.

Of course I would never expect my time on a ride with some friends to ever be as fast as an actual race where I make sure I have fresh legs and I give it all I have for just that one climb.  However I feel that if I had kept my heart rate down a bit earlier in the climb and then took it up late in the climb I would have finished faster.

Doing Speedwork

One thing I have done in the past is doing some speed work, both intervals on the flats and hill repeats.  That is significantly improved my performance on a long climb.  Although you get some benefit of just climbing certain hills at a hard pace, one should not ignore the benefit of repeats, with short recovery periods in between.  See my article on speedwork.

Cross Training

When I was training for marathons, it not only kept my weight down, but I believe it made me a faster climber.  I started to get out of running for the most part over the last year, due to some issues with my knees.  But I met a guy on our 10 day bicyle tour who also ran the Boston Marathon and he gave me some information one what was causing my problem so I started some exercises to stretch my IT band.  The issue seems to be solved so I have been increasing my running again.  Yesterday I did a 4.5 mile run, with 3 miles at a tempo pace.  On those three miles I was averaging an 8 minute pace.  Not very fast considering I use to run a marathon at a 8:20 pace.  However it was fast for my conditioning because I woke up this morning with sore legs!  Although I don’t plan to run a marathon again anytime soon, I do plan to take my running back up to at least 25 miles a week and add in some interval training.  All cycling and no running makes Franz a dull boy.

The Death Valley Double is this Saturday.  It has been difficult to get ready for a double century that takes place so early in the year.  With vacations in November and December I was not able to really get much biking in until January.  Two weeks ago some of our kids and grandkids were visiting and I wanted to spend more time with them.  Then this February had many rainy days.  Last week I was finally able to get in a lot of miles, over 350 of them.  I did a long 112 mile ride last Saturday. I felt like a slug because it had a lot of climbing, but I did make it without much stopping.  Although my accumulated miles so far this year are not quite what my training program called for, it is higher than the last two years.

I was not able to get in a real long ride, like 130 miles, but I did some long rides on Thursday, Friday and Saturday that hopefully accumulated had a similar effect.  You can see on week 7 that I was only able to get in a 52 mile ride, but at least on last week I got closer to my training plan.

As I mentioned, I felt like a slug on Saturday.   When I looked at my average speed over the 112 miles, it was not too bad considering the 8,700 feet of climbing.  In my training log I have a lookup table that shows my overall  effort when I consider average speed, climbing and total distance.  By averaging 14.7 mph, I did get a “fast” grade for the ride, even though I could not keep up with the lead riders the second half, as I could last year.

Today it was raining all morning. I had already taken a day off yesterday so I felt I needed to get back on the bike.  I went to the bike shop and bought some fenders to put on my old bike and then headed out to do some interval training.  It took me so long to get the fenders installed that the weather had cleared and the roads were mostly dry.  I have a course for interval training and measured how I did compared with similar training last year. I could not find my heart rate strap so I was missing that data, but overall I did okay, although not quite like last year.  It is a circular route so only the total can be compared with the winds different each time I do it.

I was leading a long ride for the bike club.  The official start was in San Jose, but I figured starting from Morgan Hill would be the same distance, please riders said they were going to meet us along the way.  To meet meet the timing I would have had to start biking from home at 6:30 am, but it was still dark so I asked Ann to drive me 6 miles towards Morgan Hill and I started there, at about 6:55 am.  It was warm enough, despite the early hour, that I did not need any arm warmers.  Ten minutes later I met Gary F and we rode together up Monterey to Bailey.  We then made our way over and did the first climb of the day, Metcalf.  I did the climb slower than usual because I had a long ride ahead.  We had to wait at the top for any riders to show up and then only two did.

We then started down the backside and were met by Russ and Joe F.  Not long after that Cindi S. was coming the other way and turned around to join the group.  We made our way of to Quimby for the second climb.  Quimby is a nasty climb of nearly 2,000 feet with some sections that approach 20% grade.  I had not really tried to time the climb up there for years so I did push a bit harder to see how I was doing compared with several years ago.  Since those prior times were all set on a short ride, I felt good with my time which was less than a minute off my best time ever and better than I ever did in 2004.

Russ and Gary had gone ahead of me but the others were all behind.  There was not waiting at the top of Quimby by the leaders so I headed down and to Mt. Hamilton road where I caught them getting water.  We then had the long climb up to the top of Mt Hamilton.  It was already getting hot.  We passed Louise M. on the way up, she had started the climb earlier.  Russ had reached the summit before anyone so Gary and I stopped just long enought to fill our water bottles then head down.

Due to the heat our plan was to turn around at the bottom and make the climb up Mt. Hamilton before it got too hot.  Gary, Russ and I stopped at the Isabel Creek to wait for others.  Then we started to talk about going to the junciton, per the orignal plan.  No one else showed up so we headed out to the junction, not realizing how hot it was going to be.

I had a simple lunch, a turkey sandwich and some potato chips.  Russ and Gary both had a big lunch with a lot of french fires.  I thought I could never eat all those fires and climb up the backside.

We didn’t take too long to eat because we knew the temperatures would continue to rise.  We each bought a Gatorade to stick in our back pocket because we knew that two water bottles would not be enough to make it back to the summit in this heat.  I ended up drinking mine on the spot then filled the bottle with water to carry.

On the way back we saw a couple of cyclists headed in the same direction, pulled off the road resting in the shade.  One yelled out that it was 112 degrees. I check my cyclometer and it was reading 112, although it tends to read high when in direct sunlight.  But then my body was in direct sunlight!

The three of us were biking together until the last climb before we descending back to Isabel Creek for the start of the big climb.  Then Russ started to move ahead and Gary started to fall behind.  As we started to climb up the backside of Mt. Hamilton, I slowed was gaining on Russ but I could no longer see Gary.  I caught Russ as we approached the spring at the 3 mile mark (3 miles from the top) so we stopped there to splash some water on ourselves and cool off.  We waitd for awhile and still no Gary.  I started to worry about him since he is a faster climber than I am.

A van was now coming up the hill so I flagged it down to see if they had seen a cyclists.  As it was stopping I could see that Gary was in the van.  I guess he had some issue so the driver offered to carry him to the top.  Russ and I got back on our bikes and finished the climb to the summit.  There we found Gary laying on the ground.  He had become dehyrated, was cramping and even had the chills.  I rush up to get him a cold drink and then he used some water to cool himself off.  We knew we needed to wait for him to recover.  Here is how fast I climbed the backside, but did stop at the spring, so I had some rest midway.

Eventually he wanted to go ahead and bike so we all started down the hill.  Then it was a climb back over Quimby. After reaching the San Jose Valley we could really feel the heat again, after a bit of cooler temperatures at 4,000 feet summit of Mt. Hamilton.  Russ headed his own wan and Gary and I headed back to Morgan Hill.  Gary was not feeling well so we stopped at a McDonlds to cool off and have some drinks.  I wanted him to have more time to hyrate.  We filled our water bottles with ice and water there and then headed back home.

I dropped Gary off in Morgan Hill and then biked home.  It was past 6 pm when I finally finished.  I had biked 135 miles and climbed nearly 13,000 feet.  My HRM showed only 11,900 feet, but last time I did this same route it was 12,700 feet.  We’ve been under a high pressure system resulting in a reduction of accumulated gain. I will use 12,800 since I did an additional climb up Santa Terresa to Miller this time.   This was therefore the most climbing ever on a training ride.

If I had done all five passes on the Death Ride, I would have biked 6 miles less and climbed 2,000 feet more, so this was some training ride.

I took a quick shower and Ann and I went out to dinner. I was felling fine, despite the hot weather, long distance and considerable climbing.  I was more confident that I was ready for the Everest Challenge.

This is the profile of the ride.

This chart show my weekly miles this year compared with last year and against my plan.

But my climbing is doing well.

See all the charts here.

I have been writing an article for the club website on training for a tough double century, called The Big Climb. It is where you combine the long miles of a double century with a lot of climbing, in excess of 15,000 feet. In 2007 I completed such an event last year called the Devil Mountain Double, maybe the most difficult double century in California. Last year it was unusually hot weather and although I finished it was not easy. Having run the Boston Marathon only 12 days early probably did not help either. I am determined to do a better effort at training and have developed a program which I have included in my article.

Part of my training for the DMD is to do the Solvang Double Century 4 week earlier. The following four charts track my training for DMD. For each chart I plot my training for 2008 compared with both my actual for last year and against my training plan. The first two are accumulated miles ridden and feet climbed. Click all charts to view enlarged.

The next two charts show the weekly targets for both the longest ride of the week and the weekly total for climbing. In 2007 the dips from Week 14 to 16 were due to running the Boston Marathon, which made the final training for DMD difficult. That will not be the case this year. Click to enlarge.

I am nearing 500,000 feet of climbing this year. I should be able to climb 100 vertical miles (528,000 feet) by the end of the year.

This chart shows my accumulated cyling miles. Click graph to enlarge.

I guess I post these types of graphs to help with my confidence on the Everst Challenge.