Hill Climb TT Pacing

Is that the King of the Hill event up Daggetts?

It's a pretty constant grade so it should be fairly easy to keep the effort constant. You do NOT want to go too hard early on and have the power drop towards the end. Altitude might have an effect in this if it is the event that I'm thinking of - ~7700ft will do that to a person but if you're up in Incline already you'll be pretty used to it.

If you can keep 275watts going for 10 minutes then it's not way way too hard. Try 265 for the first 20 and take it from there. With the grade being a pretty constant 7% or there abouts I'd spend most of the time seated using whatever gear suits you best for hard efforts on the climbs. For me that's a big gear as I can't spin for s#&t when going up hill. It feels harder on the legs - but my lungs and stop watch tell me that life is better that way.

I was kinda thinking about doing that event but I just a few wisdom teeth pulled and life it's good right now but I will be going up that pass at about 4.30am in the Challenge event that's going up there in June. ***edit* just noticed that you need a USCF license and I don't have one***

Kingsbury Grade?

On a steep hillclimb, speed is mostly linear with power. As long as you're not going so hard that power production suffers because of mentally quitting or "blowing up", there's almost nothing to be gained through pacing on a constant-grade hillclimb.

frenchyge said:

On a steep hillclimb, speed is mostly linear with power. As long as you're not going so hard that power production suffers because of mentally quitting or "blowing up", there's almost nothing to be gained through pacing on a constant-grade hillclimb.

I've gotta believe you meant to say there's nothing to be gained via variable pacing strategies not pacing in general. The power fade Bryan talks about in his original post sounds like classic going out too hot and fading to me and that calls for better pacing, just not the variable kind where you adjust pacing based on changing grades.

You can definitely fade and produce lower average power and speed without completely blowing up and at least for me that usually results from getting too excited and not pacing the start well.

-Dave

daveryanwyoming said:

I've gotta believe you meant to say there's nothing to be gained via variable pacing strategies not pacing in general.

No, actually I meant pacing in general. When everything is linear and constant it really doesn't matter how and when you expend the kJ, but see below.

daveryanwyoming said:

You can definitely fade and produce lower average power and speed without completely blowing up and at least for me that usually results from getting too excited and not pacing the start well.

Yes, if the pacing is so bad that the average power suffers as a result then that would affect the time. Starting at above average power and finishing at below average power doesn't necessarily indicate that, however, as long as the tank is emptied.

On a flat TT, power fade will really hurt the resulting time because a majority of the excess energy expended early was spent overcoming an exponentially higher aero resistance with less resultant increase in speed. For a hillclimb TT that's not the case, so there's no harm in pacing by constant exertion as the OP has done (even though power sloped downward during the run as a result).

frenchyge said:

...Yes, if the pacing is so bad that the average power suffers as a result then that would affect the time. Starting at above average power and finishing at below average power doesn't necessarily indicate that, however, as long as the tank is emptied...

IME, those concepts go hand in hand. Sure if you go out a little over your target pace and finish a little under to achieve the same AP then no worries. But based on the typical shape of a typical MMP curve you don't have to go too much harder before you spend so much that you won't get it back after fading. At least when I look at my own TT files when I go out too hard it's 20 to 40 watts too hard even though it feels easy at the start and on those days my AP suffers.

No argument about the flat vs. hillclimb and linear vs. nonlinear forces to overcome. Just that based on my own ride files and those of team mates pacing is a learned skill and most folks go out too hard to the point where they don't achieve the AP they'd hoped for. They didn't necessarily blow up or lose focus, they felt their effort was solid start to finish but the files showed the power fade and AP well below what they should have expected based on recent rides.

Maybe we're splitting hairs over what constitutes "pacing" but my best results in flat or hill climb TTs have happened when I went out very close to or even slightly below my target AP and then finished at or slightly above the target.

-Dave

daveryanwyoming said:

Just that based on my own ride files and those of team mates pacing is a learned skill and most folks go out too hard to the point where they don't achieve the AP they'd hoped for. They didn't necessarily blow up or lose focus, they felt their effort was solid start to finish but the files showed the power fade and AP well below what they should have expected based on recent rides.

-Dave

You must have been watching my recent 40k TT. And strangely enough, even though I had my PM up and running, on the last third of the ride I inexplicably backed off, and in hindsight realized I was subconsciously avoiding looking at the PM. That last third was downwind and some part of my mind was saying, "wow, I'm going fast. I must be doing great!"

Next time I'm going to divide the TT into three segments and make sure I have average power for that segment displayed. Oh and look at it also.

But I still got second place and $30!! woohoo!

frenchyge said:

On a flat TT, power fade will really hurt the resulting time because a majority of the excess energy expended early was spent overcoming an exponentially higher aero resistance with less resultant increase in speed. For a hillclimb TT that's not the case, so there's no harm in pacing by constant exertion as the OP has done (even though power sloped downward during the run as a result).

Hill Climbs require the 3 P's. Pacing, Pain, Pruning - in that order. Pruning = taking off everything that isn't required, if you're taking it seriously. Big ring, front mech, bar tape, bar end plugs, bottle cages and bolts etc etc...

Personally, from experience, I'd say it's worse to suffer from 'power fade' on a hillclimb - especially when it's one that's about 7 miles long and along climbs ~3,000ft. I think Kingsbury reaches 7,700ft, so altitude is also a factor. It might be a fairly constant grade, average somewhere in the 6 to 7 percent range, but there's few long pulls of 8 percent if memory serves me well. It's likely to be "effing hot" up there too. When you start to go 'bang' on a hill like this you lose the ability to be able to 'roll' the gear over those slightly steeper sections which is where you start to lose momentum and consequently time... lots of time. Once you lose the rhythm and start changing down for the slightly steeper bits you typically can't rev faster to keep the speed roughly the same - and typically drop almost 1mph. When you're only doing 8 to 10 mph - 1 mph is a big deal. On a flat timetrial when you're doing ~25mph then a similar drop from losing 20 or 30 watts is nowhere near as big a deal.

I'm about 7,000ft lower, but only about 150miles to the west and when I got back in from my ride at just after 11am it was already over 100F. Rather you than me Wattsamatta...

Good luck.

flapsupcleanup said:

That last third was downwind and some part of my mind was saying, "wow, I'm going fast. I must be doing great!"

But I still got second place and $30!! woohoo!

Congrats on the second place and the prize money!

Big gears. You can never underestimate how valuable an 11 sprocket can be until you don't have one on the bike. I used to have either a 52/56 or a 48/56 upfront and a 11-19 or 11-21 (8 speed) and that 56x11 saw quite a bit of use of the courses that we used to ride in the first half of the year.

If you plan for the best and worst conditions and you end up riding in a gear that's somewhere inbetween then you did your homework well. If you end up in a gear that either spins out or you're bogged down in a monster gear riding into the headwind from hell then all those months of training (if it's an important event) just went down the pan through a breif lack of thought.

So how did it go?

swampy1970 said:

So how did it go?

(Kingsbury Grade)

I settled on the plan of being as disciplined as I could and never going too much over my target average power. I set my powertap display to show AP and after a few minutes, I was feeling in-the-zone and all was going well -- I was holding AP steadily a couple watts over my target . Over the next twenty five minutes, AP dropped a watt on each of a couple sections where the grade leveled off a bit, but I was still feeling pretty good. Around the thirty-five minute mark, my legs started complaining and power started to fade. I kept trying to lift the pace, but I just didn't have the legs, and AP for the race ended up about 5W below target. I ended up finishing with about the same time as I did last year (which was near my peak form of that season.) So all things considered, I'm happy with the result. I'm racing the course again in a few weeks with the local club's twilight series and I'll probably employ a similar strategy. The change that I'd make would be to hold a slightly lower AP for the bulk of the course, then lift the pace to fully empty the tank in the final five to ten minutes.
As a side note, this pacing strategy didn't make the event a suffer-fest. I usually begin thinking 'when will this end?' around 25% into the race. This time the race was over 2/3 complete before I hit that point.
Thanks to all for your input,
- Bryan

WattsAMatta said:

I'm racing the course again in a few weeks

Well with that in mind: it might prove worth developing a pacing strategy that takes into consideration the expected reduction in sustainable power at higher elevations. Allowing for such "fade" may not result in a pacing strategy much different from what you actually used, but at least you wouldn't be discouraged by seeing your average power gradually decline as you climb higher and higher.

Just a thought...

acoggan said:

Well with that in mind: it might prove worth developing a pacing strategy that takes into consideration the expected reduction in sustainable power at higher elevations. Allowing for such "fade" may not result in a pacing strategy much different from what you actually used, but at least you wouldn't be discouraged by seeing your average power gradually decline as you climb higher and higher.

Just a thought...

Andy,

Do you have any data (or know of any) that puts an expected figure as too what type of power losses can be expected at those elevations (in the 7500 to 9000ft range)?

swampy1970 said:

Andy,

Do you have any data (or know of any) that puts an expected figure as too what type of power losses can be expected at those elevations (in the 7500 to 9000ft range)?

http://midweekclub.ca/powerFAQ.htm#17

acoggan said:

midweekclub.capowerFAQ.htmOpen ↗

Interesting data. The charts indicate that for my typical situation, I should expect to lose about 5W per 1000' elevation gain, so the component of power output that was under my control was a bit better than I thought.
I live at 7000' and do almost of my riding above 6500'. Do you know of any similar studies of performance gains at lower elevation of athletes who live/train at altitude?