Just out of interest close to your home (within 30km) what are the hills like as you are a monster on the hills!
Brian Toone
Hi Iain - a lot of the hills here are short and steep. I've seen a lot of your rides and I would imagine that some of the hills are similar to the short steep hills closer to sea level in Hobart. We don't have anything at all approaching the vertical gain you would get on a climb like the Mt Wellington one, but there are pretty much countless (hundreds? thousands?) variations of smaller climbs within 30km of my house. To get a longer climb, you usually have to cross one or two smaller ridges which means almost all of the longer climbs have at least one downhill. The geography is different b/c I believe most of our hills are defined by rivers that have cut through larger mountains which have eroded away (the Appalachian Mountains are some of the oldest mountains on earth) leaving behind small ridges with river valleys on either side of the ridge. The Rocky Ridge - Vestavia Dr climb at the beginning of this ride from today is a good example - the climb starts in the Little Shades Creek valley and then climbs to the highest point on the Shades Mountain ridge, but you have to cross one other creek (and corresponding mini-ridge) along the way. So the gradient profile has several sections with gradients above 15%, but it also has one downhill with a gradient above 15%. A while back, I posted some gradient profiles for the longer, steeper climbs and you'll notice that almost all of them have negative gradients. When you are going hard on a climb here you have to be able to switch between grinding up super steep stuff, pedaling like crazy on downhills, and pushing through the flatter sections - there's only a few steady climbs (such as the Vandiver one on today's ride) where you can setup any kind of rhythm. Check out these profiles of some of my favorite climbs (all of them are within 30km riding distance from my house although the Double Oak way one is about 35 miles roundtrip) -
http://toonecycling.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/the-birmingham-monsters-aka-20-percenters/ http://toonecycling.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/the-birmingham-monsters-addendum/ http://toonecycling.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/one-last-monster-and-a-summary-of-all-eight/ http://toonecycling.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/new-not-really-monster/
Iain Sheppard
Cool, well wellington here is 1280m over about 20km its a good ride. But otherwise we have some steep things around a few 4-5km @ 10% and then some short sharp ones at 12% for a km or two.
also how do you get so much meters in a week :P you must do a load of comuting and racing. I will get around the 4000m with my revised weeks but normally is 2500m (hard to ride on weekends with the kids)
Brian Toone
Yes, it really helps to have a flexible schedule. I'm training about 20-25 hours / week and can work around my wife and kids schedule. I can pick them up from school at the end of a lot of my rides. Also, I posted a higher resolution terrain map by pasting together 4 screenshots of today's ride here with annotated power data - http://toonecycling.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/bbl-power-records/
Iain Sheppard
Nice, I cant ride bar a 30 min commute after work to collect kids and I leave at 7:30 in the mornings. When the kids get older riding time will increase :P
some of the hills over there look awesome!!
tour down under starts in a few hours :)
Chad Williamson
that was a solid ride...i was TRASHED for the rest of the day! also, it's good to see you back with your power meter working again!
Just out of interest close to your home (within 30km) what are the hills like as you are a monster on the hills!
Hi Iain - a lot of the hills here are short and steep. I've seen a lot of your rides and I would imagine that some of the hills are similar to the short steep hills closer to sea level in Hobart. We don't have anything at all approaching the vertical gain you would get on a climb like the Mt Wellington one, but there are pretty much countless (hundreds? thousands?) variations of smaller climbs within 30km of my house. To get a longer climb, you usually have to cross one or two smaller ridges which means almost all of the longer climbs have at least one downhill. The geography is different b/c I believe most of our hills are defined by rivers that have cut through larger mountains which have eroded away (the Appalachian Mountains are some of the oldest mountains on earth) leaving behind small ridges with river valleys on either side of the ridge. The Rocky Ridge - Vestavia Dr climb at the beginning of this ride from today is a good example - the climb starts in the Little Shades Creek valley and then climbs to the highest point on the Shades Mountain ridge, but you have to cross one other creek (and corresponding mini-ridge) along the way. So the gradient profile has several sections with gradients above 15%, but it also has one downhill with a gradient above 15%. A while back, I posted some gradient profiles for the longer, steeper climbs and you'll notice that almost all of them have negative gradients. When you are going hard on a climb here you have to be able to switch between grinding up super steep stuff, pedaling like crazy on downhills, and pushing through the flatter sections - there's only a few steady climbs (such as the Vandiver one on today's ride) where you can setup any kind of rhythm. Check out these profiles of some of my favorite climbs (all of them are within 30km riding distance from my house although the Double Oak way one is about 35 miles roundtrip) -
http://toonecycling.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/the-birmingham-monsters-aka-20-percenters/
http://toonecycling.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/the-birmingham-monsters-addendum/
http://toonecycling.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/one-last-monster-and-a-summary-of-all-eight/
http://toonecycling.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/new-not-really-monster/
Cool, well wellington here is 1280m over about 20km its a good ride. But otherwise we have some steep things around a few 4-5km @ 10% and then some short sharp ones at 12% for a km or two.
also how do you get so much meters in a week :P you must do a load of comuting and racing. I will get around the 4000m with my revised weeks but normally is 2500m (hard to ride on weekends with the kids)
Yes, it really helps to have a flexible schedule. I'm training about 20-25 hours / week and can work around my wife and kids schedule. I can pick them up from school at the end of a lot of my rides. Also, I posted a higher resolution terrain map by pasting together 4 screenshots of today's ride here with annotated power data - http://toonecycling.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/bbl-power-records/
Nice, I cant ride bar a 30 min commute after work to collect kids and I leave at 7:30 in the mornings. When the kids get older riding time will increase :P
some of the hills over there look awesome!!
tour down under starts in a few hours :)
that was a solid ride...i was TRASHED for the rest of the day! also, it's good to see you back with your power meter working again!