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The Cost Of Climbing Hard

Today was my last real bike before Ironman CdA, since "training" was done I thought I would play with some technique things that had me curious. So I found a hill that was about 1/3 of a mile that was 6% gradeish. I did 4 laps up this hill to see what different AP's would do to times. 

1st Lap-  189 watts in 2:26

2nd Lap- 202 watts in 2:18

3rd Lap- 217 watts in 2:10

4th Lap- 321 watts in 1:38

The first lap was truly stupid easy, like climb all day kind of easy. The second lap was closer to what I expect to do on race day. The third lap is likely what I would do if not actively watching my power meter. The fourth lap was just to see what a hard effort would do to the time.  So the difference between  each 15 watt  increment was 8 seconds for the 1/3 mile lap or 24 seconds per mile. The CdA course has roughly 15 miles of appreciable climbing so over the course of the bike leg I would "loose" about 6 minutes of time for every 15 watts savings.  This really shows what little you loose, timewise, by respecting the hills. 

Comments

  • interesting stuff Steve...thanks for letting us learn off your experiments!

    I have definitely NOT mastered the art of avoiding power spikes on climbs. Try as I may...focusing on pedaling "light", spinning in my easiest gears, I still end up shooting up my watts. I'm only about 2 months into this power meter thing so I'm hoping it's a matter of me becoming more familiar with it over miles and miles & hours & hours on the bike. Still...I do have some anxiety about unintentionally spiking my watts on the climbs at CDA and somehow screwing my whole day up!!

  • As you know, Steve, the real issue is, how mny minutes on the run would that six minute gain cost you? Walking just one mile would eat it up immediately.
  • Al- THAT was exactly my point. You could easily loose 30 minutes on the run by boogering up the bike by only 15 watts over those 15 miles.

    David- you'll do great! Just glue yourself to the NP display from the very beginning of each hill and keep yourself in that safe range. Mine is 190W - 200W.
  • Note -- I find it easier to keep my watts steady if I DONT shift much. My watts almost always go up when I shift easier...so good practice on how to "massage" the pedals is riding a rolling course where some of the hills are shifting optional...and you opt out an learn to pull up, not push down, etc...to keep the watts in the right space... Just a thought!
  • I think Al makes an important point below, the cost of saving minutes on the bike can be exponentially damaging to the IM run on the back half.   I have to confess, I have never run a stand alone marathon and I have always followed the EN guidance during an IM race pegging my total bike TSS at ~285..........this has allowed me to run the entire marathon of all of my IMs so far (knock on wood) with the last one being IMTX 5 weeks ago......  

    Consider what those 6 minutes might be worth to you during the marathon and pick your poison.......

    SS

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