Mike's Bike Blog

Today after work I headed out on Limecreek road down to Volente and back. I passed several other cyclists enjoying the afternoon. As I came up to the 3 Sisters hill I really didn't have a plan, at least I wasn't out to try to break my personal best of 3 minutes and 23 seconds that I set back on Christmas day. On the first sister as the climb started I got out of the saddle and proceeded up. I think I went a bit too hard on this sister as I got to the top I took a little rest and let my power drop to 245 watts (Avg). The rest is short as the second sister looms.

Once again I got out of the saddle to attack the second sister. Again I paced myself and felt good on the way up. As I crested the second I looked down at my Garmin and was surprised to see the timer was at 2'20". This lit a fire under me as it seemed the 3 minute mark was put into perspective.

For the 3rd and final sister I rose out of the saddle for the final attack. About 1/2 way up I did sit back down to catch my breath for a few revolutions and then attacked one last time. As I got to my finish line I hit the lap button and the Garmin displayed 3'15.96". That's 7 seconds faster than my previous best.

I plugged my data into the Hill Climb Power Calculator to play with the numbers a bit to see what kind of power I'll need to get down to 3 minutes for my years goal.

Working the the Power Calculator there's 2 values that I can control, my weight and Power. My bike weight is something I could play with but about all I could do is spend at least a couple grand on lightweight wheels to get the weight down 3 or 4 pounds or so. The weight savings isn't enough to spend that kind of money. I'll just have to shave the weight off me plus improve my power.

What kind of power will I need to produce and what will I have to weight to do it? I plugged some numbers in and came up with this combination that seems realistic.

As you can see the main thing I'll need to increase is the power that I can hold for 3 minutes. As I sit here and write this I went back to the data for today's climb and looked at the 3 hills, in particular I looked at just the climbs not where the hills crest and turn into short decents. On the 1st sister I averaged 454 watts. On the 2nd sister I averaged 440 watts. Finally on the 3rd sister I averaged 488 watts.

From this data it would appear I can output the required wattage so it's not so much about boosting my power I think the better approach is to increase my anaerobic conditioning so I can sustain the required power for the full 3 minutes and not take the 2 breaks at the crest of the 1st & 2nd Sisters.

Anybody have any thoughts or suggestions on a short hill time trial such as this? Word on the street is there is going to be one in June, father's day weekend to be precise. The race would be a hill climb TT and a circuit race. The hill in question very well could be the new road across from Jester that leads up to the newly finished apartment buildings. I haven't had a chance to ride up there, but it probably has a very similar profile to Jester.