Bikes and Code

Armstrong Road is a short road of about 3km in North Langley. About half of that is smooth, good pavement, the other half is rough and bumpy. Over the first 2km or so, it raises 80m in 3 stairstep pitches. 12%, 10% and the last, on the bumpy pavement is something like 8%. This feature utterly dominates the Armstrong Road Spring Series race.

Not being someone who handles sustained climbs very well, I expected this race to be over fairly quickly. The last truly hilly races I had done, admittedly a couple of years ago, the Ottawa Grand Prix in Gatineau Park generally ended up with me being shot off the back on the first major ascent. I saw no reason why this race would be any different.

The race starts at the top of the course. A straight downhill gets the speeds up nice and  high. A sharp right hand bend into a further downhill. This next stretch is great fun as the road lazily winds down the hill. Bottom of the hill is a hard right, then onto the flats for a couple of kilometers for a few turns. After River Road, you take a turn to the right and head up the hill. The first pitch is the steepest and it tops out with a long false flat. Then it kicks up again. The second false flat is short and is noted by the road surface going from great to horrible. One more climb and then the finish line.

I started out at the front intending to remain in the top ten or so places as long as possible. Going into a climb at the front means you do get a bit of a chance to drift back and use a touch less energy. I hit the hill in about 8th place and to my surprise stayed there. A couple of attacks went off and various people ramped up the pace to bring them back but nothing doing.

I could have been done after that first climb. My heart rate was in to the mid 180’s for most of it, which is well into the not sustainable level for me. If the remainder of the climbs were this fast, it was just a matter of time.

A couple of laps later, a couple of guys rode a fairly serious tempo up the hill. I basically hung on for all I was worth to a chase group and we all came in contact again on the final uphill before the finish line. I was sitting in about 10th place, looked behind me and saw nobody. Great, I was in a break on a climber’s course. This was going to end well.

Due, I think, to some poor rotations and some serious effort on the part of the remainder of the race, the pack made contact again about 5km later at the base of the climb again. I made it to the top in the main pack again, but at this point, 4/7 climbs through the race, I could tell that I was getting into trouble.

I was shelled on the second pitch of lap 5. The lights went out and I lost 50m in probably a minute. What remained of the pack slowed over on the bumpy roads, and I closed most of the gap, but I never actually got back on. I very, very seriously debated climbing off the bike there, but decided I’d at least ride to the corner where I parked, which was about 800m past the finish line and flat/downhill.

“Well, I only have to go up that hill two more times, there are some other dropped guys ahead of me to maybe ride with and I can totally bomb down this descent with guys flagging me through corners. Yeah. I’m going to finish this race.”

So I did. Rode hard on the flats, survived up the hill and bombed the descent. It was awesome.

Placed probably around 20th, based on the size of the peloton that went up the road. 40 starters so that’s pretty good. Considering I spent some time in a break and was riding at the front until said lights went out, I’m pretty happy with the whole thing.

There are two major climbs that are accessible easily from Vancouver, Cypress and Seymour. Both are well into the epic climb category that actually compares favorably with some of the ‘real’ climbs of the grand tours. Both are in the 12-13km in length range, Cypress averages 5% and Seymour is closer to 7%. Up until today I had not ridden either of them.

The Chicks Cycling Club hosted what is best described as a mass start time trial up Cypress today. How could I say no to that? I did my research on the course and decided that at a steady grade of 5% my cassette that was currently on the bike was going to be suitable. Extended stretches of 7-8% would have led me to switching cassettes for better climbing.

It turns out that you should not believe the Internet.

My measurements of the race showed that there were a couple of false flats totalling something like 2km over the course of the race. This means that instead of 700m of gain over 12km, it was more like 700m of gain over 10km. Uh oh. So when it was all said and done, the average grade of the real part of the climb was about 7% with smaller portions reaching 8-10%. So I totally had the wrong gearing. That said, I’m not trying to say gearing had anything to do with my slowness. That’s all in the legs.

The announcements before the race made it clear that this was not a road race, despite the mass start and that it was a time trial so treat it like one. In a TT, the idea is to keep a steady effort the entire way as that’s the fastest way. So we roll out and a bunch of the guys at the front were sort of looking around. Uh, guys? It’s a TIME TRIAL. So I just settled into my pace and pulled the slackers for the first km or so until they actually started racing at which point I was promptly dropped. I did what I wanted to though, kept my heart rate pretty much pegged in the high 170 range for the thing, which was pretty much my goal.

All in all, I’m glad I did the race, coming down that hill afterwards was awesome. Don’t think a hill climb TT is really going to help my most common race of the year though, flat industrial park crits. Ah well.

As I race cyclocross, my riding season ends up being quite long. My last race of the year is generally in late November or early December depending on the exact schedule. I like to take some time off at the end of the season, I find it’s great mentally and helps with getting the focus back for the next year of riding. The downside of this is that while lots of riders are starting up with the base training for the next year, I am happily sitting on my hiney enjoying winter treats.

But by the time January rolls around, I am itching to get back on the bike, which is a great situation to be in. In the wintertime in Canada, this means a large number of hours indoors on the trainer which is far from the most exciting way to get into shape. Fortunately, it is offset somewhat by the better part of a month of fairly sedentary lifestyle so I can approach it with some enthusiasm. So January is my month to ramp up some volume and get some hours in, followed by starting to ride a bit harder in February and March.

I’ve got a few goals and things that I want to do this year. I want to do more road racing this year than I did last year. An injury took me out of commission for a month or so in June which kind of did a number on my 2008 road season. Fortunately, it appears I have tons of choice for grassroots level racing in Vancouver. I’ll start the season off by doing a couple of the Team Escape Velocity Spring Series races. Later in the year, Escape Velocity also holds a series of Tuesday night races, which sounds awesome. I haven’t yet found out about any sort of regular time trial series, but I would expect that there is one somewhere in Vancouver.

I will also be doing a couple of endurance mountain bike races this year. I intend on racing the BC Bike Race in 2010, which means I have to get back into the mountain biking somewhat seriously. So far, I’m likely going to be riding the Salty Dog, but beyond that I have not made too many plans.

Cyclocross is a long ways away, but there is a series in Vancouver and thus I will be racing it.

Of course, this is all theoretical at this point. All I really know is that I intend to continue to get faster and hopefully actually be competitive within the next, oh, decade.