Knowledge is Power

Knowledge is power. I’m so glad I mapped out the Rev 3 Tri bike course and compared it to the Duke 1/2 course. Before mapping it out, I was completely unaware how tough that race was going to be! I would have freaked out when I got to the race site – had I not done my homework! Now I can fully prepare for the race, both mentally and physically.

I showed the graph to my mentor, Jon, explaining how I thought I was in “deep doo doo”. This was his reply…

Wow, that looks awesome!

Seriously, I’d be scared too. But think how great you’ll feel about yourself after you’ve done it, right?

Other thoughts:

I think you have to align the lowest Duke point with the lowest Rev3 point. (It’s not enough to scale them the same). It’s so small it’s hard to see for sure, but I think that would raise all elevation points of Duke up a bit.

I would also have a gear lower than any you think you’ll want to use, just to reduce the fear factor. If the worst happens, you tell yourself, I’ll just rest my way up one of the long hills.

Such long climbs, hard hill repeats like Mt. Sinai won’t completely address it. How about putting blocks under your front wheel on the trainer, and push a big gear hard enough to get the HR you want, for as long as you estimate the biggest climb will go on. And repeat that a couple more times.

And remember, you love climbing. Just keep repeating that to yourself.

Here are my thoughts about his points:

“I would also have a gear lower than any you think you’ll want to use”
My tri bike has a 11/23 cassette. Hills are tough on that bike. I think I will get a 12/27 cassette.

“…you love climbing.”
True, but do I love hills THAT much? I guess I will find out. Actually, this race is both scary and exciting to me now, which means the goal is just about right! I’ve talked about that before: If a goal is just scary – it’s too hard. If a goal is just exciting – it’s too easy.

“Such long climbs, hard hill repeats like Mt. Sinai won’t completely address it. … “
I remapped the course and compared it to known hills such as Mt. Sinai. The worst climb in Rev3Tri is about the same grade as Mt. Sinai, but about 4x longer. Next time I head out there for hill repeats, I will time myself going up that hill. That way I will know how long to do the trainer ride repeats he recommends. Four times longer! I can do this thing!

Here’s that new graphic I made:

Update: I took this one step further, and plotted out just the worst hill at Rev3Tri to compare to the hill I do repeats on (Mt. Sinai). Now I know the exact start (the little bridge) and stop point (Patterson Rd) for today’s timed test! Then I’ll need to grind a big gear on the trainer for 4.3x that time. Yay, this is fun! And I am OCD! Update a few days later: Mt Sinai took me 5 minutes at a relaxed, sustainable (~zone 3) effort…so I estimate this Rev3Tri climb will take 20 minutes! At least there is a flat section in the middle of this long climb for a bit of recovery!

The way I create these pics is to map out the courses (using my BT log, but you could use bikely.com) to get the elevations. Then put each elevation image into a separate layer in photoshop (or you can use GIMP, a free photoshop copycat). Then scale each layer to the same x and y…so that, say 400 feet on the y scale matches up for all layers, and 20 miles on the x matches up. The scaling is tricky, and not very accurate, but good enough to give me an idea of what I’m in for!