20 minute all out win!
Breakdown
I raced my final race as a cat 2 at this year’s cat 2/3 Tour de Bloom. The first stage was the mission ridge hill climb. The parcours was a mass start hill climb, finishing on a gravel parking lot sprint. The climb itself is 4.1 miles climbing 1,702 feet. 6.5 km at 7.9 % in bike racing statistics. My approach this year was similar to last, pace myself for the first two-thirds of the race, but this year play the last 1/3 more tactically. Last year I paced myself, letting my position sag, then ride back to the front but upon getting there I was unsure what to do, and got beat in the gravel sprint.
This year started similar to last year, I got dropped from the front, then rode my pace back to the front. I set myself a hard cap at 400 watts, as I planned to average between 340 and 350 for the full 20 minute effort. I had gotten dropped but returned to the front sooner than I imagined, with about 4km to go(less than halfway). Once I had reached the front I stayed on the last rider, coming around when they were about to drop. I did this staying as relaxed as possible. The group went from 15 when I recontacted the front, which slowly whittled to about 10 riders. At about 3 km to go, Garrett Horner attacked and split the group to myself, Garrett, and Mitch Williams. This was the hardest point in the race for me, and I was struggling to hold on. After his attack settled I went to pacing myself on the front. This kept us moving away from the others, but didn’t go above my envisioned effort.
With about 1 km left Garrett attacked again. This was again hard but I was able to hold the wheel. Mitch was gapped here. For the next minute the Garrett vs Mitch gap held steady at around 5 seconds. Garrett let up with 400 meters to go. Here would have been my opportunity to attack but I decided against it. Garrett is a tall lanky rider, one whom riding style doesn’t scream “I can sprint”. He probably rode 80% of the climb out of the saddle doing 75-80 rpms. I felt that I could outsprint him. I was at least more confident in my abilities to surge past him on the gravel verses a long ranged finishing attack. In this moment I decided to sit on the wheel and commit to the sprint.
Coming into the last 200 meters you go through a gate onto gravel, then bend left into the last 80 straight meters to the line. I made sure to position my front wheel on the left side of Garrett’s rear and to my surprise Garrett left the inside line completely open. I decided to stay in the saddle and start an acceleration through the corner. I passed Garrett surprisingly easily(I normally go backwards in sprints) and never looked back. I knew Garrett would be on my right side and have to come past my peripheral vision. With no sight of Garrett I elected to stay seated and pedal to the finish line. I was concerned that after a hard effort standing up on the gravel I would either lose traction or lose my flow. I never felt the need to stand to try to get more watts out so I played it safe and stayed on the saddle. Luckily I was able to ride to finish line without hitch, beating Garrett by 2 seconds. Mitch came in not far behind, only 2 seconds behind Garrett.
Analysis
Now to look at numbers. My time for the hill climb was 20:07. Over a minute faster than last year. I am happy with this, especially because this year’s edition was much head-windier. Despite this I did less power this year. Last year I averaged 345 and this year I did 340. I have changed bikes and power meters since, so clearly this years power meter reads lower than last years. More objectively I climbed with much higher VAM this year. VAM stands for Velocità Ascensionale Media. It is your rate of vertical ascension on the bike. It is measured in vertical meters per hour and gives a more objective climbing speed. Last year I did 1519, and this year I did 1547. This I am happy with.
Above is my Intervals.icu data page. For being a mass start hill climb, I am pretty happy with my pacing, only going into the red zones a few times to close gaps, hold on in an attack, or the final sprint. I am proud of both my heart rate graph and my W’ balance. My heart rate shows very controlled elevation, no extreme spikes or dips, but constant suffering. My W’ balance shows a fairly steady decrease, to a near zero value at the end. This shows a well paced effort that fully drained my capabilities. I am happy that this shows my ability to pace myself well to complete exhaustion. Otherwise this is a very normal and uninteresting graph.
Summary
All in all I don’t have much to say. This felt like a very good display of my fitness and skill. I had the patience and head to pace myself and take advantage of opportunities, and luckily I had the fitness to finish the job. Given the 90+ starters and the competition(Emmett Horner is the son of Chris Horner, ex Vuelta winner, and team PNW is stacked with talent), this is my biggest win as of yet. As this was stage one I went into the pink leaders jersey for the next stage. This was a very good start to the weekend of racing, and the first time I’ve ever been in a leader’s jersey!
Leave a Reply