Placing my flag in the ground right now. I have one primary cycling goal for this year: Ride under 1:40 on the primary Mt. Lemmon HC strava segment. It’s 21.2 miles with 5,454 feet of elevation gain. Here’s the link to the segment: Mount Lemmon | Strava Ride Segment in Tucson, AZ
I got 1:46:XX last year, beating my previous PR by almost 9 minutes. I progressed a lot last year, so I think I can take off even more time. I hope to make the PR attempt in early April. I’ll post periodic updates as I go! Wish me luck and here we go!
Update - fitness is starting to come around. 320 watts during SS workouts feels a lot easier than it did last year. Vo2 intervals still (and probably always will) suck. Looking forward to the next ramp test!
If bestbikesplit.com isn’t already on your radar, I would highly recommend giving it a demo to pace plan for this. It excels at time goal oriented TTs imho.
Update. Did a recovered TT up the mountain yesterday. Knocked over two minutes off my PR and shattered my midway PR by several minutes. Final time was 1:44:01. Really started to fade at the end. But I’m proud of the effort because I started the ride with courage and held the pace that it would have took to go sub 1:40 for a long time.
I can definitely feel the fitness improving. Continuing to train with SS medium volume (skipping the recovery ride and substituting with a run). Sub 1:40 probably won’t happen this spring because it’s ready starting to get hot and my big frame doesn’t offload heat very well. So I’ll probably have to wait until oct/nov to try again. That’s ok with me though, because it will give me more time to build fitness!!
Congrats man that’s awesome. Keep building your fitness and you’ll kill it later in the year.
One of my 2020 goals was simply to survive the HC climb on Mt Lemmon (my previous biggest climb was a whopping 400ft as I live in Illinois). It took me 3 hours but I was able to do it in March and it was an unforgettable experience. Hoping as my own fitness improves I can make it back to Tuscon someday and have another go at it!
Did the Mount Graham hill climb yesterday here in AZ. It was the AZ state climbing championships. It’s very similar in length and elevation gain to Mount Lemmon, but it is way more pitchy. So naturally it is going to be slower for a big guy like me. Nevertheless, I beat my old time up the mountain (1:48 flat on the strava segment.)
So I think that will probably translate into a new Lemmon PR. (Super weather dependent though…) I’m going to try for sub 1:40 on Lemmon in two weeks with a buddy who is very close to me in both FTP and w/kg. So we’re thinking that we should be able to pace each other well. We will see what we can do!
Update: Pushed the PR attempt until this coming Thursday. All the hard training was done and in the bank on Tuesday this week. Just recovering and tapering until Thursday to see if we can do it!
I did Mt Lemmon at the end of a training camp back in 2017. Some great riding in that area, I’d love to go back and do the climb again on fresher legs.
Update. I did the attempt a few weeks ago, but forgot to post about it here. It ended up being a very windy day. So, despite setting several power bests, including the first time I’ve ACTUALLY done over 300W for an hour (my FTP is 321), I only ended up at 1:49ish for the effort.
Given those same numbers and better weather like I had this past year in April when I went 1:44:01, I think I probably would have cracked 1:40.
So I took a break for November and am going to start base training again next week. I’ll be hoping to peak in April-ish and give it another shot!
