Brentani’s Cycling Blog

It’s been a while since I’ve done my northern hill loop that I use as my benchmark ride. The last time was back in March, when I set a time of 56:58. This also means I haven’t ridden this loop since I got the new Garmin. Given that I had been having good form at Smack Downs and have generally been feeling good about my condition, I had high hopes for day. I was hoping to beat my previous best time. In the end, it didn’t happen. But on second thought, beating that time would have been pretty remarkable. I posted 53:45 during the 2 week break between Okemo and Ascutney and was almost certainly at the peak of my form last year. So, given that, I’m pretty happy to have fallen short by only 15 seconds. And really, 15 seconds is within range that any number of factors could account for the difference. And now that I have a Garmin course on my computer, I should be able to beat it, because the Virtual Partner feature does wonders for improving your time on a set course. I’ll probably do one tough/long ride tomorrow morning, and then I’ll start a taper for Whiteface on June 19.

Oh, and here’s my Garmin read-out. The extra 5 seconds was caused by not getting the time stopped right away, but I did hit the intersection at the top of Whipple right at 54:00.

After two consecutive decent showings at the Mark Nicholson Smack Down Ride, I was feeling pretty good going into today’s ride. This was the one-year anniversary of the last time Mark led this ride, a ride I unfortunately missed. There were just five of us today, including Mark on his bitching new 953 Circle A. Also present was Keith, an Irishman who I’ve only ridden with one other time. (That time was at the first Mark Nicholson Memorial Smack Down after Mark died. I do remember some discussion about him being strong, but I was dead tired that day from riding the course earlier in the day to paint the route, and was nowhere near the font.) Anyway, at the start, Keith was talking about having three knee surgeries in the last year and having “little or no power for things like sprints.” Great, he shouldn’t be a huge factor in the sprints….(keep in mind, this guy doesn’t even race!)

Pace was a little higher on Greenville, and Mark got to be the sacrificial lamb going up Austin. He set a tough pace, but we were all holding on just fine at the top, while he was clearly winded. I figured, what the hell…worked for me last week, why not go for the sprint. I hit it harder this week than the previous time, and opened up a big gap. Except Keith was glued to my wheel. He has a bad knee, right? Doesn’t like accelerations, right? Gun it again. Still there. Well, I can still try the same method as last week: let him take a pull and try another sprint for the line. I ease up to let him pull through. He kicks it, and passes me like a freight train. Jesus. Not even a chance to grab his wheel. I rolled across the sprint point easily in second. Next sprint, Keith also rides away from me and everyone else.

The third sprint point, up to the penultimate roller before the top of Douglas Hook, Keith also takes that, and powers away from us up to the crest. I managed to dig deep to catch his wheel before the top and drop the rest, but still. Then Mark flies by on the descent. I saw a max speed of 42 for me, which is higher than I usually hit there. Keith bridged up to Mark with no problem at all, which is supposed to be where Mark would usually just ride away.

Tourtellot Hill. Keith turned the screws right at the bottom. He dropped everyone off his wheel, except me, but I was only barely hanging on. About 1/2 way up, I was watching gaps open up and having increasing difficulty closing them down. Then he seemed to slow a bit. Probably due to the delirium caused by the speed, I thought we were almost to the top. I tried an attack. I was barely around him when I realized: 1. we hadn’t even hit the 400m to go mark, and 2, he was counter-attacking. Never saw him again. Syl was coming up hard behind and passed me. I kept my tempo as high as possible and when I saw Syl slow down, I sprinted for the line and took second place by a wheel.

Keith rode on the front almost the entire way home from that point, dropping all of us at various points and making us all hurt. Meanwhile, he barely seemed to notice.

The funny part is that Keith doesn’t even race. I tried to convince him to enter into some hillclimbs. He’s a little nervous about pack riding, and definitely wants to avoid crits. A race like Tokeneke would suit him pretty well. Especially if he entered the 5 race, he’d almost certainly crush the field on the finishing climb. He could probably just ride away at the start line and cruise to the end. I’d guess he could also post a top-10 finish at something like Ascutney. His riding style reminds me of Khalid, in fact. Almost the same body type, which is tall and freakishly thin, and able to generate massive power with a very, very fluid pedaling style. He’s also apparently a fan of this blog and BRENTACOL so feel free to suggest races he should try.

Ok, this post goes out to all my math-y/science-y bike-dork friends. Which basically means all my cycling friends. I received an email from someone last night questioning some of the data on my map for Blue Hill. His main question was regarding the mileage on Blue Hill, which I had listed at .82 miles. He claims its a bonafide .9 miles. As I replied to him, the discrepancy could result from any number of things. My best guesses were that the road on the google map was in the wrong spot or wasn’t very accurate. I’ve seen some major discrepancies between the satellite, topo and map views. Alternatively, I easily could have started or ended the climb just a little bit in the wrong spot. (i.e. if you count the climb all the way to the building at the top, then it includes a little bit of flat at the top that I prefer to remove from the calculations.) There should not be, as I think my emailer was implying, a problem with the accuracy of the data itself because of the fact that I’m not calculating in feet. Up until the data is rounded and displayed on the site, all calculations are based on hard GPS and elevation data, which may have some different inaccuracies built in, but which I nevertheless calculate to well below the level of feet. Anyway, my first check was to see if there was anything fishy going on with the map/satellite view. There was, so I recalculated. it doesn’t seem massively different, and the new route only adds .03 miles, bringing it up to .85 miles total. Then I remembered something that’s been nagging me for a while and is the real point of this post: How does one actually calculate gradients.

Here’s how I understand it. A gradient of 10% means that you gain 10 meters (or feet or whatever) of vertical for every 100 of horizontal.

This means to calculate the gradient you need the distance between the start of the climb and Point C in the graph above, not the hypoteneuse which would be the actual distance travelled. I’m pretty sure that the gradients I’ve been calculating are actually correct, however, because, unless I’m mistaken, the formula for calculating distances based on GPS locations doesn’t take any of this into account. This formula assumes that the earth is a perfect sphere. And I’m assuming Google/veloroutes uses the same one, because I tested a a cliff wall in Hawaii and came up with a route that loses 623 feet in 0.05 miles. The distance travelled in such a case should be AT LEAST 623 feet of course, but .05 miles is only 264 feet.

In all actuality, the difference between using the hypoteneuse and the base is pretty negligible for most hills you’ll encounter, as you can see in the following examples:

10 KM (base measurement) at 5% average: That’s a vertical gain of 500 Meters in 10,000 horizontal. As we know from high school math, the hypoteneuse (distance travelled) will be the square root of 500^2 + 10000^2, or 10012.49. That’s just a difference of about 12.5 meters per 10 KM, which isn’t much.

But obviously, the steeper the hill, the more pronounced it will be:

• 10 KM at 10% = actual distance travelled of 10,049 meters, or 50 more than just travelling the base distance
• 10 KM at 20% = 10,198 meters travelled
• 10 KM at 30% = 10,440 meters travelled

Now some actual hills:

• Scanuppia: 6164.9 horizontal, 1025.8 vertical = actual distance of 6,249 meters (meaning I have it 84 meters too short.)
• Calle Monroy is 28.5 meters longer than I have it listed ( 771.5 v. 743)
• And now the one that started this, Blue Hill: 1369 meters distance, 125.9 elevation. Actual distance should be: 1374.4 Meters. Only 5 meters difference. That still leaves the total distance at 0.85 miles.So still not the “bonafide .9 miles,” but closer if only by a fraction.

Now, do I implement this change into the program or just say “fuck it”?

After the smackdown 2 weeks ago I really had no cause to have crappy expectations for today’s ride, but I kind of did anyway. The cold I was just “getting over” last time was still lingering 2 weeks later (in the form of coughing up thick phlegm all morning), and my rides yesterday and the day before were a little less that stellar. But at the start of the ride, the group consisted of Casey, Aaron, Curtis S., Another RFN rider who I can never remember his name, Syl, and Dave Kellog. Not having ridden with Dave, I didn’t know what to expect. I found out later he’s a wicked fast local masters racer, but he was also taking it easy today, so he wasn’t much of a factor. Just as we rolled away from De Pasquale, I noticed a blue Quick-Step jersey, which turned out not, in fact, to be Tom Boonen, but Evan. Then part-way down the bike path we picked up the Dash guy (can’t remember his name either…rides a cross bike with road tires, and has been very strong in past weeks).

As usual, pace was high on Greenville, but nothing that put anyone into any difficulty. Austin was a different story. Evan was on the front almost from the beginning, and he pushed the pace. A lot. I felt under pressure, but when Evan pulled off near the top, he was definitely not feeling so great. That’s my experience on Austin as well. Any time I really push the pace, I always expect to drop people, but actually look back to find everyone smiling and chatting away. It’s just not steep enough to dislodge people, but it is certainly hard enough to blow yourself up.

Now, as a bit of an aside, I had made it my goal to win the first sprint on this route sometime this summer. I’ve won the second sprint once (after numerous failed attempts) and the KOM on Tourtellot Hill a couple times, but the first one has always eluded me. 1. It comes close to the top of Austin, but not close enough. Almost a mile from the top of the hill. And Austin isn’t steep enough to launch a serious break. 2. The finish for the sprint is actually somewhat downhill after a sketchy bend in the road, and I don’t want anything to do with that shit. So figuring out how to win this one was going to be a bit tough.

After the hill I was about 3rd or 4th wheel. People were already getting a bit nervous about positioning for the sprint, so I quickly found myself second wheel behind Syl. What the hell. I gunned it, still about a mile from the line, and opened up a pretty serious gap. Don’t look back, just keep a smooth and maintainable cadence. Don’t look back. Shit. I’m caught. I mumble something about “oh well, worth a try” and look back to see that it’s actually only Casey, and the others are way back. I let Casey pull through, and the gap stays pretty big. I see the line, and I’ve recovered a bit from my initial burst and give it everything I have. Casey later told me he was a little surprised how hard I came around him.

Next sprint? Not so much. I hung on for a while, but eventually most of the others were up the road. Aaron, the other RFN guy and I kept a pretty steady paceline and still had them almost in our sites at the top of Douglas Hook. Regrouped in Chepachet. Syl, who was feeling a bit off today came in shortly after, giving me some extra time to recover.

Tourtellot Hill. I really didn’t have ambitions for this hill today, since I had gotten the first sprint and I didn’t want to put myself in danger of being dropped during the last section. But the pace was moderate for the first half, and I was beginning to think we’d just roll it up to the top without sprinting. Then other RFN guy made a half-hearted move, followed by Aaron, who made a much more sizable attack. I knew 2 things about Aaron’s attack: 1. He would put in a concerted effort and it wouldn’t fizzle out right away, and 2. he wouldn’t push me into the red. I followed his wheel and happily noted we had a gap. Under 400m to go, where I attacked last time. Wait just a bit. Jumped for the line and took it pretty easily.

I guess the moral of this story is I actually have some form, which feels good! And Whiteface is still a month away.

and I held them in my hands. Completely subjective, but they feel as light or lighter than the ritcheys. An additional thought on swapping between the bikes…for the price of a freehub for one of the companies that sell swappable freehubs, I could get a new SRAM rear derailleur, which, as Khalid pointed out, should work with my campy shifters. (http://velonews.competitor.com/2008/03/bikes-tech/can-you-run-campy-shifters-with-a-sram-drivetrain-sure-why-not_73404) If I did that on the current bike, then I could run the new wheels (which do not have swappable freehubs) and also any future wheels could be sram/shimano and avoid the whole issue…certainly if anything happens to my chorus RD, it will be replaced with a Force…

Today, gewilli announced that he was going to stay with the group and he wasn’t going to get dropped on the Smack Down Ride. Positive thinking only. None of this “I’m gonna get dropped by the skinny guys on Austin and roll it in solo for the rest of the ride.” I commented that “if he did get dropped, he wouldn’t have to ride alone, ’cause I haven’t ridden for over a week and I’m just getting over a cold.” On the bike path out of town, I even made sure to tell Greve that if I got shelled on one of the first sprints, they shouldn’t wait because I wasn’t going to push myself. How’d it actually shake out? Read on…

10 riders showed up. Many of them very strong. Casey is a cat 3 and a great climber. Evan from the RISD team has proven himself to be one of the strongest riders in the last few Smack Downs. Gewilli, Aaron, Curtis S., a couple Brown riders and two new Refunds now riders rounded out the group. It was pretty usual fare after we left the bike path and hit Greenville Ave. Greve set the pace on the gradual uphill, and I was second wheel. When he pulled off, I took a quick pull to save some energy. When we got to Austin, I was third wheel behind Aaron and Casey. Aaron is coming off of his running season, and so, while he could maintain a steady pace for hours, doesn’t really have much in the way of acceleration and climbing ability this time of year. His pace was nice and comfortable. When he pulled off, Casey wound it up a bit, but not enough to bother me. He thought it was harder than it was, and when he hit the top, he was surprised to see most of the group still hanging on.

The first sprint is about 1 mile after the top, and somehow I ended up in front. I wasn’t contesting the sprint, but I didn’t want the sprint, which is sketchy on a good day, to start at 18-20 mph, so eventually I kicked the pace up to 25-30 just so I’d have a chance of staying near the front after the sprint. Casey and Evan duked that one out, and I’m not sure who won, but we regrouped in time for the second sprint up Nicholson Hill. This is where the group usually falls apart, and today was no exception. Casey and Evan were first over the line again, and there were 3 or four people between me and them, and a the rest scattered behind. The rollers after the hill are what usually do me in on this ride, so I found a wheel and tried to hold on. Eventually I realized I was stronger than the wheel I was holding and bridged up to Casey and Evan. There were then 4-5 of us heading into the third sprint. Again, Casey and Evan went up the road, but not by much. At the crest of Douglas Hook, I wasn’t too far off the front. Guess who comes up on my right? Gewilli. Positive thinking pays off. Going down Douglas Hook, I can’t hold on to Gewilli and was spinning my 50-13. (I never bothered changing my 13-29 from last weekend, because I figured I’d be on my own by this point anyway!)

I was feeling a bit cooked by the bottom, and was thankful for the regroup point in Chepachet. Everything back together, we headed for Tourtellot Hill. I was now thinking I had a chance to actually contest this one. Turning onto the road, Gewilli and I were on the front. He was happy to set the pace, because it kept him from having to deal with accelerations. Me? I would have much preferred to sit on Casey or Evan’s wheel, to see if I had anything left at the top to make a jump for the line. Oh well. 400m to go, I could see Gewilli starting to fade. I think the group expected us both to pull off. Gewilli moved to the left. I gunned it and opened up a gap. To my surprise, no one seemed to be able to follow. Casey later reported that his shoulder had started bothering him (from a recent crash) and I’m not sure what happened to Evan. In any case, I still had a sizable lead at the top. Chalk one up for negative thinking.

The rest of the ride (mostly downhill) was a bit of a struggle at times, but I hung in there in spite of being close to getting dropped a couple times. Great ride, in any case.

after toying with the idea of  the following:

• handbuilts that would have greatly increased the price tag of my bike (King Hubs, Open Pro Rims, DT Revolution, spokes) but would have come in below my target weight (~1500 grams)
• a set of Easton EA70s were a bit heavier than I wanted (1650) and also of questionable reliability, especially for cross, and also don’t come in silver.

In the end, I decided on the ultegra/open pro option. These wheels are assembled by Circle A’s distributor and shipped untensioned. They use Ultegra 6600 hubs, silver Open Pro rims, and Wheelsmith DB14 spokes and alu nipples. I’m not thrilled about aluminum nipples, but on a 32-spoke wheel, I’m not too concerned either. They’re a good deal, classy, and not as heavy as I thought (presumably – I probably won’t know for sure what they weigh until I have them in my hands). They should only be marginally more than the Eastons (maybe 1750 or so), but considerably more reliable, and prettier. Somewhere down the road, like when I get a real job, I can think about a set of race wheels (something like the Chris King option above, maybe even with carbon rims, but almost definitely tubulars).

so, it looks like Circle A’s component distributor has dropped Mavic, so the ksyrium elites are back off the table. Now looking at Easton EA90 SL’s, perhaps, or something else…Basically looking for something in the 1500-1700 range, as strong and as cheap as possible…The swappable freehub issue isn’t so huge any more since I think the Rtichey’s are holding up pretty well now that I have brass nipples on them.

I drove out to Western Connecticut today to have another go at the Dudleytown Loop I originally tried at the beginning of the winter. The centerpiece of the ride is Dudleytown, an abandoned and, according to some, haunted town just up from Cornwall Bridge. On the ride, there are three dead-end roads that get close to the town: Dark Entry Road, Dudleytown Road, and Bald Mountain Road. The town itself is off-limits, and the Dark Entry Association monitors it pretty intently to keep ghost hunters out. My interests, however, were much more terrestrial. All three of those hills are nasty little climbs. In addition, my route also included climbs up Swaller Hill Road, Dibble Hill Road, Everest Hill, Great Hill, and Flat Rocks Road. There were also two other smaller hills that I only discovered as I road the course. Total climbing for the day was about a vertical mile in less than 35 horizontal.

1. Swaller Hill Road. First hill up, and it’s a real brute. I parked at a trail head on Route 7, just north of Cornwall Bridge and rode north on 7. Just north of Cornwall, Swaller Hill goes up to the left. Exactly a mile at 11.6%, this is the steepest hill of the day. The gradient is pretty consistent, but it does ramp up to the upper teens at times. This one, more than any other hill of the day, felt like climbing one of the big Vermont climbs (Ascutney or Okemo). The fact that it was *only* a mile wasn’t really much of a consolation, and I found myself already happy that I had put on the 13-29 cassette for the ride. Unfortunately, the road dead-ends (or turns into a closed dirt road that is inappropriate for a road bike) so I had to turn around instead of taking the route I had planned.

2. Dibble Hill Road. If this hill had been the last one of the day, I think there’d be no question that it was the most difficult. For one thing, there’s actually a pretty decent climb up 128 before you even turn onto Dibble. A little up the road, you hit your first steep section, a sustained 15-16%. When I drove the road in the winter, I had remembered a big “wall,” and after that section I was trying to decide if my memory had failed me and it wasn’t as hard as it had looked today, or if there was still another wall coming. There was. Just before the top, you have to negotiate a sustained 20%+ section. Really, really hurts. It’s a little like Jenckes in terms of length, but steeper. Ow.

3. Dudleytown Road. Again, after the first section, I thought maybe this one wasn’t as hard as I remembered it from driving. then it kicks up again. I would not be surprised at all if that 34% is right, although it’s probably calculated on the inside of one of the tight switchbacks. Nasty hill. At the top, the road flattens out and turns to dirt. You can go another 1/2 mile or so before signs turn you back from going into Dudleytown. No signs of pig-demons, but there were some creepy looking trees.

4. Everest Hill Road. Not much to say about this. The opening of the hill is very steep, but thankfully not too long.

5. Great Hill Road. This was one of the few hills of the day that wasn’t steep enough to keep me from getting a decent rhythm. Not too much to say about it, but it’s a nice hill.

6. unscheduled hill, Seeley Road. Kind of like a Rhode Island hill…pretty easy.

7. Flat Rocks Road. This was supposed to be the easy, gradual climb. And it is, except that it’s actually dirt. So it is quite a bit more difficult than it would have been had it been paved. Still though, not too hard.

8. Bald Mountain Road. I had done this one before, so I knew it hurt. But this time I turned onto it coming down Warren Hill Road. It’s a tough turn because it’s probably about 150 degrees, coupled with a change from about a 7% descent to a 15-20% climb. I had thankfully gotten in the little ring, but I was still over-geared. The first .3 miles is a relentless 14%. After all of the other hills, I was really starting to feel it on this one. I think I may have seen some of the Dudleytown ghosts. [cue Zak Bagans impression] Whoa! Bro, just as I was getting to the top, I totally got a stinging in my eyes. And then when I stopped at the top, I started feeling a bit dizzy and disoriented. Dude.

9. Dark Entry Road. I was cooked by the time I hit this one. I got up to just before the steep kicker right at the top, but I had to stop. To punish myself, I took the steepest line through the final switchback, and watched my Garmin top off at 27%!

All in all, one of the best routes I’ve done in my life. Hard, beautiful, not much traffic. All I need to do is find an alternative to going up Swaller Hill and turning around. Three dead-ends is ok, especially when they all share the theme of getting as close as possible to the paranormal, but the fourth was a bit much. I’ll see what I can do to fix that part, but the rest was completely phenomenal, and Swaller Hill was really a nice enough hill that I’m definitely glad to have done it once.

My obsessive searching for the steepest hills on the planet led me to Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. The blogs and listservs where people post their favorite hills make for some interesting reading, but usually don’t produce too many interesting results. It seems that almost no matter what hill someone describes, there’s always someone happy to chime in that “the hill right next to my house is steeper than that.” Usually they’re completely full of shit. So when I first came across this post contesting that Baldwin Street was the steepest hill in the world, I was a little skeptical. Not because I believe that Baldwin is as steep as the Guiness Book of World Records says (according to my calculations, which I don’t stand behind at all, Fargo is steeper, and John Summerson’s book claims that Canton Ave in Pittsburgh is an average of 37% top to bottom for .1 miles).

The problem is that “steepest” is such a subjective thing. Steepest average gradient, top to bottom? But what if the hill is only 100 meters long? Would that really qualify? I always figured that there must be sections longer than Fargo of higher gradient on Scanuppia, even though the whole thing, top to bottom is *only* 17% (the first 2 miles average 24%, which pretty much makes the end of Lincoln Gap look like a walk in the park.) If you go by “steepest section,” what’s the threshold? I’d say 20 feet is the smallest distance that might actually be noticeable, but even that depends on the context – i.e. how much momentum do you have going coming into that section? And, if we’re talking about difficulty, I would submit that climbing (based on comparing, say, Jenckes to Mount Tom) climbing 1/2 mile or more at 12%+ is exponentially more difficult than climbing 12%+ for .2 miles. But at the same time, I don’t think beyond a certain threshold that length adds exponential difficulty. Just look at climbing times for Washington and Ascutney. Ascutney is about 1/2 the distance and the same gradient. Riders generally finish Washington just slightly longer than half the time they take to get up Ascutney. Based on personal experience, I’d say that somewhere around the .15 mile mark, if the road is steep enough, for me, any momentum I had going into the climb will be gone (and at 30%, that distance will be much shorter). I base this on the fact that I usually hit a wall just before the top of Jenckes, but George Street is sprintable top to bottom.

Back to Tenerife. Calle Monroy was the hill selected to challenge the previous claimants to the “steepest hill in the world.” Based on available data, Canton and Fargo are probably a little bit steeper, top to bottom. Calle Monroy, however, is almost a half-mile at 28% (i.e. 5 times as long)! The last half of the climb is mostly over 30%, so I’m guessing you could easily pick out a 1/10 mile section that would beat either Canton or Fargo. This also means that this hill gains almost the exact same vertical distance as Mount Tom in half the distance. I mean, really. Most people – most of my cyclist friends – have never done a hill harder than Mount Tom. (Certainly the two I took there last year haven’t done anything harder before or since and they’re still pissed off at me for making them do it.)

Then I noticed that Calle Monroy keeps going after the end of the pavement with what looks to be decent dirt. Adding that section, the distance jumps to 1.2 miles, and the average gradient actually goes up by .2 percent to 28.2%. Completely nuts. I wonder if anyone ever done this thing on a bike?? Extended 30% gradient is something I have no experience with. There’s a little section of 30% on Mount Tom, but you carry a little momentum into that because the road dips just before the last kicker at the top. The 30% section at the top of Bowen doesn’t last more than 5 feet, but even that is enough to make people fall over sideways if they lose momentum on the cobbles. My friend Andy recently did Fargo recently and I think had to do switchbacks. But keeping it up for a whole mile? yikes. Even with extremely low gearing, say my 39/26, 11-36 setup on the new cross bike, I don’t know if you’d be able to keep the front wheel on the ground, and it seems like rear wheel skidding would be a nightmare on the dirt section. The whole area around Calle Monroy also looks to be littered with hills almost as steep as well.