23 November 2006

View of Henry Cowell I decided to go on a short ride in an attempt to climb Alba in under 40 minutes. Since my previous best was 41-42 minutes, it should be doable. It was a cool and windy day. It was clear and sunny, and the sun was warm, but, in the shade of the trees still dripping water from the rain last evening, it was chilly, especially in the wind. Some of the roads were still damp as well.

I headed up Hwy 9 into a slight headwind. I stopped at the overlook of Henry Cowell to take a picture. My tires got covered with lots of wet debris there, but the subsequent descent cleaned it off.

I arrived at the base of Alba at 11:45, and shifted to my small chainring. The first two and a half miles of the climb, which included the steepest parts, were shielded from the wind. After that, there were a few spots where there was a headwind, but they didn't last too long. When I reached the top, it was 12:22, so I did it in 37 minutes. At the top, I looked to see what gear I was in and was surprised to see that I had been slogging up in 30/21. I had expected to be in 30/23, with 30/25 in reserve, but I never felt a strong need to downshift.

I had been considering heading down Pine Flat and Bonny Doon Rd to the coast, but it was so cold on the descent on Empire Grade that I decided to finish the ride by heading down Empire Grade. It warmed up when I got into the sun, and, in the final descent, I had a nice tailwind.

Looking at the calculator at http://www.kreuzotter.de/, it looks like my power output was around 205 watts on the Alba climb, as well as on the Eureka Canyon climb yesterday, and around 190 watts on Felton-Empire. It looks like it was around 180 watts on Saturday up Page Mill in around 51 minutes, after having ridden 50 miles. Actually, 180 watts would probably be an overestimate, as there were intermediary descents. If I had done that climb with fresh legs at 195 watts, my time would have been around 47 minutes, and at 205 watts, it would have been under 46 minutes, according to the calculator. Based on the calculator, to climb Felton-Empire in 30 minutes, I'd need 200 watts, so I'd probably be able to do it in under 30 minutes with a dedicated effort.