A doughboy's cronoscalata tale...

It was 'Back to School' this past Sunday... at the Berkshire Cycling Association's Mt. Greylock Hillclimb.    Fun race, run by a really nice bunch of guys from what looked like a great bike club.   (Thanks Kurt, for putting on a great race!)

OK, so maybe a hill climb is not the ideal debut effort just coming back after a broken collarbone, with no intensity training in months, and still ~10 pounds or so over a reasonable fighting weight.  But 8 miles flat out up Rockwell Road to the highest point in Massachusetts was just what I needed both physically and spiritually.

For a guy who never had 'natural climber' at the top of my cycling attributes list, I'm still attracted to the challenge of trying to improve on the big climbs.   The Quest for VAM.  Finding your inner Charly Gaul.

In the truth-be-told dirty little secrets department, I never finished a hill climb time trial happy with my effort.  My first time up Mt. Washington I put my foot down a few times (oh, the shame!)

My last clmbing TT was in the Tour of New Hampshire Milk race - way back in 1983 - up Vermont's Mt. Ascutney.  I was simply pathetic.  From top 10 in flat stage 1 - to bottom 10 on the big climb.  That memory is still the source of 'drowning man' nightmares - getting caught by rider after rider, zig zagging up the climb, praying for it to be over.   Demoralized and unfocused.  Like those dreams where you're running from something and the legs won't move...

So call it unfinished business if you will.  The ideal of climbing to the absolute limit.  A bloc.  With lionheart courage.  Penance for personal failings of character in too many other similar moments of truth.  Henious sins against the spirit of the ghosts of grimpeurs past.  It can't end like that, can it?

What's really fascinating to me about hill climb time trials is the mental concentration aspect, and the quest to learn (you'd think I'd have figured it out after all these years) how to balance cadence, gearing and breathing to stay right on the knifes edge of blowing up, without going into the red.   I feathered that edge Sunday at 168-172 bpm, spinning away at 90-100 rpm.   Panting.  I erred on the side of smaller gears (compact) and it kept me from my usual overgearing and blowing up, but unfortunately didn't propel me up at a very competitive velocity.

My time?  Bah, a mediocre-to-poor 42 minutes...totally forgettable.    I caught a few guys, but also got passed by a few including the winner Team Type 1's Will Dugan who blazed up in ~30 minutes.   Not very good, but I suppose it wasn't so terrible either after a month and a half of no racing or max level intensity.  I'm quite sure it's the hardest I've pushed myself for 42 minutes straight in decades.

What was positive about this test was that for literally the first time ever, I didn't get demoralized or quit mentally... I fought to the line and am satisfied knowing it was the most I could do that day.   Finally happy with the effort, if not the result.

It felt good to suffer again.   That's what it's all about.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Time tested, old school early season training advice

Image
I just love the article below. I found it on the web years ago. It's a lecture by Dr. Marco Pierfederici, a trainer who used to work with Eddy Merckx and Italian pro teams back in the ’70 and ‘80s. He delivered this talk at a training camp in Miami organized by a long-gone business called 'Italia Velo Sport'. They imported Battaglin and Francesco Moser frames, Campagnolo and Gipiemme components and other Italian clothing and gear. This innovative, early discount mail order company brought champion Francesco Moser to a winter camp with US amateurs in 1982, and then brought over Giovanni Battaglin and his teammates, I believe in early 1983. The pros spent the days logging early season easy miles with starry-eyed US amateurs, and spent evenings giving clinics to imparting old world 'knowledge'. An old friend and CCB teammate Rick Graham attended that camp. A few weeks later as we were tapping out the miles around Gloucester Mass., I remember Rick talking ab
Read more

Benotto dreams...

Image
Before the US National Road Race Championship, August 1982. Hard to believe now jongens , but once upon a time I could sprint a bike through a crowd fast enough that somebody actually saw fit to sponsor me. It's a faded memory I needed to keep drawing upon several times this past season... Way back in 1981 I was recruited by Constantin Negulescu to join his Northstar Bicycle Club.  The ex-Romanian national team rider had put together an elite US Amateur team, sponsored by a slate of leading Italian cycling brands:  Bicicletas Benotto, Gipiemme components, Ambrosio rims, Hutchinson tires and IscaSella Saddles.   With the exception of Hutchinson (who still makes killer tubeless tires... raced this whole season on one pair), most are brands either dead, or largely missing in action.  But back in '82, well, it was the perfect gear. "Good enough for Roger DeVlaeminck or Moser, good enough for you!" Talk about Christmas morning... I can still remember being in
Read more

Lost races of the Northeast: Le Tour de la Gaspésie

Image
Ever wonder what it's really like to ride a Tour? C'mon, admit it.  Most of us amateurs, from the time we first stomp on pedals in anger, from that first adrenaline rush riding in a peloton, that sound of whirring chains and wind, incubates a dream of riding a ' Tour '.   A real stage race, one longer than the 3 or 4 day long weekend versions available nowadays.  A race with  commissaires,  run from town to town in a place where the road signs are in a foreign language.  A race with stages measured in kilometers, one where words like revitaillement, grimpeur,  hors-delai and  voiture balai  are quickly added to your daily vocabulary. Back in the 1980 and '81, if you were a New England based Cat 1 or 2 rider longing to ride a Tour, you basically had two options:  Get selected for the internationally known Coors Classic in Colorado, or work your way onto a team doing Québec's Tour de la Gaspésie.   While I had neither the talent nor the  palmares for the form
Read more