Cursed Realm of the Faceless Ghost

Anyone who checks this blog regularly has probably noticed a new theme in the past few weeks--running hills.

I was self coached for the beginning of my cycling career. The first year I did plenty of made-up workouts in which I would go as hard as I could for x minutes, rest, and repeat. Primitive interval work, really. My go-to workouts were 3x10 minute intervals and 60 seconds all out, 30 seconds off for 30 minutes or until incapacitation, whichever came first (for the record, incapacitation always came first).

This was my first attempt at training (as opposed to just riding), and I got much faster. But not as fast as I did the next year, in which I didn't do a single timed interval. Instead, I went nuts in the hills and mountains around Utah County. My go-to climbs were Squaw Peak, the Alpine Loop, and Creamery on 9th, a brutally steep stair-step climb from the creamery to Rock Canyon Park. (Fun fact: the Creamery on 9th is where my wife and I went on our first date. She doesn't remember it.) I would climb the Alpine Loop in about 45 minutes, Squaw Peak in about 25 minutes, and the creamery in about 8 minutes. I rode each climb several times per week and spent the rest of the time racing or putting in mellow miles around the valley.

Riding those three climbs all out, I built anaerobic strength (the creamery), developed my threshold (Squaw Peak), and put in plenty of quality tempo miles (Alpine Loop). Throw in at least one race per week and I had my speed covered, too. It was a nearly perfect plan, and it showed in my results. The best part was that there was no structure--I didn't really understand the principles that made my training work. I was just having fun.

Not understanding my training proved to be my downfall, however. The next year I tried to replicate the training that had worked for me the year before, but without understanding why it worked, I got things wrong and wound up burned out, overtrained, and much slower.

After a disappointing season, I found a coach and worked with him for the next two seasons. And for the most part, I was successful with him. I won races, I received my category 1 upgrade, and I earned a chance to ride with my team in the Tour of Utah. But each year I found myself mentally fried by the end of the season, and my performance suffered noticeably.

With my coach, the approach was very scientific. When I was training myself, I rode with a stopwatch or nothing at all. With my coach, I relied heavily on a power meter and an HRM. By myself, the terrain and perceived exertion determined my intervals. With my coach, every minute of every workout was prescribed before I headed out the door. In fact, in two years of coaching I think I only got to go out and go nuts in the mountains once or twice.

Interestingly, although I got into great shape with my coach, I never felt as good or climbed as fast as I did when I was self coached. I'm not sure if that's because I gained a couple of pounds, because I didn't practice my climbing, or because I lost power. But whatever the real story was, I never felt like I did when I was self coached. I think it's because all the structure of coaching made training feel a lot less like fun and a lot more like . . . well, training.

Anyways, I can't remember what point I was trying to make. I think it was to say that this year, I'm going to focus on getting out and having fun in the mountains while trying not to worry too much about intervals and training plans. Or something to that effect.

Squaw Peak was always my testpiece. My times to the top were a fairly reliable indicator of where my fitness stood and how I could expect to perform in a race. I think I'll try to use the climb up the west side of City Creek Canyon in the same way. The "offical" interval starts at the switchback where the trail leaves the canyon and finishes at the saddle on the ridge. It's 1.2 miles long and climbs somewhere between 600 and 700 feet (Garmin altitude measurements have been fairly inconsistent). Someday I'd like to be able to climb it in 10 minutes, although I'm not sure how realistic that is. Today I climbed it twice: once in 13:04 and once in 12:49. For now I'd better just worry about breaking 12 minutes and call it good.

Average pace - 8:12/mile

Total vertical - 1,902 feet