Hill Climb Challenge 2018
Based in the Northwest of Auckland is a cycling club called the Department of Cycling (DoC). They recently ran a three-round Hill Climb Challenge in the easily accessible foothills of the Waitakere Ranges in Auckland’s west. Here’s the course on Strava.
One Sunday in each of May, June and July, the course of six timed climbs was completed and logged on Strava. Results were ranked based on each rider’s Strava records, with a chance to improve over the three rounds. A dual challenge in effect, against yourself, and against the group.
The selected hills are tracked as named Strava Segments;
- Coulter Rd ramp
- Vineyard Road to Coulter Rd Intersection
- Kay Rd Climb
- Bethells Rd Climb
- Te Henga Rd (Climb)
- Crows Rd
Round 1, Sunday 27th May. I’d scoped-out the segments online and had a vague idea of the hills involved, their average grade, and approximate length. I was prepared, but perhaps a little under-prepared. I did well enough finishing 5th, with a total time of 37 minutes for the 6 climbs. I felt I could have done better.
Here are the results, provided by Mike Conza, DoC organiser of the event.
Key to results: The top 3 times of each climb are highlighted; yellow 1st, red 2nd, orange 3rd, with the Total time column being sorted in descending order.
Reflection. My coach said I should challenge for 4th. As a response, I decided to get more organised. I looked at the time differential between me and 4th for each climb and thought I could do better than 4th. I wrote the times of the 3rd place rider for each climb on my bar stem, Starred the Segments in Strava, and synched them to my Garmin so that they would trigger during the ride. I also became determined to hit the target watts of 320w for climbs of 5 mins or less, and 230–260w for longer climbs; targets based on my performance at similar durations in training.
Round 2, Sunday 17th June. It was a good day in the saddle. The weather was not so good, a little wet, but I wasn’t focused on that. I was focused on my targets for improvement, written on my stem. And what a change the added focus brought. I made 3 of them, fell short though still improved on 2 of them, with only Te Henga Road going the other way and taking longer.
The results are below with me coming 2nd or 2nd equal (red) against the riders of the day on 3 climbs, and 3rd (orange) on the other 3. Matt O’Connor and Jordan Brown were new riders for round 2.
Round 3, Sunday 8th July. In the interim I’d been training, and on a climbing day had woven-in an extra session on the hills of the hill climb challenge. Another chance to get to know the parcour. The day of round 3 and Jordan Brown who is an absolute Mountain Goat with a background in rowing was back. There was no way I would expect to beat him. We two were leading the bunch to the start of the first climb with Paul Altorf, and strangely, by the time we turned into Candia Road North the rest of the bunch seemed to have disappeared. We waited some minutes but there was no sign of them. The three of us continued on and started the climbs, waiting after each one to catch our breath and see if the bunch would show up. The answer was no.
The climbs were going well and a pattern of Jordan, then me, then Paul became apparent. By the time we had completed the Bethells Road Climb Paul, who was keen to see what had happened to the rest of the bunch, turned back to find them. And then there were two; Jordan and me. We continued on with the remaining two climbs which ran as before. We started the climb, Jordan went to the front and then rode away, and we re-grouped at the top. Completely as expected.
We rode back to the rendezvous point at Avanti Plus Westgate and confirmed the rest of the bunch were still out on the course.
I felt really good and though my times were a little mixed, I was really pleased with my results. I was solidly in 2nd place on the day and achieved PRs on the Kay Rd Climb, Bethells Rd Climb, and Crows Rd segments, finally matching the target time from my stem on that climb. The other climbs were a little down, a case of swings and roundabouts. Another good day of climbing.
Summary. All-in-all it was an excellent series which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was relaxed and the friendly bunch of regulars from Department of Cycling extended a warm welcome to visitors such as myself. I plan to be back next year.
