Harding - A Performance Analysis

Something odd happened last night on a ride up Harding. I didn't set out to go hard or to try and break my personal best of 1:28 gate to gate. I just wanted to cruise and not put any "strain" on my legs. This meant riding in a lower gear with a higher cadence and it meant not pushing at any point in the ride.

Funny thing though ... I got a new personal best of 1:24. It was actually 1:23:55, but I figured I'd round up even though the old personal best was something like 1:28:50.

The point is that I blew away my old personal best (the last time I set a new best on Harding it was by only one minute) which was very unexpected.

I've come to some conclusions about riding and riding fast that I'm going to try and figure out over the next few months.

Ride analysis:

I'll divide the climb from gate to gate in three sections.

Section 1 (Warmup):

I rode in a high cadence and a low gear (1-3 to be specific). Even when the trail leveled out I stuck to my low gear. I wasn't moving fast and I was able to keep a conversation going with Matt. Heart rate was in a great place and I was not putting out a lot of energy. Felt slow, but that was ok.

Section 2 (Warm):

I felt better and warmed up after maybe 45 minutes and a few miles of climbing. I still kept my gear low and my cadence high. However I started to accelerate on the easier grade sections and pushed when opportune times came up. Heart rate started to get a bit higher, but I picked my spots to go harder. Felt like I was in a good rhythm.

Section 3 (Sprint):

I decided to go for it and push hard. Legs started to hurt and breathing started to hurt, but I pushed and pushed and went for it. I know the implication at the beginning of the post was that I was going to cruise, but once you realize you're on pace for a personal best, you have to empty the tank.

Heart rate went to my maximum sustainable rate and pain set in. Felt like I was going fast and tried not to fall apart.


The ride could be summed up with these steps:

1. Warmup
2. Get comfortable
3. Little faster
4. Little faster
5. SPRINT!

I find this fascinating because not only was the time fast for me, but I didn't fell all that bad after the ride. I recovered pretty well.

So my conclusion is that warming up and taking it easy for a while can make longer rides faster. I'll quickly compare my three laps at Whiting from last week with the Harding ride to illustrate the concept further.

Let's imagine I'm doing a ride from point A to point F. Points B, C, D and E are in between the start and the end.

For my Whiting laps I went at a constant pace - always trying to push. So Whiting looks like this:

A->B: Push
B->C: Push
C->D: Push
D->E: Push
E->F: Push

Harding looks like this:

A->B: Cruise
B->C: Cruise
C->D: Increase
D->E: Increase
E->F: Push

Even after I had warmed up at Whiting I was not able to push for the entire lap and get a good time. I just didn't have it because I think I went too hard too soon.

So all this to say that my new strategy for riding fast on trails and getting personal bests will now go something like this ...

I'll start out at a very sustainable pace. Something I could ride at for hours and hours and not get tired. I'll slowly start to increase the cadence and gears maybe an hour into it. I'll try to never push too hard as to strain my legs until a certain point. At that pre-determined point I'll go all out and sprint. The sprint should be at the end of the climb for that given trail.

The idea then is to start the sprinting earlier and earlier in the ride. I like this strategy better though because it allows me to not sprint if I'm not feeling good that day.

It seemed to work last night and I'll keep messing with it to see how it pans out.