wanna do a tt w/ 60mph winds?

[SteveP]

try the mt washington hill climb.
Cyclists battle wind on NH's Mount Washington - Boston.com

this is one of my guys...
luckily he gets another shot in august.. hope for better weather.
record is danielson at around 49 minutes.

every time the record has been approached the weather has been perfect for it...

brutal climb for anyone into it.

to save erichie the notation.
john ireland, who moved to arizona before cam was born, would have been very proud.

[Too Tall]

Ouch ouch ouch.
Years ago one of the guys I was coaching said "you want the data from the race?". My reply "no need, your HR spiked at 1:45 and stayed pegged until you finished."
Brutal

[AntLockyer]

My hat goes off to those guys. I did a TT in very windy conditions once, opted for the road bike and shallow rims and still got picked up off the road a few times.

[Matthew Strongin]

Congrats to all the men and women that made it up. That sounds horrible, yet strangely I want to give it a shot.

[WFSTEKL]

Mt. Washington HC is no joke. The weather is something that you have to factor in when preparing for the event. This means having the proper gearing to ride into a 40 mph headwind on a 12 % grade. I did the event three times and the weather was a factor each year. Oddly, my fastest ascent occured during a year when some riders were getting blown off their bikes. I must have been in better condition that year. A cool side story. Jeanne Longo was there one year. After I finish my race I stumbled into the observation building and found Longo sitting at a table by herself. Everyone else in the building was somewhat in awe. I sat down with her and we shared a conversation for 30 minutes.

[SteveP]

i did it years ago and it was really windy...
if you stop or get blown to a stop - which happens for sure- you cant start again...
you have to walk until you find somebody who will hold the bike while you clip in.

[Matthew Strongin]

i did it years ago and it was really windy...
if you stop or get blown to a stop - which happens for sure- you cant start again...
you have to walk until you find somebody who will hold the bike while you clip in.

Ok, I take it back. The three bridges I get to climb once a week really wouldn't prepare me for that.

[SteveP]

lotta funny stories...
there was the time tim johnson ( who won the race twice ) just beat jeanivive jeanson ... barely.
its a quirky event...

a few elite riders at most... many people do it to do it.
starts in waves so there are always people ahead of you...
i remember coming up on a guy on a full suspension dh bike...
fark, the guy had to be going 1/2 mph bouncing up and down...
made me feel good about myself... you can see them for a long way cause you are only going 4-5mph..
pretty hard to describe really... its 10x harder than alpe d'huez. at least.

[WFSTEKL]

I agree with Steve. Mt Washington is considerably more difficult that Alpe d'Huez. Another funny story, each time I did it I started in the first group with the fastest guys (and women). You were given this option if you could ride the mountain faster than 1 hour 20 minutes. I always finished between 1:12 and 1:15 the three times I did it. In any event, there were always a few guys who would gun the accellerator as soon as the road ramped up about two hundred meters after the start. Many of these same guys would do a u-turn about two miles up after they blew up. It was hard to fathom how one could invest in the considerable training for an event like Mt. Washington and then do something stupid like begin the race like it was a criterium.

[GrantM]

My folks were in NH last week, they had been travelling the East coast for their 50th anniversary.
They stopped in Bethlehem at an B+B just on the edge of the White Mountain national forest, about
an hour from Mt. Washington. My mom called to tell me they had stopped for the day and were
enjoying sitting on the deck enjoying the sun.

Some folks they had met earlier in the day were doing the Mt. Washington drive, and arrived back at
the hotel later in the day, told them it had been raining so hard at the top they never even got out of the car.
My mom laughed, as they had been sitting outside having a pleasant afternoon!

-g

[WFSTEKL]

My folks were in NH last week, they had been travelling the East coast for their 50th anniversary.
They stopped in Bethlehem at an B+B just on the edge of the White Mountain national forest, about
an hour from Mt. Washington. My mom called to tell me they had stopped for the day and were
enjoying sitting on the deck enjoying the sun.

Some folks they had met earlier in the day were doing the Mt. Washington drive, and arrived back at
the hotel later in the day, told them it had been raining so hard at the top they never even got out of the car.
My mom laughed, as they had been sitting outside having a pleasant afternoon!

-g

It wasn't snowing?

[ergott]

I saw a guy in my field go guns a blazing only to pass him puking on the side of the road within the first mile.

I got to wish Tim Johnson good luck before he went off. I saw the Saturn kit and figured he was a pro even though I didn't recognize him. Danielson ended getting the record that year. My parents got video of Jeanson as she broke the women's record.

That shit is hard. First time I did it I was dumb enough to have a 39/34 as my low and I wasn't fast enough to rock that. My cadence was under 60 the whole time and my heartrate average was 187 for the duration.

[roseyscot]

the article mentions only a few top 10 finishers were under 40 years old. it doesn't mention that it is very expense ($300+), hence the reason many younger racers are unlikely to attend.

aso, i feel less bad about having lost a number of Strava KOMs to Cameron. I guess he goes uphill pretty good after all.

[davids]

A friend finished on the podium for the women's 50-55 group.

283675_10150908981680718_1824829626_n.jpg

[monadnocky]

My heart rate from the race two years ago = 170 bpm a little over one minute into the race. Into the high 170's a few minutes in. Never really came back down that much for the 90 minutes it took me. Yes I am not a whippet.
I see a 163 about 20 minutes into it, I think this is either a spurious reading or it was one of the "flatter" (ha) sections.

I say with all sincerity: I don't care if it took you four hours, you have my respect. This race is a beast.

[SteveP]

the article mentions only a few top 10 finishers were under 40 years old. it doesn't mention that it is very expense ($300+), hence the reason many younger racers are unlikely to attend.

aso, i feel less bad about having lost a number of Strava KOMs to Cameron. I guess he goes uphill pretty good after all.

the only elite guys who race it are kids who think they can win or crack the record.
no reason for anyone else to lay out the cash.

it is an event more than a race in a lotta ways.
w/o wind i thk cam can get it done around 51:30 or so.

my hr is still coming down from when i did it in 1998... almost back to resting.

[jscott]

A local wag described it as "a w/kg contest in the vicinity of other people," which pretty much nails it.

2008 - Near-perfect weather at the start, but bright sun and zero wind brought a different kind of suffering above treeline. A no-kidding hailstorm rolled in while the later waves were finishing, covering the summit with icy marbles. As if the 20+% pitch at the finish wasn't hard enough. The mountain don't care.

I'm not going back until/unless I see the south side of 150lbs again.