One Minute Hills

A few weeks ago a semi-famous Boston-based Mountain Khaki-wearing pro bike racer/coach/promoter/blogger twitted a request for places to do one minute hill repeats. Uninterested in the popular pastimes of facialbooking and tweetering, I only follow what makes it onto his blog, and from the synopsis it appeared that he settled on Moose Hill in Sharon. The main part of Moose Hill is short and pretty steep, definitely a sprinter's hill. Personally I don't like it all that much, as it has a fast lead in and that makes you feel bogged down when you get to the more difficult part. Then there is a stop sign at the top. There are two other longer, more gradually ascending roads that lead to the same spot, and I enjoy these. For intervals, you'll more likely find me down at the bottom, doing loops on the little triangle made up from Moose Hill Parkway, Upland Road, and a short section of route 27. It takes five or six minutes and has nice ups for efforts and downs for recovery, great for crit simulations. And it's all right turns with minimal traffic.

Of course I work over in the Blue Hills, right on the course for the race they had last week (in which I did not compete this year). Anyone who reads this blog probably knows that I often frequent the main Big Blue Hill access road for my five minute efforts. And of course, like the smart-cyclist referenced in my opening paragraph, I've been riding around the hill on the race course (aka the "short loop" which distinguishes going down Canton Street from the "long loop" which stays on 138 all the way to the 'pan before turning right on the parkway) for years. But I am not crazy about the climb up Unquity. The road is generally busy with speeding commuters in the evening, which makes it unpleasant. More than that though, much like Moose Hill proper, I find it hard to keep a good rhythm on it from top to bottom. It's not a hard climb, in fact it probably averages only 3-4%, depending on where you start and end your measuring. On a good day if I can power over the little pitches without bogging down, I won't dip much below 27 kph or so. Big ring. But it's just not the kind of hill that inspires me to push myself. The last pitch always seems to leave me ending my effort early rather than finishing it strong.

These days, I'm more likely to descend Unquity, then turn right up Hartland, climb to Hillside, and then continue back to close the loop either by just going straight, or turning left up Forest. We raced here back in the day, when it was called "Milton-Roubaix" as Hillside was totally bombed out at the time. When the BHCC revived the race a few years back, they used this loop, but went counter-clockwise for some reason, which I don't understand. The past few years they just used the short loop. Well, the Hartland loop is the shortest of all, but when I get out of work it's much quieter and I'll generally kill time doing circuits or figure 8's on it until a bit later in the evening when 138 and Canton Ave quiet down. Last night I did just that, and it's then I noted that Hartland can make a pretty good "one minute hill," although it is not that steep. And actually it takes around two minutes, but you can get efforts of any length up to that in.

I have been feeling like shit this week. I'm coming off a rest week, which was generally mismanaged with excess activity (working on the Merrimac race), not much sleep, trips to the pub, and no massages. I had been going really well up until Turtle Pond, and then the day after I did a proper "ramp down" ride at a snail's pace before taking three days completely off the bike. Thursday and Friday were hour rides at a gentle pace, and Saturday after working our race I actually got the Cronoman to do a coffee shop ride. Then Sunday we went out and probably went too friggin' hard, riding in a successful search for Hilljunkie's test climb, Chestnut Hill Road near Goffstown, NH (10:15 Doug; your record is in no danger). With minimal sleep and spotty nutrition for the two days prior, our hilly four-hour ride proved about two hours too long, and Sunday afternoon I was a wreck. Then Monday I worked and went to the Sox, getting home at 1 am. This is what the PROs do, right? Tuesday I rode easy for thirty minutes (yes, it is worth getting kitted up for that sometimes), leading me to last night.

In my mind, I should have been feeling better, but my legs felt smoked when in the saddle. Residual damage from Sunday? Who knows? But Big Blue was out of the question for me. Hence the one minute efforts. I had to do something, and standing/sprinting up climbs for one minute seemed like it might be tolerable. So after warming up and trying to open with a few modest efforts on Hartland, I crossed Rt 28 to try my personal favorite for uno minute tests, the forbidden Chickawtabut access road. Forbidden? Long time readers might recall this post. Well, the bird-watchers must really mean business now. The gate at the bottom was closed as usual. But now, instead of the little signs with a picture of a mountain bike with a red circle and X over it, they have two new signs. The first is a large one that says "no wheeled vehicles" with a picture of a bike on it. Seriously. The second says "vehicles by appointment only." This signage almost makes it appear that the dude I argued with was so flustered by my calling him out for driving his SUV to the summit, yet insisting that I not ride my bike up there, that they went out and had new signs made. This might require some activism, as I'm sure state highway funds are paying for the road maintenance. These fucks have their heads up their asses.

Anyhow, ignoring the signs, I went around the gate and hit the uber-steep upper portion of the climb, sprinting in my 39x23 until I blew, about forty meters short of the top gate, which was open. Figuring bird boy and company might be up there, I just left. Taking a right at the bottom, I remembered an even better sprinter's hill, the bottom of Chickatawbut that comes up from near Wood Road in Braintree. This is a nice straight section, about 350 meters long, with a very constant grade that I'd guess to be 7% or so. Perfect. I did two more efforts over there. The first I was under-geared and had to shift, but for the second I used a 39x14 and got in a full minute before blowing chunks. That one resulted in a power PR for all durations between 22 and 49 seconds, but I faded to 587 versus a PB of 605 (set last year on the audubon hill) for the full minute. Not great numbers for a 77 kg guy, but I'm old and not a sprinter, so fuck off. And I'll keep working on it. Now off to the day job. Thanks for reading.