I started this thread as I was headed out the door to do hill repeats on a 3 mile 1200' climb about 20 miles from my house.
The plan for my training buddy and I was 4 repeats.
The first time was great - my attitude was good, I decided to hold one gear in reserve the whole way up and that's what I did. At the steepest sections I just focused my mind on my pedal stroke and breathing and glided up. On the way down I rested and thought about the next ascent. I decided to keep two gears in reserve except at the very steepest section - then drop back one gear. This went well but I lost about 20 seconds off the first ascent. Third ascent I decided to use all the gears, so when I hit the steep sections I was down to 30/25. At this point I was getting tired and my right knee (which is the weaker knee) began to bark a little. As I hit the very steepest part my mind shifted to - "just get to the top" mode. At that point I decided I was done, if I couldn't keep the mind together the 4th repeat was just going to be a painful slog, so I dropped out and let my partner finish #4, he is faster anyway and as I was headed down after my third climb he was already about 1/4 of the way up on his 4th - I just told him I would meet him at the bottom. The mind was not in it and there was no reason to kill myself, I have house work to do this afternoon anyway and a metric on tap for tomorrow. It's all in your head.