Northeast - Anyone climbed Mt. Washington?

I've been thinking about training for this over the next year. Has anyone here ridden it? What did you do to train for it? Anything comparable?

For those unfamiliar with it:

LENGTH: 7.6 miles (12.2 km)
AVG GRADIENT: 12%
MAX GRADIENT: 22%.

The record is Tom Danielson's. He climbed it in 49 min 24 sec. which is a speed of 9.2 mph! That's 9.2 mph for a full 49 minutes over 12%!! WOW.

Equally impressive? Ned Overend placed second to Tyler Hamilton in 2006 despite being 51 years old!

EDIT: Oops, I thought you were talking about hiking it.

I feel like an idiot now haha

yes, i've done the hill climb 3x. Since there are no comparable climbs in my area I sought cycling routes with as many hills as I could find, and road them a lot. Gearing is your friend and getting down to a 1:1 (at least) is the best bet.

You can trin on Ascutney, Whiteface also has a climb / race, and other roads in NH & VT could serve as good training grounds as well...

I did it on the spur of the moment. Friday September 19, 1980.

On the second day of a meandering two day tour into the White Mountains from my home base in Naples, Maine, I'd left Jigger Johnson campground on the Kankamagus Highway at 9:20 that morning. I decided to take in a few of the notches on my way back. Bear Notch was first, then a left on 302 and up to Crawford Notch at the quarter century point of my ride. There I took a right onto Mt. Clinton Road, eventually crossing the Mt. Washington Cog Railway Base Station Road onto Jefferson Notch Road, and up and over Jefferson Notch. I reached US route 2 at the 38 mile point. Four and a half miles later another right turn onto Pinkham B Road, the short cut to Route 16, bypassing Gorham. Pinkham Notch was the last "notch" on my planned route and a bit of an anticlimax after the others I'd climbed. I reached Glen House, at the base of the Mt. Washington Auto Road, with a half century behind me so far for the day, and went into the visitor center across the road for a break. While sitting there I made the decision to detour to the summit. It was clear, and a comfortable 60 degrees when I started out, but when I reached the summit 2 hours and 10 minutes later it was clouded over and 32 degrees. No view. :( I took a short break but didn't linger long. My somewhat cautious descent took 40 minutes, including a few stops to rest my fingers from braking.

I don't remember much about the remaining 63 miles of my ride back into Maine, arriving back in Naples at 11:50 PM. Just one isolated memory of sitting on a stone wall overlooking a moonlit field somewhere around Brownfield, eating a snack.

I never bicycled up Mt. Washington again after that. If I had, one thing I might have done differently would be to take the camping gear off my bike for the climb. :)

P.S. A good variation to make this ride a little more challenging might have been to go back into Maine by way of Hurricane Mountain Road, which I did not do.

I just had my first experience with Mt. Washington yesterday (practice ride for race in 3 weeks.) I'm very happy I had the experience of climbing it before the official race.

Here are my first impressions (hot off the presses!)

a.) You need to find long hill climbs of 7+ percent to do repeats on. Travel if you have to. Ascutney is a great probably the best place to train. Get as close to the grade you are going to do and as far a distance as you can. Also, make sure you find some training in what it feels like to do 15% grades for a decent distance.

b.) Get your core in the best shape you can possibly get it in! My lower back is very sore today. The extended grades of 15% + are killer & pretty much impossible to grab a drink on. Heck, the only two sections where it is somewhat easy to drink on are just before 2 miles (pretty good for about 50 yards) and then a 200 + yard rolling section around 6.5 miles in.

c.) I used several Time Trials to help me do all out efforts in preparation for the focus needed to maintain threshold & pain. Also use these to get a very good idea of what your LT Threshold is. You need to know it to keep yourself from deflection. Deflection on Mt. Washington could mean you fall over if you are on a difficult section (most likely) or completely slowing down to dead nothing.

d.) Get some miles in on flats to control / drop weight, but do at least 30 - 50 % power and hill work.

You may have a particular time in mind... but you really need to ride the mountain at least once to have an idea on what target time you might want to shoot for.

What the top pro's have done on Mt. Washington completely blows my mind. More so now that I've done it. Anyone riding under 1:20 really does deserve to be in a category called "top notch."

Feel free to PM me if you have any specifics. My program started right around this time last year when I was thinking..."hmmm, I wonder if I could do that."

Dave

I just had my first experience with Mt. Washington yesterday (practice ride for race in 3 weeks.) I'm very happy I had the experience of climbing it before the official race.

Here are my first impressions (hot off the presses!)

a.) You need to find long hill climbs of 7+ percent to do repeats on. Travel if you have to. Ascutney is a great probably the best place to train. Get as close to the grade you are going to do and as far a distance as you can. Also, make sure you find some training in what it feels like to do 15% grades for a decent distance.

b.) Get your core in the best shape you can possibly get it in! My lower back is very sore today. The extended grades of 15% + are killer & pretty much impossible to grab a drink on. Heck, the only two sections where it is somewhat easy to drink on are just before 2 miles (pretty good for about 50 yards) and then a 200 + yard rolling section around 6.5 miles in.

c.) I used several Time Trials to help me do all out efforts in preparation for the focus needed to maintain threshold & pain. Also use these to get a very good idea of what your LT Threshold is. You need to know it to keep yourself from deflection. Deflection on Mt. Washington could mean you fall over if you are on a difficult section (most likely) or completely slowing down to dead nothing.

d.) Get some miles in on flats to control / drop weight, but do at least 30 - 50 % power and hill work.

You may have a particular time in mind... but you really need to ride the mountain at least once to have an idea on what target time you might want to shoot for.

What the top pro's have done on Mt. Washington completely blows my mind. More so now that I've done it. Anyone riding under 1:20 really does deserve to be in a category called "top notch."

Feel free to PM me if you have any specifics. My program started right around this time last year when I was thinking..."hmmm, I wonder if I could do that."

Dave

Cool trip cyglist, that's above and beyond awesome. Pretty sure now they only allow bikes on the road for this race and a practise day.

Did the running race there in June. Long sustained hill climbs are key, I did most of my stuff with repeat sprints up every steep hill I could find (ok, the steep side of my 'big' local hill only hit 18% or so for a short stretch). Unfortunately this race isn't about sprinting at all for normal humans, it's all about grinding out painfully ongoing stretches, so the sprints were of questionable help. My cycling is on a fixed gear lately and looking back I'd have liked to upped my gearing beyond my 48x17 and riding longer, less steep inclines. For the race, I arrived at Dolly Copp campground at 11pm in the rain the night before and I ran down the trails afterwords. Ignoring sandbagging implications I consciously kept myself under control for the race, enjoying the views and a number of speed walks at just slightly slower than running and broke out a moderately fast sprint/stair climb for the end wall. Started way too far back at the start forgetting that it was a lottery race and not merit based so had to dodge the crowds for the first few miles before things calmed down. Made the top in 1:23 and after a break to cheer others and eat I survived the descent unbroken despite massively quaking legs by the Pinkham Notch base lodge before continuing the run up the highway to the auto road and my car.

On a bike I'd stick with a minimalist fixed gear set to a gear that would allow 75-90rpm at the speed for the finish I expected. Pretty sure I could run it ~10 minutes faster than I did had I focused on the race and not the full day (and had trained for it instead of the longer flatter races I tend to do). Race weather is a huge factor; it was pretty good for the run but changes fast and ends up being a gamble. If I get in another time I'm totally going to do the trails again, would be nice to have a driver to get me home after that though because I had to fight falling asleep after that.

[edited for clarity, why was I up posting at 1:16, ugh]

Not sure where you're from, but people have been known to train on Mt. Greylock in western MA. I hear however that it may be closed this year due to road repairs and resurfacing. Pack Monadnock (Miller State Park) on Rt. 101 in southern NH is another possibility. A fee is charged to use the road, I think $3 is the amount. In my area (north central MA), Mt Wachusett is another option. By combining the "down" road of the state park with Mile Road past the ski area, you can get a good workout. In NH, I have ridden both directions of the Kancamagus Highway, as well as the bike path through Franconia Notch, Rt. 112 through Kinsman Notch, as well as Crawford Notch, Pinkham Notch, and Evans Notch. To me, they are all tough, but since I've never ridden Mt Washington (have hiked it several times!), I can't offer a comparison.

I just had my first experience with Mt. Washington yesterday (practice ride for race in 3 weeks.) I'm very happy I had the experience of climbing it before the official race.

Here are my first impressions (hot off the presses!)

a.) You need to find long hill climbs of 7+ percent to do repeats on. Travel if you have to. Ascutney is a great probably the best place to train. Get as close to the grade you are going to do and as far a distance as you can. Also, make sure you find some training in what it feels like to do 15% grades for a decent distance.

b.) Get your core in the best shape you can possibly get it in! My lower back is very sore today. The extended grades of 15% + are killer & pretty much impossible to grab a drink on. Heck, the only two sections where it is somewhat easy to drink on are just before 2 miles (pretty good for about 50 yards) and then a 200 + yard rolling section around 6.5 miles in.

c.) I used several Time Trials to help me do all out efforts in preparation for the focus needed to maintain threshold & pain. Also use these to get a very good idea of what your LT Threshold is. You need to know it to keep yourself from deflection. Deflection on Mt. Washington could mean you fall over if you are on a difficult section (most likely) or completely slowing down to dead nothing.

d.) Get some miles in on flats to control / drop weight, but do at least 30 - 50 % power and hill work.

You may have a particular time in mind... but you really need to ride the mountain at least once to have an idea on what target time you might want to shoot for.

What the top pro's have done on Mt. Washington completely blows my mind. More so now that I've done it. Anyone riding under 1:20 really does deserve to be in a category called "top notch."

Feel free to PM me if you have any specifics. My program started right around this time last year when I was thinking..."hmmm, I wonder if I could do that."

Dave

Fantastic! Thanks for that and the offer, I'm sure I'll be asking you eventually for some tips. As far as I know, we don't have anything with extended 15% grades within even a 2 hour car drive from here. The best we've got is Mt. Wachusett (3 miles, 6.5% avg, two 10%+ sections) which is about 55 miles away and I've been trying to ride out there and go up/down as many times as I can. Occasionally, I've driven out there and ridden up/down it.

Starting last year, I've been doing 1 hour rides, once a week, where I ride for 60 minutes keeping my heart rate above 85% the entire time. After about 5-6 weeks of that last year, I noticed a big difference when climbing Wachusett. I think combining those two workouts (85% TT and Wachusett) is probably my best plan for now.

Donr,

Where are you from? Currently, I can't remember if we covered that in the Boston Roll Call threads.

Here are two of the best sites I use that have helped me out with my training:

http://www.tinmtn.org/mwarbh/page.cfm/About-This-Race - check out the pics and the racers forum.
http://www.northeastcycling.com

A few things I didn't stress enough or discuss in my last post would be:

1.) I had expected the climb to be taxing my HR / LT Threshold which is currently 163 give or take a beat. I figured if I had issues with the climb, I would break the LT threshold and cramp then have to back off. That wasn't the case. The problem area I might have run into was in core strength. I'm not sure if that hits most people first but it's definitely the one thing I need to work on to become better / faster.

2.) Gearing is very important. I ran a 44/32/22 mountain setup up front, with an 11 - 34 on the back.
Outside of the flat sections, I spent my time in 22F and 24-28-30-34 the entire time. I tried gearing up before coming out of the seat for some sections but the back wheel was just kept spinning beneath me. You might think this kind of gearing is extreme. You might even find many shops that think this is extreme but you will find that even your top notch guys are gearing around 1:1 ratio 34F/34Back to get the best time.


Cyclist - that is one amazing day! I think it's amazing to cycle the distance you did that day, but the climbs as part of them? Wow, that's a herculean effort!

dave

Cool trip cyglist, that's above and beyond awesome. Pretty sure now they only allow bikes on the road for this race and a practise day.

And even then they don't let anyone ride down, right? Does anyone know when they started restricting bikes? My guess is that it was sometime in the 1980's. For a few years there was a regular group of CRW (Charles River Wheelmen) riders who did a 3 day trip every year, riding from the Boston area to Pinkham Notch the first day, up and down Mount Washington the second day, then back to Boston on the third day. I never did that trip although I was a CRW member then.

cyqlist (with a Q)

Donr,

Where are you from? Currently, I can't remember if we covered that in the Boston Roll Call threads.

Here are two of the best sites I use that have helped me out with my training:

http://www.tinmtn.org/mwarbh/page.cfm/About-This-Race - check out the pics and the racers forum.
http://www.northeastcycling.com

A few things I didn't stress enough or discuss in my last post would be:

1.) I had expected the climb to be taxing my HR / LT Threshold which is currently 163 give or take a beat. I figured if I had issues with the climb, I would break the LT threshold and cramp then have to back off. That wasn't the case. The problem area I might have run into was in core strength. I'm not sure if that hits most people first but it's definitely the one thing I need to work on to become better / faster.

2.) Gearing is very important. I ran a 44/32/22 mountain setup up front, with an 11 - 34 on the back.
Outside of the flat sections, I spent my time in 22F and 24-28-30-34 the entire time. I tried gearing up before coming out of the seat for some sections but the back wheel was just kept spinning beneath me. You might think this kind of gearing is extreme. You might even find many shops that think this is extreme but you will find that even your top notch guys are gearing around 1:1 ratio 34F/34Back to get the best time.


Cyclist - that is one amazing day! I think it's amazing to cycle the distance you did that day, but the climbs as part of them? Wow, that's a herculean effort!

dave

THANK YOU for the very thorough posts and great info! I really appreciate it.

I have been trying to work on my core a bit more as I notice it makes a huge diff. not just on climbs but on long rides too.

I'm basically around Boston, so a number of the climbs on northeastcycling.com aren't really near me. Too bad. :(

I've been doing the August race since 2004.

I did the race 2 times in the mid 80's with top 10 finishes. It's a relentless monster, nothing comparable that I have found (grade and length) in the eastern US and perhaps all of NA.

There are only 2 key's to making this ride enjoyable - proper gearing and proper gearing. To prepare ride hills and ride then them some more.

Have fun.

Boyze,

Two top 10 finishes at MW - that's some serious shape! That's like having 2 World Series rings that nobody can take away.

Relentless = 100% agree with you. There may be no better word to describe it.

On the MW Hillclimber's forum there have been some people trying to dig up results from different years. You wouldn't happen to have a complete results from any of the years you rode?

dave

I did the race 2 times in the mid 80's with top 10 finishes. It's a relentless monster, nothing comparable that I have found (grade and length) in the eastern US and perhaps all of NA.

There are only 2 key's to making this ride enjoyable - proper gearing and proper gearing. To prepare ride hills and ride then them some more.

Have fun.

Two guys I ride with finished 29th and 96th overall. I rode the Quabbin Century with the guy who finished 96th and got dropped all day long. I'm motivated to build some power this winter.

Also build your core!

Mt. Washington will require good power, but the key to using that power is being able to sustain that power. You will probably feel fatigue in your lower back that you have never felt before. Get on a stretching program that will allow you to build those lower back muscles.

Try riding Ascutney as soon as it is passable in early summer. You need to experience some 18% extended grades to understand what part (s) of your body may break-down first, and how that can lead to other problems, such as a loss of power.

dave

All ready preparing for next year!!!

I am winding down my season. I may try Burke in 2 weeks but will not be able to ride while visiting the mother-in-law over Labor Day weekend...

See you next season!!!