did something of a dry run today. i decided to do two hard efforts up this climb. it was mainly for my bigger training picture but also would give me a chance to see where i am for this hill climb. ran 50/34+11-25 today and stayed in the 34 the whole time as a test; i think a 36 or 38T single will be fine. there were a couple spots where i could spin out, but i could do with a few seconds of rest.

for reference, last year i rode up it in 32:08 during the mass start race. on friday, i rode up it in a little over 38', but it was the first climb of a day when i went up 3 mountain passes, and i have training wheels/tires, 3 24oz bottles, food for 4h, etc.

today i rode up in 33:10. i'm a bit lighter (5#), bike was in the same trim as last year, and i was carrying a full bottle and some other stuff (phone, multitool, etc.) that added up to an extra 2# or so. my little back-of-the-envelope calculation based on my after-the-fact power predicted 33:02. i dragged my feet so started 4h later than the race day start (i'm no morning person!)....so got the bonus of >25F warmer....85 vs 57F.

on race day this year i hope to be a bit lighter, i'll ditch all the excess bike weight, and will carry pretty much nothing. might be 7# shaved.

even though the power was down about 5% from last year on race day, i was pretty thrilled. if i want to meet my goal i'll need to be UP 2-3% from last year. don't know that will happen as i'm in a situation of rebuilding post-injury rather than gaining, but i've got to do the work anyway for the long-term, so it is what it is.

i intentionally trained through. for those who speak power, post-clavicle and then post-femur, my CTL was in the low 40s. over the last 5 weeks i've built back up to 90. (i don't put any stock in a difference of, say, 94 or 97CTL, but there's a difference between 105 & 80.) TSB was -30 this morning...so 5% down isn't bad. (last year was sitting at 105CTL & +13TSB.)

i'll either go without water entirely or maybe my wife will do a mid-course hand-up. i used a hammer flask with a few sips of sports drink last year, but it's mostly psychological.

was strapping on my HRM today and realized there's 50g of excess. the HR is only for data recording...and probably the most useless data. (yeah, i could ditch my SRM, but that saves only 73g over a specialized spider...or 126 w/ a garmin 500; i think that data post-ride will be more valuable to me, but it also may be useful during the race to help save the 3" it will cost.)

again, if the turbo doesn't fire on race day or if the winds are unkind, i won't make it in my goal time, but all this sweating of the small stuff helps stack odds in my favor.