Originally Posted by
OBoile
IIRC in one of his books Phil Gaimon was asked about what the toughest climbs were. He said that, for pros (as opposed to us mortals), the climb didn't matter. Any pro could ride up pretty much any climb without too much difficulty*. What made it tough or not was the competition you were racing against and how fast you had to go in order to keep up.
*I think this might have been written before the stage on the Angrilu that @
indyfabz lists above.
This is true, even for a well trained amateur with the right gearing these climbs would be difficult but doable. In my video above I was doing about 200w on a 34-32 setup on the rental bike I had, which in any other scenario would be endurance level for me, but with the temps around 90F and being so far above sea level, I was struggling and just grinding it out when it was 12%. With some more time to adjust to altitude and such I might have had an easier time with that. For pros for whom 300w is no big thing, even the HC climbs, in non-race scenarios, are a walk in the park.
I did another climb (cat 2 classification) a lot more fresh and early in the morning (only a few mins from my parents' home) and if you go to about 29 min I'm having a much easier time with the double digit gradient with the 34-32 setup, I wasn't as maxed out so I could get the cadence and corresponding power up. It's also funny how my HR suddenly jumps at the 30min mark, I'm pretty sure it happened on another ride where I pass a certain altitude