Benchmarking: Castle Hill

Following on from the last post, it make sense that I benchmark myself against the other individual stage of the Tour of the North (v2021). This one an ascent of Castle Hill.

 

Castle Hill sits on the fringe of the Townsville CBD and the Townsville beachfront. It's bloody close to being a mountain - just a few feet short. 

There's a road that goes to the top - it winds its way around the hill. 2.5 Km long. It's popular with the tourists and locals. You get great views of the city, Magnetic Island and surrounding area, and it's a solid 60 minute walk up and down, so it's a good exercise spot. The road surface is pretty good and the car traffic very light.

 

It's also popular with the local cyclists. The rest of Townsville is largely flat, so it's pretty much the only decent climb in town. 

It's not though what I'd call an easy climb.

Here's the segment for the climb on Strava. 2.55 Km, 7.5% average gradient. It's far though from a consistent 7.5%. The first half of the climb is a series of short ramps (of up to 11%) with a number of flatter sections to provide some relief. After the last flatter section (which is known as the saddle) the remaining 900 m of the hill is a constant 10% apart from the final 100 m which jumps to 14%. 

It's that last 900 m that makes Castle hard work. Double digit gradients are never easy. It also limits how hard to can afford to go on the bottom section of the hill. Push too hard in the bottom, and you'll pay for it bigtime up the top.

So how did the D-graders go in the Tour of the North? Well again focusing on Knight-Hanson-Mort: Knight crushed out a 10.15, Hanson 12.01, Mort 12.41 (as a reminder Knight won the tour, Mort 2nd, Hanson 3rd). 

And me? Well today I punched out 18.15. 

That's the sort of gap that make you suck your teeth a bit. 8 minutes? That's an eye watering amount of time to make up. Well there is some good news on this front:

• This was only my 5th Castle Hill since embarking on my cunning plan to win the Tour of the North next year. My first climb was 21.03. So I've already found nearly 3 minutes.
• The time when your weight hurts your cycling most is when you are climbing. And as of last weigh in I'm still over the century. Using the rather clever Bike Calculator website, if I can drop from 100 kilos to 90 by raceday, I'll be almost 90 seconds faster up the climb 
• Segment misalignment. The actual climb used in the Tour of the North isn't actually perfectly matched to the Strava segment (the start-finishes might be out by 30-50 m at either end). And that make a big difference when you're sitting on 10 km/h. Thru comparisons of race times (across a number of grades) and a few of Strava segments, I'm confident in saying that's about another 15 seconds in my favour.
  

So if I bank the weight loss and the segment misalignment I'm back to a 16.30. The rest though will have to come from hard graft on the bike.

 

Benchmarking: the Prologue

So as discussed below, the Tour of the North (v2021) ran an opening prologue. A prologue is the cycling equivalent of an appetiser. It's almost always done as a time trial - that's a solo race against the clock. Riders start at one minute intervals. It's less a tactical event, rather one of measuring raw horsepower.

That said, it was a 7 Km ride. Far from massive, but that's a 9 minute effort even for the hitters in A-grade. It would be very easy to go too hard, blow up, record a crap time, and stuff your legs for the rest of the weekend. My feeling is most would have gone at 90% not full gas.

Here's the start finish point. It's out on the fringes of suburbia in Townsville.

The course is pretty much flat. It gently drags ever so slightly uphill on the way out to the turnaround. Always pushing into a headwind on the way out as well. The road surface is good, though a fairly coarse chip.

Here's the Strava segment. 

D Grade was won by Mario Romeo in 11.30. Probably more relevant are the times of Mort (11.36), Knight (11.55) and Hansen (12.15). These guys ended up filling the podium at the end of the Tour, and were there or abouts in all the stages.

So my time this morning? 13.33. 

I was pretty happy with that. I think I've got a lot of improving to do in my fitness. I actually had to stop pedalling at a few points and just coast, to gather myself up, recover a bit and go again. That will have cost me time.

I also wasn't able to sit in the drops the whole way. That's the most aerodynamic position on the bike. But it's also the least comfortable place to sit. I did quite well on this front (I did around two thirds of the way out in the drops), but if I can go the whole way out come Tour of the North 2022, that'll save me another 15 seconds (you're about 2 kph faster in the drops). Admittedly that's less critical downwind but it still helps. So if I can do the full journey in the drops, I'd be about 40 seconds faster.

Take off 10 kilos and that finds me another 15 seconds

 (It's bloody interesting to play with variables around weight, where you sit on the handlebars, etc with Bike Calculator)

So just through weight loss and improvements in my flexibility, I'm already back to a 12.38. The rest would need to come thru improved fitness, strength & endurance, but I reckon that's achievable over 10 months.