Now, big bridges will be good for training your fast twitch muscles but I am guessing that spinning will be better for training your slow twitch muscles. The trick for this is not to get out of the saddle a lot the way many spin trainers do their workouts, but rather do sustained pushes, just like a long hill. For example, Quadbuster is a little over a mile in length. Most riders will average 4-6mph on it, maybe less, which means it will take 10-15 minutes to get up it. You can easily replicate this on an indoor bike - simply warm up for 10 minutes and then do 15 minutes hard, and I mean as hard as you can sustain. You need to be dripping with sweat at the end of it. Do this 2-3 times a week and you will be in great shape for the Ride.

BTW - heart rate monitors are useful for this sort of workout as the level you can sustain is typically 85-91% of max heart rate (which is roughly 220 - age). This is above what the machines in the gym tell you to target, but then they aren’t really designed for people training for ALC!

Hope this helps

Ben

Measuring altitude. There are two methods for measuring altitude, the first is barometric pressure, the second is GPS. Barometric pressure can be inaccurate, particularly when moving as it is very susceptible to changes in air pressure which happen a lot on a long days ride. Don’t get me wrong. If you stand still at the top of Mt Tam a barometric pressure based altimeter will give you a perfect reading, however, the problem is when you are moving, as can take a while to react. GPS is more accurate, but also has limitations, the primary one being that they have to have line of site to the satellite. Anything that gets in the way such as trees or clouds can disrupt the signal, resulting in an inaccurate reading. The new Garmins are better, but can still have a few issues.

Calculating altitude gain Though measurement is an issue, it is not the most significant reason why bike computers are inaccurate for altitude gains on rides, there is a more important one. Bike computers calculate the height gained/lost by comparing to the previously recorded data point, after all, thats all they have to go on. However, this means that they are dependent on the the sampling rate used by the bike computer. I have a Polar 725, which supports a sample rate of 5s, 10s or 30s. I don’t know what computer you use but I am guessing something similar with a similar range of options as to my knowledge only the very expensive PowerTaps and SRM computers have anything higher (1s) but they don’t measure altitude.Anyway, lets assume you are using the most accurate setting, i.e. 5s. What this means is that you are only getting a height reading every 5s. At 20mph you travel 147ft in 5 seconds (1760 yards * 3 feet * 5 seconds * 20 mph / 3600 seconds). Is 147ft material? Could be. Particularly when considering that if you increase your speed you increase the distance proportionately. Similarly, if you increase the sample rate, you increase the distance proportionately. Another way to think about is that with a 5s sample rate you’re missing at least 80% of the ride in your data set (1 in 5) when making your altitude gain calculation. At 10s, 90% and with a 30s sample rate a whopping 97%. I think thats a lot. Think of all the rollers we ride when you go down and back up. If this happened within the 5s the bike computer would not know about it nor include it within the calculation.

The reason for the detailed answer is because a couple of years ago I got this exact question from a rider and ended up emailing Polar to check with my hypothesis was true and they confirmed it. Given this I stopped using an onboard computer to measure the height and eliminate hence my errors from my postings. I now use Delorme’s Topo USA as my mapping software (http://www.delorme.com/topousa/default.asp), it uses the latest data from the US Geological Survey as its underlying maps, they are the most accurate data available to the consumer. Other mapping software uses the same underlying dataset. Topo USA has a profiling feature which is what calculates the altitude gain (I think to anyone, believe is also what Google Maps use via NavTeq). Its not 100%, but its also not prone to sampling error. According to the USGS website (http://rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/nmpstds/nmas647.html), vertical accuracy is that “only 10% of the points tested can be in error of 50% of the published contours” (and horizontal accuracy is within 1/50th of an inch). As Topo USA has 25ft contours, it is at approximately 12 times more accurate (147 / 25 * 0.5) than a bike computer, and thats before the sampling error.

Modern bike computers are cool gadgets, but honestly, I am going to go for the USGS national standard with its 10Gb dataset and a real computer when calculating this stuff. However, in the end it DOESN’T REALLY MATTER, what does is that the altitude gains are measured consistently relative to each other. I have been using Topo USA for plotting all the CAT2 routes and giving you the altitude gains for each ride. I used Topo USA to do the same for the ALC route (I have the whole thing in there, turn by turn - took me a while). New riders on the CAT2 series can accurately compare a ride they have done to one of the days on the ride and thats my goal - to take the fear out of the ride. Thats all.

One person commented that the altitude gain they measured for the Devil Mountain double they did compared favorably to that posted by the organizers. Of course, that depends on how the altitude gain was measured to start with. I plotted the Death Ride route (http://www.deathride.com) into Topo USA and got exactly the same number of feet as what they post on the website, where as when I did the Death Ride a couple of years ago I used my Polar and got a result that was off by 40%. My legs can assure that the Death Ride is over 15,000ft of climbing and not 10,000. On the flip side, when I rode the Marin Double Metric a few years ago, I was amazed at the amount of climbing, particularly as it was posted as only 9,000ft. As a result I decided to go with an 11-23 cassette which was a big mistake. When I checked the numbers in Topo it came up as 13,500ft. I complained to the organizers who informed me they measured the course using … you guessed it, a Polar.

So … the real takeaway is when comparing rides its important to use the same method of measurement. To the best of my knowledge, AIDS/Lifecycle also uses Topo USA (it was recommended to me by someone there) which was why I bought it.

Finally, if you use a Garmin and can create a GPX file of a ride you should be able to load it into Google Maps and create a similar altitude gain as those I’ve posted.

Hope this answers the question.

Ben

All other links for all other days work.

Thanks! This is great info…though that wind on day 2 sounds mighty scary!

How long is the hill on day one? From the route sheet it looks like it’s over 10?

See you out there!

Ben