Originally Posted by
DiabloScott
You already had the psychological and pacing stuff figured out though, right? Yeah, you can get climbing strength and endurance on the flats but you don't get the reality of knowing you can't soft pedal for a while if you dig too deep. I see this on the faces of people stopped on the shoulder looking surprised at how much harder it was than they were expecting. I'm not bragging here, I'm slow... but I know how to climb, because that's what I do and that's what I enjoy doing.
You're right. And I had a couple of advantages. 1. I'd done it before so I knew where I'd wasted some time, so rather than let myself take it easy through Rock City, that's the place to drill it; 2. I treated it like a race. I found a group that was just a bit faster than I could be on my own and I just fought like crazy to hold that wheel.