expatbrit

zacster

I stopped just short of there on my real ride up, It was those last switchbacks that just did me in. And are you sure it was downhill and not just flat? Even yesterday on my simulated ride a 2% grade felt relatively easy. If I can figure out how to start in the middle of a ride with Rouvy I'm going to pick up where I left off. It won't prove anything that I can do it on a trainer in sections, but I'm curious to see how each section feels, thin air notwithstanding. It would certainly prep me for the real ride just by being more familiar with it. With Zwift on an endless loop of Central Park, a place I avoid even though I live here, I need something else to keep me occupied.

Campag4life

and my 2 cents...
no. 14: No hot chicks in tight cheer leader uniforms waiting at the top as a motivator.
To me, you were just being sensible.
Next time, use an e-bike on Strava and set a KOM.
Good effort. I would have failed too.

Lazyass

If you want a good Hawaii ride then do Saddle Road from Hilo to Waimea. Around 60 miles with zero gas stations or stores. The first half is a killer with close to 7000 feet of climbing, but knowing you have 30 miles of downhill coming helps motivate. Just beware of the idiot drivers blasting by you at 100mph, especially on the way down haha

TimothyH

Altitude training masks are available.

This is an example. https://www.trainingmask.com/

I'm not sure how they work but a guy near me is in the military and uses one for running. I asked him about it and he says it is effective.


-Tim-

DrIsotope

I see runners wearing those training masks. I had never actually seen a masochist before, but now I am completely aware of what they look like.

joejack951

Being related to crossfit is about all I need to see to recognize that it's a BS product. That and the fact that no elite endurance athletes are ever spotted wearing those things.

DrIsotope

My wife works with an "avid crossfitter." Her time is divided between two activities:

1. Doing Crossfit
2. Recuperating from injuries sustained while doing Crossfit.

indyfabz

I sometimes head from the east coast out west to tour. 5,000 is about where I start to feel it. A few years ago in Montana I crossed a 7,200'+ pass the second day of a trip after spending the previous night at only 4,200'. The next day I did two passes back to back. 7,300+' and 7,800+'. The next day I hit 6,000' during a 20 mile stretch of dirt. The whole experience left me knackered. I knew it would, which is why I built in a rest day after all that.

drewguy

Wait, when is the time for telling everyone else about how they do Crossfit?

zacster

You are wrong on no. 14, except no uniform.

Sensible, yes. e-bike, never.

caloso

I've done it a couple of times. It's hard. For me the thing about it is that it is so unrelenting. Most mountains have some up and down. Haleakala: nope. Maybe a slightly flatter part at the store and at the park entrance, but really it's just a long slog that never ever lets up. Here in NorCal, Mt. Diablo is known as a benchmark climb, but Haleakala is basically 3 Diablos stacked on top of each other.

As for training, I think if I had to choose between climbing hills and churning out long steady efforts, I would choose the latter.

TimothyH

I would have made it.

Just felt like you all should know that.


-Tim-

expatbrit

Pretty sure you are right on the money about this. My kettlebell instructor had me doing some things thru' a restrictive device for breathing, but it's not the same.

(And man. I'm sitting in ATL. There's a LOT more air here than at home, but the traffic makes me glad the bike /is/ back home...)

Rides4Beer

Do Bear Mtn 10x?

zacster

You would think doing Bear Mtn 10x (7x really) would match it, but it is a long break between climbs since you have to go down each time. Besides it would be boooorrrriiinnng.

zacster

That. You start in Paia and you get maybe a quarter mile of flat, then it starts to rise, and rise, and rise, with no break. Actually one break, after Makawao when you turn off Olinda onto Hanamu road, that is downhill for a little bit. It was even downhill on my simulated ride the other day. After that though it is uphill the rest of the way up. And when I was going down I hit that same point on Hanamu and almost couldn't get myself up because I was so sore. In the video of the simulation you see some of the downhillers actually walking this, but these are people that didn't do the climb, they are bused to the top to basically coast down the entire way. And that just shows how unrelenting it is. It is a tourist thing to do that.

zacster

I just had an experience to confirm what people are saying about the altitude. I was on a road trip with my wife and we visited friends in Denver, who also have a house in Leadville, Colorado. When we got to Leadville they took us on a short walk to a clearing to see the mountains and I was completely winded. The next day we did a longer hike up and I could barely keep up with them and had to keep stopping. And consider that I'm fit and ride 150 miles per week. I just could not catch my breath. In Denver it was little harder, but at 11,000' it was really difficult. When we got to Santa Fe, at 7000', I was getting accustomed to it and didn't have any more problems.

Carbonfiberboy 

IME the acclimatization tables work, but leave out some immediate factor. I find just spending 24 hrs at an altitude results in more acclimatization that I would expect. I've been told that this is an involuntary response consisting of altered breathing and probably other internal processes that we don't notice or understand. Just driving to the top in early morning and spending the day up there moving about, some jumping jacks, some jogging, etc. should be very beneficial. Maybe 2 days in a row before the ride. There's also pressure breathing as done by mountaineers: https://www.rmiguides.com/blog/2014/...or_performance

Breathing is something else you can practice while you're up on top and very important to practice while climbing. Takes practice not to hyperventilate.

One reads opinions that you should never arrive early at altitude, but IME that's completely wrong. I'll hike up to 10,000', spend the night, climb to 14,000' and upon descending to 10,000', find that it's nothing. Similarly just spending a couple days at 10,000 fixes me right up. My itsy-lunged wife went from sea level to 11,000' in just a few days backpacking and did fine, walking right past some zonked youngers, but she knew how to do it.

As far as training on the flat goes, resistance rollers are pretty good. Set your gearing to produce your long climb wattage at your long climb cadence, and have at it for a few hours. Rollers or a trainer are really good at not providing breaks, but rollers are better at keeping one's head in it. Pain city is available right in your own home.

zacster

With Rouvy now on the Mac, I'm going to give it another try indoors, but not until the weather gets bad outside. One thing I noticed on the trainer when I tried last year was that the perceived effort was greater than I remember and that each change in grade of .1% felt like too much in power needed. Even going up for real you can easy spin, but on the trainer it wasn't ever an easy spin. Trainers are great for training but not necessarily for simulation.

Darth Lefty 

I was on Maui a few years ago. The in-laws invited us to Lahaina to celebrate their 40th anniversary. We wanted to do the ride DOWN Haleakala on rented bikes but my wife was pregnant and sick and we skipped it. Uphill with my heart condition and beta blocker? Probably never.

They had just officially ended sugar production that year. There were a bunch of fallow sugar fields with wild sugar that year we could see while driving from the airport. I wonder what it's like now. I recall thinking one of the owners of those huge tracts on the foothills of the volcano could do well with a year round lift served DH MTB park. You look at the cone and it just goes uuuuup at the angle of repose.

Carbonfiberboy 

Simulation? No, they're not really that. But you have your power from your climb, if nothing else from Strava's estimate, which is close enough for practical purposes on steady climbs like that. So just set that power and have at it. Power is power, indoors or outdoors.

That said, indoor power is harder to sustain. For one thing, you need 2 24" fans set on high and no shirt, for another there's not the tiniest easing off like you get outdoors, even if you think you're going steadily. But that's a good thing. You don't want to sit there for 5 hours. Just do it until the pain forces you to stop. That's the objective. Intervals will help a lot. On my rollers, I either do steady-state at some particular power (varies) or I do intervals. I don't fool around with ride simulations. Waste of time IMO. If I want to just ride, I ride outdoors. Today I'll do my once-a-week FastPedal on my rollers: pedal for 20' - 45' at as high a cadence as I can maintain in a very low gear, and stay in zone 2, for me ~112, for you 115-120. Try it - it's interesting. Then I'll go to the gym for an hour.

fastfour

I did it in April of this year and it was the hardest physical challenge of my life. I stopped a lot to not only enjoy the scenery and local fare but to catch my breath. I live at sea level and let me tell you altitude is a killer. It took me 6:43 up and on :42 down. I say do it again and do what I did and just gut it out. I was never so happy (and still haven't been since) to finish a ride as I was that one. Good luck!

zacster

If you still live in Seattle as your profile says you at least had some hills to train on! There is nothing like that in the east. I really envy you that you made it.

oujeep1

It is true physiologically it takes several weeks to acclimatize to altitude, because acclimatization occurs with an increase in your red blood cell mass. Your actual performance begins to decline as soon as you arrive, so some people will come out to colorado the day before a big event, like Mt Evans. However it is also true your risk of high altitude sickness increases if you do a big exercise soon after arrival
If you know a friendly urologist, blue magic(Viagra) helps many people with high altitude performance.
At 10k the air is starting to get pretty thin so you will notice it at the top of Haleakala. At Mt Evans(14K)it gets really really thin, the last few miles take forever, never ending series of switchbacks. Here in oklahoma we say to train for mt evans you sew your lips close and tape one of your nostrils shut, then go ride up Mt Scott.
If you want a great ride on Maui with lots of climbing but no altitude, and the climbs while tough are not long and are accompanied by lots of descending, try the West Maui Loop. Preferably ride it clockwise so you are on the mountain side of the road. About 15 miles past Kapalua it turns narrow and bumpy. Little traffic, but be careful lots of blind corners. Stop at Julie's for banana bread and water. Wailuku coffee co a good place to stop and refuel also
If you are in the wailea area go south along the coast past makena soon you'll be riding right next to the ocean, its beautiful.