2019 Goats League - *CLOSED* Climb 6 - Onion Valley Road

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Del C

Veteran
Location
Horley
Great report @Aleman and a good time too!

I went out quite hard on the Col de la Bonnette but blew up badly and limped home, so I’d already decided to go out less aggressively this time round.

So, after the night before’s beer and curry I decided to take the @Whorty approach and set off riding at a steady but conservative pace. I set the coach at 230W but I did load ghosts as well. I set out just to complete the course and nothing else, but I found the ghosts helpful in terms of letting me know how I was doing.

I was riding with @Mugshot for the first few kilometres and I saw exactly when his EPO shot kicked in as he took off and flew up the road. I thought of going with him but decided to stick to my plan and just keep a steady pace. Just before the steep section I was riding at 219W but starting to feel better and with my ‘handicapped’ coach 2 minutes up the road and @Mugshot around 4 minutes away I thought I should at least see if I could up the pace and close the gap.

I managed to bring my average watts up to 231W by the end without blowing up like I did on the Bonnette. I pulled back around 1m 30s on @Mugshot but the real pleasure was actually catching the Coach! I was hitting around 250W for a lot of the second half of the ride and on the steepest section I managed to hold around 300W for long enough to take a huge chunk of time out of the Coach.

I don’t think I could have done any better. I set out just to set a time so I was pretty pleased that I did as well as I did. The ghosts certainly helped me to get the tempo much better this time. I think going out easier on long climbs certainly seemed to suit me better.
 
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