Wintergreen Returns!

For the first time since 2019, the Wintergreen Ascent Hill Climb was back on offer. Alastair and I decided to tackle the 7.3 mile, 2500' climb since he was fresh back from his first season of collegiate road racing and had a ton of fitness. We headed up on one of the most beautiful race mornings in recent history for a ride that would hold an almost perfectly consistent low-70's temperature all the way up.

I'd done this race from 2017 to 2019, and the first year had to get off the bike halfway up and wait for pain to subside. In retrospect, I was significantly underweight at 137.7 lbs that day, and I finished dead last in category. In 2018, I finished 2nd in my 5-year age-bracket (40 - 44), and 3rd in my BAR age-bracket (35-44). In 2019 I swapped to a compact chainset and raced CAT3 in a BAR bid and got 4th.

At racing-age 50, I'm fully embracing the Masters life, and with Alastair racing CAT3, I chose the 50-54 group. The bike I raced previously was considerably lighter than the Aeroad, and seeing as I weigh a little more now than I did then, I needed to save equipment weight where I could. I pulled it down off the wall at 16.38 lbs and ran through my options.

The Ultegra 6800 groupset had been on it since November 2015, and while I'd stuffed a 11-32 cassette onto it a couple times, it never really worked all that well. 4 years ago I pulled the ancient Dura-Ace crankset and replaced it with another 5-bolt 130BCD power meter crank, with the idea that I could hold on to my chainring investments. Immediately the industry abandoned that standard and I found myself stuck with an expensive crankset with limited ring options--you can't put anything smaller than a 38T ring on 130BCD. I felt stuck for years with that setup, and considered the bike *done* when I bought the Aeroad.

While the Aeroad runs 50/37 rings up front, it supports up to a 33-tooth cassette out back--much deeper gearing than the standard 53/39 - 11/28. But the Aeroad is also heavy, even with lightweight climbing wheels.

So, standing in the garage and over-thinking things as usual, I noticed Alastair's abandoned gravel bike with its SRAM Force CX1 drivetrain: 40T chainring, 11-36 cassette. Every single bit lighter than the Ultegra 6800 equivalent. I also noticed an abandoned Ultegra R8000 drivetrain sitting in a box. An idea was born: swap out my 6800 with the SRAM CX1 and upgrade his CX bike to R8000.

The conversion took my old Blue Axino down to 15.72 lbs. Then I remembered a lightweight saddle that was also lying around, and that brought me down to 15.58. Fully 0.8 lbs removed, and the only things I had to buy were a cheap 5-bolt 130BCD 1x chainring ($20) and a new chain, since the Blue had been put up with a badly worn-out chain. Of course I opted for the lightweight gold chain, because why not?

I took it out to the local Thursday night fast group ride with that setup and, while it was spun out regularly, managed to hold on and grab a KOM I never thought I'd get. I guess I was as ready as I was gonna be?

As this wasn't my first tangle with Wintergreen, I knew the biggest mistake would be to over-commit early. The first mile is mostly flat, then it kicks up sharply. I was desperately hopeful the deeper gearing would let me stay out of wattage danger before even turning in to the resort road.

I set off at a tepid 300W and thought the guy ahead was getting away, but just held steady. I even backed it down a touch since I didn't believe I could legitimately average anything higher than 280W. Within a few minutes I was noticing him getting closer, and by the first time I had to use the deepest gear I was right beside him.

Steady, steady, steady. Heart-rate in range, power fluctuations as minimal as possible. RPM sinking into the low 70's, but that's a hell of a lot better than the 50's or 40's that I'd seen before! Suddenly I was at the entrance, one of the steepest ramps of the day. I'd caught a few more people and had another in sight, but for the first time I doubted myself, and then I lost the granny gear. The whole entire reason I'd put the SRAM setup on the bike was failing me.

It took a few minutes of pain, confusion, and anger to realize I could hold it in the granny gear by holding the shifter in. So that was gonna be the entire remainder of the ride: to get 40/36, I'd have to keep pressure on the lever. 25 minutes of hand-cramping while trying to keep the rest of my body from revolting. Then I felt the cable slip, and now I had to hold the lever even farther in (found afterward the anchor bolt was loose--I got lucky it didn't slip any further!).

But steadily more riders came into view, and by the time I got to the sunshine sectors I was passing walkers. Nobody had passed me and the resort itself was in view. So close!

Then I heard a grind behind me, and slowly another rider began to pass me...in my category. The last 2 ramps were abject misery as he passed me and then pulled away, and it was all I could do to make it across the finish line. I hit stop at 44:33, 1 second after crossing the line.

Shockingly, my results were identical to 2018: 2nd in my 5-year age-bracket (50-54), 3rd in my BAR age-bracket (45-54). Perhaps more shockingly, I was 23 seconds faster than in 2018. The bike may be lighter, but the rider isn't. I weighed ~5 lbs less in 2018 than I do now, but that increased weight has coincided with a greater ability to maintain power. My average power that year was 261W--this year it was 277W.

In 2018 I went off the line like it was a traditional TT: burst to speed above FTP and then settle in. I was 30 seconds faster in the first half. This year, with the tepid launch, I was better able to tackle the 2nd half, and finished that 1 minute faster than ever before.

I'm very pleased with my results, even if some friends were a couple minutes faster. Alastair finished 100 seconds behind my time, but he makes no claims to be either a TT specialist nor a spindly climber.

I'm looking forward to resolving the granny gear issue and going after it again next year. I think the gearing is right, and the bike is just about as optimized for weight & aero as it can be.

And I didn't have any cardiac events! Yippee!

Ok now for the super nerdy stuff. Data analysis has also improved pretty significantly since 2018, and while others may have been aware of W' back then, I wasn't, and I had no meaningful tools to compare activities directly.

This chart shows 2018 in orange, 2025 in fuchsia. You can see the hard launch and resultant higher early speeds, correlating directly to a W' loss in the first half mile. Everything tracks pretty steadily until ~2.5 miles in, when there are some deep fluctuations in 2018 that ultimately lead to a heart-rate period above 180bpm right around the 4-mile mark.

Cadence varies pretty significantly between the two, as well, with a slightly lower average in the opening 2 miles and a big drop right around that same W' low-point, strongly indicating the higher gearing in 2018 was a detriment to my race. The lowest cadence recorded that year was 49RPM (the zeroes are erroneous--I didn't stop), as opposed to 67RPM for that same point this year. After that, I clearly had to back off power, which cost me the race. W' starts to recover at that point, and every spike afterward has both lower power and heart-rate. I was cooked and barely holding on.

This year I was much more stable with my W' depletion, and it looks like I can still work on some very minimal strategy improvements to keep that depletion a bit more linear, or at least not let it recover so much before the end...or maybe save a touch for a wimpy sprint.

I've got options if I can keep this fitness for another year!