I am not a lemming...

I’m all for exaggeration, especially when used to impress others. A good fish story is, well, GOOD. I’m a better listener than story teller, so I appreciate embellishment and amplification as important devices to add color and heighten suspense.

But I find it's best not to believe your own fish stories, ya know what I mean? When your own story telling devices start to freak you out, it’s time to get a good grounding in the truth.

Fine, so when you’re telling friends about the race you’re about to do, fine, go ahead, tell them how far, the elevation change, the horrible sun and no shade. Elicit gasps of disbelief from them as you recount the feat you are about to undertake. Willingly. In fact, you’re paying for the privilege. Fine. But I gotta put a big ol’ firewall between that hyperbole and how I approach training for said race.

Let’s take a hard look at IM St. George for example. Here’s the bike profile:



And I think, gee, that’s a big ol’ hill right there, and, uh, I get to ride up it twice. Should I be worried about this hill? DP and Geekgrl seem a tad freaked out. but… but… It’s at lower altitude than we are (3000 ft, to my 7000 ft). Is this hill going to make me miss the cutoff?? Will I have to walk my bike up it??? Ack!!!

Shift gears into “analysis girl.” I should wear a mask, maybe. Ooo, do my colored lab safety glasses count?

Thankfully, handy dandy web tools exists that will let me map routes and tell me elevation points. Map my ride, and USATF are good. Plus, for comparison routes that I’ve ridden, I can make use of my Garmin Forerunner GPS data. (oh boy oh boy oh boy, I love data.) All I need is distance between points and elevation at each point.

Here is a graph of 3 routes I have done around ABQ and let’s compare them to the hill at IM St. George (Route 4), grâce á USAFT mapping.
Route 1:Smiths on Central and Tramway through the canyon to the Triangle grocery.
Route 2: Smiths through the canyon to the top of 337 (aka S 14).
Route 3: Tramway from I 25 up past the casino to the tram.

I can tell you from experience that Route 3 is the steepest, and I’ve always thought the other two were comparable.

Survey says?

Ok, IM StG = totally doable. Yes, it’s a hill. Yes, I will ride it twice, and it’s long – but there are flattish spots. It is not, NOT I say, not harder than hills I ride all the time. (The % grade I calculated was from the last two points which is the steepest section only - though it is still an average over those 15 miles.) The trick will be to ride it at a level that still allows me to have a good run afterwards.

And, while we’re at it, it’s pretty clear why I’m sucking wind all the way up Tramway, even though it's only 6 miles.

Good to know. I feel much better now.