Smyer KOM

Posted

in

Quick post here … I took back the Smyer to Shades Crest KOM today. One of the things about that climb is that it is has been on my commute route home from work for the past eight years. Before I ever had a GPS I used to time myself with a very basic bike computer. I kept track of a backpack time and a non-backpack time. The segment doesn’t match if you are coming up from the 280 side (which I do quite often) so Strava only shows me as having done the climb 126 times — but I would guesstimate the number closer to one thousand times especially considering my pre-strava commutes from 2005-2008. I know that climb well enough to possibly do it with my eyes closed … actually I’ve experimented with that a few times and ridden sections of it with my eyes closed just for fun.

A few weeks ago Paul Tower took the KOM from me with an amazing time of 2’33”. A few days later I was able to put in an effort on the climb to try to take it back, but I ended up falling quite a bit short (2’37”). Just four seconds … but for such a short climb that is pretty much an eternity. Not racing this past weekend, I needed to get a good hard effort in to wake my legs up for this weekend’s Mississippi Gran Prix so it worked out for me to try again today. This time I started from a cross street instead of lower down on the hill … and that made a huge difference. Combined with a little bit of GPS love (i.e., the Strava segment matched up a bit early b/c my GPS track was offset a bit to the right at the end) led to a smashing of the old record with a time of 2’25” … almost 20mph.

Now that Paul (and Mark Fisher) know the ideal place to start the segment, I’m not sure how long that KOM will last — but rest assured if it falls, I will be back out there again to try to get it back! Here’s my data from the climb:

Smyer to Shades Crest takeback KOMSmyer to Shades Crest KOM … 2’25” @ 484 watts, VAM 1500 on a 5% climb.

Comments

One response to “Smyer KOM”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *