Drive n Ride

I can’t claim to have invented the Drive n’ Ride, though I think I can claim perfecting it!

In my hour record prep I decided I wanted to just do a ton of threshold work, I also figured if I could cut down the volume of endurance then I could do more time at AT, so the Drive n’ Ride was refined down to a fine science. This variation (my favorite) is outlined below, beware this post may take you as long to read as the climb it is about!

The morning starts off with my good buddy Henrie riding over to my house, we then load our road bikes and mtn bikes up on the back of my VW van with it’s sweet 4 bike hitch rack. My Boy puts his mtn bike in the van and climbs in, we crank up the Pink Floyd and are off. Oh, one quick stop to pickup Grandpa on the way to the freeway, then warp speed ahead.

We get to our preferred Starbucks in Malibu in a short 45 minutes, feels like about 5 minutes while we sip coffee, rock out and talk about how rad we are going to be. Grandpa and The Boy sit in back and spend a bit of quality time together. Once in Malibu we take a quick piss and head north.

After 15 minutes riding along the beach we come to the bottom of Corral Canyon, our training grounds for the day. A quick stop at the bottom for another piss (we are old), power meter zero offset and iPod setup and we are off.

I love this climb, it is a dead end so has very light traffic. It starts steep for 10 minutes but then gets manageable and you can climb with a bit of speed. It’s also long, just under 30 minutes, and is uphill the entire way.

I have a screen shot of my first climb up it at the beginning of January 2013 and one after 15 weeks of doing this workout almost once a week.

So the climb goes from 37 feet above sea level to 1957 feet above sea level and is 4.281 miles long, that puts the average gradient at 8.5% (though the first 10 minutes is steeper, last 20 minutes not as much). In the charts above I am just showing power and altitude for simplicity, you can see the steady non stop inclination of the climb.

Here is my stats on the climb from the beginning of this year (2013) and from April 1st of this year (about 12 weeks):

Jan – 28:31 minutes to climb, 328w average, 8.9 mph average
April – 27:07 minutes to climb, 350w average, 9.4 mph average

This is training based on my pull up concept, just match or improve by 1 watt EVERY week.

So once we get to the top, we take a piss (yea yea) and roll back down, turn around and do it again. The second time up is slower, about 2 minutes and around 30 watts lower.

While this flogging is all going on, Grandpa and The Boy are eating a nice breakfast. For our second climb they follow us in the van, it sure is nice having a support car for your training!

Once at the top we meet Grandpa and load our bikes on the rack, grab some food and chill for a minute.

Now Henrie, Me and The Boy jump on our mtn bikes and do a killer 10 mile downhill run back to Malibu!

Meanwhile Grandpa drives back to Malibu, hops on his bike and rides the 25 miles back home to his house in Manhattan Beach, go Grandpa!

We roll out of the trail about 100 meters from the bottom of Corral Canyon, then do an easy 15 minutes back to the car, where we toss our bikes back on the rack.

Now for the best part, we all sit down and have a nice meal and a beer (or two for Henrie) and talk about how rad we were!

So, I get to spend time with my good buddy, my Dad and my Boy. I get 60 minutes of work at or above my threshold, a bitchin downhill mtn bike run and a nice lunch and leisurely drive home along the ocean. Ride n’ Drive perfection!