hurricane ridge kom attempt
the setting
shortly after i moved up to the northwest at the onset of the pandemic, i made the trek out to hurricane ridge for some interval training. that ride put me on the leaderboards and piqued my interest in returning during better conditions to see what a steady effort could yield.
hurricane ridge is a hors categorie climb beginning in port angeles, wa and climbing 5200 feet from sea level over 18 miles winding in the olympic national forest. while a bit remote, it is an absolutely bucket list climb that consistently makes top ten lists in the united states.
profile and plan
i had not considered going back to the ridge until september when they do free access for cyclists on national park holidays. then my dad found out about the annual “ride the hurricane” event where the park closes to cars for the morning so that hundreds of cyclists can have the full road for their ascending and descending delight. he asked if we wanted to do it as a family and i said yes—if they were willing to part with me after the lead-in.
free access matters because otherwise you have to stop at the toll booth to pay for entrance and that will cost precious time if you’re going for a segment that represents the “full” hurricane ridge climb it is this one, pictured below.
but for a segment that can serve as the “real” kom, there’s good reason to prefer choosing a segment that goes from just after the toll booth to the top—that way everyone can do it without stopping, not just those who are lucky enough to enter on free days or who can quickly flash a discovery pass and then carry on smashing. the post- toll booth segment is pictured below. it’s often referred to as “the one with the typo in the name” — “park” is mis-spelled.
if you just look at the difference between the two profiles, you can see that the former segment includes about about four miles and significant elevation gain that the latter segment excludes. if one were getting really picky and wanted to pick a segment that started even further down the hill to maximize truly possible elevation gain, you could, so i made sure to include those streets in my lead-in.
from my interval ride up the ridge in 2020 i had a baseline for my times and watts up these two segments. to figure out how much effort i would have to do to get the kom i used strava sauce’s performance predictor tool. it’s a neat way to plug in assumptions for weight, watts, and co-efficient of drag to get an estimated time over a segment. i figured 5w/kg would be a good target, so i plugged it into sauce and it said i’d come in a minute or so under target. i memorized my target mph, watts, and duration for each of the two segments.
the ride
the days prior to the ride were, let’s say, cortisol-heavy.
despite appearances from the above, i really did not have a lot of time to plan or think about the ride ahead of time. i texted my coach that i’d just see how i felt and do the effort for as long as i could sustain it.
saturday night i drove to port angeles with the family, checked in to our hotel, ate dinner at turnip the beet (good), and then watched some olympics while teaching everyone how to pin on numbers before going to bed. i slept poorly (on the floor), woke up, slammed some cold brew and biscuits, then rolled out.
i said goodbye to the family at the turn into the park. i had the live segment going, set my target watts, and just settled in. soon i was down on the live segment, but i knew i would make it up over the course of the climb. i held my target mph for the climb to the toll booth, hit the lap button, and carried my speed through to begin the climb to the top.
as i rolled through the tunnels, my garmin lost communication with the satellites and the live segment disappeared. in hindsight this was probably for the better. on longer segments if you know your target mph and time, the live segment can just be a distraction: when you’re ahead of target it tempts you to ease off; when you’re behind, it tempts you to give up.
there were hundreds of riders already on the climb, so that kept things interesting as i rolled up the middle third into the alpine zone. that’s where things started to get challenging. in the last three miles i saw my average mph drop down to 14.1, which is what the current kom stood at.
i was also starting to feel a little light-headed from the effort, altitude, and smoke (which has been hovering up above our heads in wa the past few days). my watts were dropping to 330 and i was basically resigned to the fact that i probably would not go sub-50 on the shorter segment like i had targeted (my teammate ted has this kom off-the-books at 50min). i thought i would still be able to get the longer one though, so i kept grinding.
i rolled past the last ride the ridge aid station and up into the second-to-last sweeping corner. there was a band of drummers at the top that made me imagine i was finishing some alpine climb in a world tour with fans hammering the barricades. i squeezed out the last two minutes of effort and looked down at my lap time with about 400m to go. i saw 50-something and gassed it to the line and a little beyond for good measure.
ended up rolling through in about 51 minutes, and about 1:13 for the longer segment. both times were sufficient to get the strava kom’s by a fair margin (depending upon your view in strava you may have to click to show hidden segments to see the longer one). i think i averaged about 360w for each, which was a peak all time 60 min power.
the rest
after rolling through the top, refilling my bottles, and snapping a pic or two i rolled down the hill to catch my bro and finish the climb with him. he was looking strong as hell and i actually struggled to catch up with him after i flipped around. pretty good for his first big road ride.
once we got to the top we did the same thing to finish with mom and dad. we enjoyed our time at the top, descended at our own paces, and re-convened in the parking lot for recovery beverages and tacos. if you want to watch a video of the descent, here’s a one-minute timelapsed one from the same day.
overall, it was an amazing ride, in great conditions with great people. and a fun result too. next up, mt. rainer eastbound climb to paradise (looking at you josh). or maybe take back westbound. or maybe both. who’s in?