5 Ways Jill Patterson Crushed Pikes Peak 14,000-Feet QOM While Training at Sea Level
On August 9, Peaks Coaching Group (PCG) coach Jill Patterson pulled into Keystone, Colorado, 1,700 miles away from her sea-level home in Alexandria, Virginia, with a big mission: Bag the Strava QOM on Pike’s Peak.
She had ridden the climb two years prior, and to her surprise, landed second place on the leaderboard.
“It was on my bucket list to climb it,” says Patterson, 38, who comes to Colorado to stay with family and ride in the mountains every year. “But I hadn’t really trained for it or thought much about my equipment for it. So when I saw I was second, that stoked the fire to come back and try again with a lighter bike and more training.”
Things didn’t work out for an attempt last year, but this year, the stars aligned. Patterson, who had been training for and won Gran Fondo New York in May—unseating 12-time GFNY champion Camila Cortes from Columbia—was still on form and had gotten herself a lighter bike.
“After that first attempt, I got a light climbing bike from a small company called Zephyrus in Falls Church, Virginia,” Patterson says. “I was planning on staying in Colorado two weeks, but I knew I’d be riding a lot and would be more tired the longer I was there, so I decided to try the QOM attempt without much acclimatization, because I knew the fitness was there.”
She did a shakeout ride on Saturday and a smaller effort up Loveland Pass on Sunday to test her legs and gauge the wattage she’d need to hold for the big attempt.
“I was riding about 200 watts steady state for that hour on Loveland. That felt good, so I decided that’s what I would aim for up Pike’s Peak,” Patterson says.
She knew she’d also need to make adjustments for the altitude, which would make it exponentially more difficult to produce power as she ascended.
“At the bottom, which is between 7,000 and 8,000 feet, I held a higher wattage, about 235, which felt like a sustainable perceived effort,” she says. “As I continued, I tried to keep my perceived effort the same—just hard enough without blowing up—while holding over 200 watts as my power gradually declined. With three miles left, I stopped looking at power. I was below 200 at that point. I just went by perceived effort and started pushing a bit harder, dipping into the last of my tank.”
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Her tank fully drained by the top, Patterson did it. She bagged the QOM, completing the 18.16 mile, 5,923 foot gate to summit segment in 2:09:14—a 17 minute improvement over her time of 2:26:36 two years prior.
“Over the two hours and nine minutes, my power averaged out to 198 watts—normalized was about 202—so I was right on target,” she says.
Obviously, any attempt at a high altitude climb is best done with some time at altitude to help you acclimate to the thin air. Barring the luxury of arriving a few weeks early, your best bet is tweaking your regular training to meet the demands you’ll face in the high mountains, and then stop drop, roll, and get it done.
Here are five tips Patterson recommends for crushing it.
Know the course.
You should always try to know what the course you’re going to be racing or riding demands. That’s even more important when you’re going to altitude, because you want your body to be as prepared as possible for the demands you can control.
For Patterson, that meant spending a lot of time training at “sweet spot,” which is right between tempo and threshold intensity, or 84 to 97 percent of your power at threshold.
“I knew I wouldn’t be surging or doing any punchy efforts. I needed to be able to hold steady, strong power. So I worked up to riding an hour and a half at my sweet spot,” she says.
Adjust your expectations.
Your power will decline about 10 to 15 percent at high altitude, so you won’t be able to motor along at the same wattage you’re accustomed to. And if you try to, you’ll fatigue fast.
“My sweet spot wattage is typically 235-240 watts. I can do that for about an hour and a half on the East Coast,” Patterson says. “I knew no way I could do that on Pike’s Peak, so I adjusted it to 200 watts, which was just right.”
Train your recovery.
The thin air compromises your aerobic system at altitude, but your anaerobic system isn’t. That means you can still punch the pedals and surge to bridge a gap or crest a hard climb. But remember you need oxygen to recover from those efforts, so it’ll take considerably longer to bring your legs around after any surges or attacks.
Patterson recommends doing “microburst workouts” to train your body to recover more quickly. Do 15 seconds on and 15 seconds off for five to 10 minutes. Recover for 5 to 10 minutes, and then do another 5 to 10 minute set.
“That way, your body is learning to recover in very short breaks,” Patterson says. “Obviously it’s not going to recover in 15 seconds at altitude, but maybe it’ll recover in 30 or 45 seconds.”
Get the right gears.
Since your power is going to be at least 10 percent lower, you want to make sure your climbing gears are low enough to allow you to spin out your usual cadence.
“If I was going to do Pike’s again, I would actually choose better gearing,” Patterson says. “My average cadence was 70. If I could get it up to 80, I probably would have done better. I had an 11-28t cassette, but I’d have been better off with an 11-30t or an 11-32t.”
Plan your nutrition and hydration.
“The higher altitude you are, the less the blood goes to your stomach for digestion, so that’s the first thing to go,” Patterson says.
You want to make sure you fuel up in advance of your efforts so you don’t have to try to choke down a lot of calories on the bike.
Patterson had a nice big steak dinner the night before. Then three hours before her ride, she had French toast drizzled with coconut oil and sprinkled with protein powder and cinnamon. She ate a Honey Bun 30 minutes out. She chased that down with a drink mixed with Ucan energy powder, which delivers a slow release of carbs.
During the ride, she relied on a bottle with a little caffeine and electrolytes in the mix to give her an energy boost on the way up the mountain.
“You have to experiment with what works for you, but it’s important to realize that the same nutrition strategy that works for you at sea level may not be possible at high altitude,” Patterson says.
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