Attacking Hills Note

On my ride today, to keep the head busy while the legs cried out for mercy, I figured out a formula for how fast you'd need to go down the other side of a hill, given your uphill pace and target average speed (assuming the distance is the same on both sides of the hill) (there are a lot of those hills here).

Let's say your target speed is S, and your uphill speed is Su. Then:

2/S - 1/Su = 1/Sd

Use this to figure out what your downhill speed needs to be to keep up the average. This is entertaining:

If I go 9 MPH up the hill (optimistic), and I want to keep a 15 MPH average through the ride (reasonable), then on the downhill side...

2/15 - 1/9 = 1/45

...I only need to go 45 MPH. But let's say I train really hard, and for some reason I can keep up 12 MPH going up the hill. Then going downhill I need...

2/15 - 1/12 = 1/20

to go 20 MPH. Well, that's more reasonable. Except I don't think I'll be maintaining 12 MPH up the hills around here anytime soon.

I think the moral is that hills will kill your average, and that improving your uphill speed just a bit will make a big difference to your average. So go ahead and attack the hills.