Bleh! It has been awhile since I have had that metallic-blood-like taste in my mouth. Last night, I had the chance to experience it once again… and I liked it.

The Time-Crunched Cyclist Plan has one issue with it. Because the times are short — for instance, my workout last night was 1:30 — I only have so many options of routes to ride. If you see maps of the routes I have taken, you will see they look very similar and typically go over, around or in front of Paris Mountain. Mostly, my routes are some sort of clockwise loop following variations of the US Pro course.

Last night I decided to turn the clock around and do a counterclockwise loop. I had two things in mind. I wanted to go over Piney Mountain from the east side and then give Audubon another attempt while I was a little fresher. Both of these objectives revolved around Strava. First, I wanted to create a new segment that covered only the climbing portion on Piney Mountain. Second, I wanted to improve my disappointingly slow time climbing the Audubon Road Hill Jam segment.

Getting over Piney was easy enough. I really wasn’t going for speed — just fast enough to hopefully register on the first page of the Strava leaderboard. I just wanted to mark the way on my Garmin. This is a section of the road where I have often done repeats. It is just over a half a mile with an average grade of 5.4%. With that done, I headed toward my primary objective.

Audubon Road is tough. The road starts off easy enough as you turn onto it from Altamont Road. However, that isn’t where the segment starts. You have to wind your way around a bit until you start going downhill at partridge drive to a small creek at the bottom. At that point there is a left turn ahead that gives you no warning of what you are about to experience. That is the start of the Audubon Road Hill Jam segment.

For the next half mile you are on a 10% grade, but that is deceiving. It is only a 10% average because grade lets up a little at the top. Two switchbacks near the first half of the segment can suck any momentum you’ve created right out of your legs and things turn into a slog for the top.

Ironically, after writing about the need to be an efficient rider in yesterday’s post, I didn’t approach this climb with much efficiency. Looking back, I’m positive that I went too hard. For the first 30 seconds I was putting out over 700 watts until I hit the first switchback. I pushed my way through it and then through the second one. I realized at that point that I had definitely burned too much energy getting to that point.

Now it was a fight. I had made some pretty good time up to this point, but the question would be whether I could maintain it. At one point as I was standing and rocking the bike forward (in what seemed like an inch-by-inch endeavor) I almost called it. My breath was coming in gasps and my lungs were burning. My shoulders were sore from the tension caused by pulling and pushing on the handlebars.

Then I looked down at the computer. I saw that only 2:20 seconds had passed. The finish was coming up pretty soon. I tried to calm myself and push through once more. For a few seconds I got the power back up over 400 watts and then sat down with a “plop!”

My heart rate was sky high. I could tell because I actually got a bit light headed. Sitting down and bringing my breathe under control as best I could helped. Again, with the line in sight I wanted to just sit up. Still, I didn’t want all this to go to waste, so I gritted it out and pushed to the finish.

My Garmin showed 3:39. I knew that was a good time on the Strava leaderboard, but I wasn’t sure exactly where that put me. Plus, the Garmin lap wouldn’t necessarily match up with the Strava segment. It could possibly be faster or slower.

But that wasn’t what I was thinking about most. The overriding sensation was the metallic “blood” taste in my mouth. Of course, this wasn’t the first time I’ve had that taste, but it has been awhile. It was proof to me that I had given it everything I had.

At home I saw that my heart rate had peaked at 191 bpm and I had averaged 180 bpm for the Audubon segment. Sure enough, this was the biggest effort I had given in quite awhile. Even though it was an hour or so later, I was still coughing sporadically from the climb.

What causes this? Well, first of all, I need to assure my mother that it wasn’t chunks of my lungs and I’m not having heart failure. However, this is a common occurrence with athletes who go into deep anaerobic efforts. Anyone who has given an all out effort on Paris Mountain has probably experienced it.

I’m not a doctor, so I won’t make a diagnoses. However, I have tried to find the answer to what causes it and have come upon two commonly mentioned ideas. Perhaps you know which one it is?

1) The massive movement of air in the lungs — especially during cooler temperatures (as was last night) — combined with the extreme effort causes the blood capillaries in the lungs to “leak” out small amounts of blood. It isn’t as though you can see it, but it is enough to cause the taste. Coughing is also associated with this as it irritates your lungs.

2) The iron rich red blood cells are not able to keep up with the volume of oxygen/carbon dioxide processing and therefore release gases into the lungs that cause the metallic taste. This is similar to (1) except there is no actual blood involved.

Either way, all I know is that for the next twenty minutes I was spitting to try to clear the taste from my mouth. The coughing was a little more delayed — perhaps five minutes after the effort. By the time I was on the last stretch of the Swamp Rabbit Trail headed for home, I no longer had the taste and, frankly, was feeling pretty good.

Oh, and my time? I moved up on the Strava leaderboard from 10th to 2nd. Boyd Johnson still holds the top spot at 3:10. I ended up 22 seconds behind him at 3:32. Unless I can find a more efficient way up the segment, Boyd is safe for awhile!