FYI, you can survive otherwise deadly boredom on a ride with an audiobook:

The protocol if you want to go as easy as possible would be to use your easiest gear and just spin up.

Centennial Park for that many laps? That audio book must be gold.

Hills and wind are just a matter of gearing. Rolling resistance and the small amount of wind drag aside, if you can climb a hill at 300W at 12mph, then 150W would be 6mph. Gear ratios determine what cadence you get to produce that 150W at. I remind folks doing races like IMWI of that reality. If a pro is going 11mph on one of the steeper climbs @ 320W (typcial), then if your a MOP female with a FTP of maybe 180.... guess what, you should plan on going 6mph up that hill....or plan on walking the marathon... their choice.

Triathletes on hilly courses for some reason over think this.

The only other difference going uphill or into a wind, is that there's less inertia, so you deaccelerate more during the weaker portions of your pedal stroke. So climbing and wind are like riding your trainer. Actually ,there's a good argument that if you want ot learn ot climb better, use your trainer more.

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TrainingBible Coaching
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makes a lot of sense, thanks.

yeah, need to get a 34/28.

or raise your W/kg by about 1 =)

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I agree with others that you need lower gearing if you can't stay z1/2 (on a z1/2 day).
Also might want to avoid climbs like this on a z1/2 day.
Maximize your climbing on climbing days and/or tempo/threshold days.

Since the polarized model is based on effort you just have to spin up easy :-)
It is harder to go easy than to go hard, but the easiest is to go in the middle where we do not want to be (high 2).

Naughty naughty - CP has a 30km/h speed limit :)

You will find this article helpful.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3912323/

I've been told I need to train MORE. That's obviously bullshit,

wasn't wearing a helmet, either.

thanks, having a read now.

One quick question. Let's say I've got a very mountainous race coming up, should I be doing serious specificity? By that I mean lots of threshold efforts by doing 60-90 minute climbs.

You can only do so much threshold work.
Define lots.
I would say an hour of threshold work is a lot.
You might want to support this with a good amount of sub-threshold work on climbs.

You can do a 6x10 minutes hill intervals (that is a really hard one).
No need for doing a lot of threshold sessions. Those are usually in the too hard to be easy and not hard enough to be intervals zone.
Not that it is totally wrong once on a while, but in the polarized model zone 3 is not where you want to do your intervals all the time :-)

The most important thing is to look at the overall picture. One interval or threshold session will not ruin everything :-)

great, thanks for your insights.