Winds? Hills? What's the diff?

If it seems I'm obsessing about this upcoming trek up Ventoux during our trip to Provence, well it's more than seems. It is. I am. Obsessing. Frankly, I'm concerned. So I'm riding with a little more desperation. Today, with a 30 k wind from the Southeast, which ended up shifting to the South, I thought, well here's a solid challenge that might be a bit like that hill. A bit. So I headed into it, obliquely at first, and then fully. The whole ride was 56 ks, and about half of these were partially or fully into it. (7 ks were completely with it, and the remaining were managing a full-on side-wind.) Well I had to battle my disappointment at my mental fortitude. It was tough (except for that 7 k break). I know it's early in the season, but I was disappointed with a 27.25 k/h average (just over 2 hours). I know that riding up that French mountain will take a full two hours (likely more), and there won't be any "with wind" break in those two hours.

So I've been looking for some kind of comparative measure between riding up a hill, and riding into the wind. Of course the variables are pretty ridiculous - body size and weight, wind direction, grade, etc - but I found a "bicycle speed (velocity) and power calculator" set up up by a German, of course, that allows you to enter either the grade of the slope of the hill, or the windspeed, along with all the other variables, along with the distance and speed you've travelled. Then it tells you the watts you'd need, or have used, to do the ride, along with the kcals you've used to do it. Pretty great!

I punched in my numbers and ended up feeling okay about how much I worked today, and how that might translate on an ascent up a 22.7 k hill. Geez though! I shouldn't be waking up at night in a sweat over a bike ride in France. I have got to learn to take it easy on this stuff!