Hi, I’m planning to tackle the Alpe d’Huez climb soon. My current benchmark time is 1 hour, and I’m aiming to improve that to between 55 and 59 minutes. I’d like to use the “Segment Hunting” feature, but I’m wondering how it handles gradient changes—for instance, the initial hairpins where the slope is steeper. If I follow the power targets, will they adjust to the current gradient and the rest of the segment? It looks like it works that way in videos, but I wanted to confirm and perhaps get some advice. I’m also planning to do the Chamrousse climb, which takes over an hour; should I treat it as a single segment or split it into two?
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Xert Segment Hunter (XSH) is dynamic power pacing rather than factoring in slope % changes.
XSH is best for shorter segments. See this related post.
On a long hill climb TT you’re best off maintaining a tight target power range regardless of slope %. There are exceptions, of course, but if you follow Phil Gaimon’s advice for long climb record attempts the first third should feel easier (suppress urge for a hard start), second third is a concerted steady effort, and final third will be hardest hanging on to your watt target to the finish line.
Mentally breaking the effort into thirds (20 min in your case) gives you three milestones to focus on. Power-wise that means as steady a burn as you can manage. 
Here’s Phil G’s power, HR and cadence profiles for his MWARHC record ride on Aug 20, 2022.
I’m sure there is an Alpe d’Huez FIT file you could download from his Strava account and plug that into XFAI Race AI. You’d need to contact him for a date or view the segment on Strava and pick someone with a public profile.
My guess is it’s a similar power chart with short blips at switchbacks which the MWARHC lacks.
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