hills!!!

Asian Allez said:

hi, im still pretty new at cycling, i need help on hills! they are so terrible, and i try to charge them but i still have to goto the easiest gearing and i am dying going up the hill at 90 rpm! do i jsut need to train more? after that climb, i can barely move and then goto the next hill!

Hills represent a fairly major problem with the bicycle. If you've lightened up as much as possible, and are able to maintain 90 rpm, then you just need to pace yourself (rather than charging) up the hill, and do it over and over and over again until you're in better shape. Sounds like if you're dead by the time you get over the hill, you pushed yourself a bit hard - take 'er easy, and build up your endurance slowly, even if your rpm drops down to 60-70 now and again.

If this doesn't appeal, then you can always take an alternate route and ride around the hill.

thanks! i dont plan on riding around hills. i want to be able to conquer them.

Asian Allez said:

thanks! i dont plan on riding around hills. i want to be able to conquer them.

There's no trick to climbing. Hills just reveal one's strength or weakness in sustainable power. What you need to do is increase your sustainable power. Every training regimen has workouts to increase sustainable power. Actually, you are at an advantage being able to train on hills because hills make it easy to ride at a steady, high intensity. Ride your hills at ~90% of the speed you could ride if you went all out. It doesn't matter what that speed is. If your max effort on a given hill is 10mph, then ride the hill at 9mph. Your speed will gradually increase as you do more high-intensity training (whether you do it on hills or not).

Asian Allez said:

hi, im still pretty new at cycling, i need help on hills! they are so terrible, and i try to charge them but i still have to goto the easiest gearing and i am dying going up the hill at 90 rpm! do i jsut need to train more? after that climb, i can barely move and then goto the next hill!

Work on consistent output and don't try to charge. If you push too hard at the begining of a hill you'll blow up, and while your body is trying to recover you're still climbing. Work on riding at a pace that you can maintain all the way up the hill. It takes some restraint to go slower, but your average speed will go up.

artmichalek said:

Work on riding at a pace that you can maintain all the way up the hill.

Great point. I find that if I try and mash up the beginning of a tough climb, I'm fried before the hill is finished. Sustained tempo, even if it's just crawling along, seems to work best for me. And every time I climb that mother, it gets a little easier.
Keep plugging away.

How long are these hills, timewise? That will determine what the sources of energy will be and what you need to train. However, if you want to be really good at climbing, you will need to train most systems.

Losing as much weight as you reasonably can will also be necessary.

Not all training has to be done climbing. Specificity is an issue but L4 and L5 intervals you do on flat and rolling terrain will translate to better performance on big hills or mountains.

[font=Verdana]AA [/font]

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[font=Verdana]you must approach hills like they are a woman you’d like to ask out on a date you need confidence, patience, and some persistence. You can’t go rushing in like some high school sophomore, you can’t get yourself defeated mentally from the start, and you don’t start at third base! There is skill, both physical and mental at play here, timing your reactions to the changes in grade, position both on the saddle and off, position of your hands on the bars – your grip, no strangle hold here, and it’s been said earlier pacing. All these things can be mastered, pacing for me was the greatest challenge, but with practice, learning to find love when you see skyward pointing tarmac all will go a long way towards making you a better climber. [/font]

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[font=Verdana]HR[/font]

Squint said:

How long are these hills, timewise?
Losing as much weight as you reasonably can will also be necessary.

well they are short, 3-4 minute hills, but in rapid sucession, i'd say 5 in a row, all going more and more uphill each time.

i am 5'5" and weight 125 lbs. how much more should i lose?:p

Hookyrider said:

[font=Verdana][/font]
[font=Verdana]you must approach hills like they are a woman you’d like to ask out on a date you need confidence, patience, and some persistence. [/font]

You're also going to get slapped a lot. Learn to like it. :eek:

Asian Allez said:

well they are short, 3-4 minute hills, but in rapid sucession, i'd say 5 in a row, all going more and more uphill each time.

i am 5'5" and weight 125 lbs. how much more should i lose?:p

You'll need a good amount of L4 and L5 work then. L6 won't help that much since doing short hills in rapid succession will exhaust anaerobic capacity but don't neglect it completely.

It's quite possible to be light, thin, but not lean in which case there's potential for more weight loss. If you can generate a lot of power aerobically, it's not an issue but some light people don't generate very much power and their light weight doesn't compensate for it.

Asian Allez said:

well they are short, 3-4 minute hills, but in rapid sucession, i'd say 5 in a row, all going more and more uphill each time.

i am 5'5" and weight 125 lbs. how much more should i lose?:p

I'd say relax, learn to pace yourself, and just let your climbing endurance improve with the miles. If you want to be strong on a series of hills, you'll need to stay aerobic as much as possible. This means not charging up the first hill, but staying at a more comfortable pace. Don't worry about speed or cadence, just listen to your breathing.

Next ride out, try going as slow and easy as possible on the set of hills and see how the last one feels. You don't need to kill yourself everytime out to make progress.

that happens with hills too LoL

AA

not sure you need to focus on trimming down, sounds more like building some power, learning some pacing, and how to handle the bike. On a set of rollers like you described it's easy to to not pace yourself, because you don't look at them as a whole.

I'm 5'11" and 175 at round about 9-10% body fat, you'll need a lot less power to bust someone my size on a climb than for me to put the hurt on you once you get things under control, then you will be the bane of all of the "larger" riders...

HR

Hookyrider said:

that happens with hills too LoL

AA

not sure you need to focus on trimming down, sounds more like building some power, learning some pacing, and how to handle the bike. On a set of rollers like you described it's easy to to not pace yourself, because you don't look at them as a whole.

I'm 5'11" and 175 at round about 9-10% body fat, you'll need a lot less power to bust someone my size on a climb than for me to put the hurt on you once you get things under control, then you will be the bane of all of the "larger" riders...

HR

im really sorry, i dont mean any offense, but i have no idea what you are talking about. can you please rephrase?

Okay - you say you are 125 pounds or so. I weigh 50 pounds more than you. Climbing hills on a certain level are basically a simple math problem conquered by what is called power to weight ratio. These scenarios presented to illustrate my point.

[font=Times New Roman]You are 125 pounds and produce 250 watts of power; this gives you a P-T-W ratio of 2 watts per pound. I am 175 pounds, with little hope of weighing less and I produce the same power and only 1.4 watts per pound. Given this scenario you will beat me up any hill that that we start together. For me to put the hurt on you I’ll need to produce at least 375 watts of power giving me 2.1 watts per pound.[/font]

[font=Times New Roman]Putting out more power becomes more and more difficult, so as it turns out most Pro riders that are pure climbers look pretty much like horse jockeys, or concentration camp victims. Light but powerful bodies have a natural PTW ratio advantage.[/font]

[font=Times New Roman]This is one of the leading reasons why folks want a lighter weight bike. It’s cheaper to loose the lard to get the same result, unless of course your ride is made of some kind of special Lead Alloy like most of the really crappy cheap bikes.[/font]

[font=Times New Roman]HR[/font]

Don't charge hills especially with the weather getting colder you need to keep breathing under control or your lungs will be burning. I charged a hill near a mountain here in MA not long ago to measure watts and was coughing all the way home.