How do I prepare for hills?

[TexasKate]

Ok, that may seem like a stupid question...but where I live and ride, the terrain is predominantly flat. Like a pancake. I'm talkin' F-L-A-T. So, I went on a 25 mile ride yesterday (my first one EVER) and had to deal with gradual sloping hills for the first time ever. The upside - I never once had to get off and walk, inspite of burning legs and lungs :) ....but the downside, it took me WAY too long and used up too much energy to figure out how to handle the hills. :confused:

I guess my question is - what is the best technique for conquering hills, other than just doing it? How do you gals who live in hilly and/or mountainous areas do it? I'd like to ride in places other than my local area, but that will involve more hills. I have a ride coming up on April 1 and I'd like to be more prepared. Any advice?

Thanks! :cool:

Kate

[snapdragen]

This might help:

http://www.imt.net/~yvcc/jeff_hill/index.htm

[alpinerabbit]

I promise it will get easier.

Try the same route a few times and you will notice. Some of this effect is psychological, especially if you just start out (btw I started serious riding in September. I speak from experience).

As the above link says, alternating between standing and sitting will give some of your muscle groups intermittent breaks and you can go on longer.
Apparently Lance positions himself very much above the handlebars, using some arm muscle to support his upper body. who knows if that helps. I've also heard him quoted that he does not see the hill, just the 10 meters of road in front of him. This definitely seems to work for me.

[snapdragen]

I've also heard him quoted that he does not see the hill, just the 10 meters of road in front of him. This definitely seems to work for me.

Exactly, I try to never look at the top of the hill, just the road ahead of my front wheel.

[TexasKate]

Thanks for the advice and the great link!!

[CyclaSutra]

Kate,

Do you ride with a heart rate monitor? It's pretty important to climb within your ability, at a heart rate you can susatain. If you go anaerobic, i.e. near your max heart rate, your lungs will fee like they're coming out of your chest, your eyes will cross and you'll have to slow down and "give up," but probably not stop.

I've been working with a trainer who has you do a fitness test at the beginning of your season: Pick a flat section of road with as little wind as you can muster. Warm up well first, at least 10-15 minutes. Then start at one end of your course from a standstill, and hammer as hard as you can sustain for 8 minutes. Stop, record all your data: distance, average speed, average heart rate and max heart rate. Spin back to the start and repeat. What he's looking for is your max heart rate on this test, which will tell him your trainable max. Then he builds "zones" below this like 60 percent of max, 70-75 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent plus.

The idea is to occasionally train at 90 percent plus in intervals to try to raise your sustainable max heart rate and make it "easier" to cycle that hard.

With all that being said, if you don't ride with a monitor, pick a gear you think you can push all the way up the hill and keep a steady cadence to try to keep your heart rate steady. If it feels like you can't sustain it, drop down a gear or two and try to keep the same cadence. Don't worry about "keeping up" with anybody when you're first starting out on hills, just get up them and they WILL get easier!

Johanna in the rocky, rocky mountains of Wyoming...

[salsabike]

One way to build some hill climbing strength when you don't have hills to practice on daily is to ride into headwinds for a while on the flats.

[Nanci]

The thing that helped me most with hills is gaining the quad strength to be able to climb standing- all the way on smaller, not so steep hills, and the last bit on bigger hills. You can practice on flats. I do little sprints- stand, pedal at what feels to me like a nice "running" cadence until I feel the very beginnings of lactic acid in my quads, coast, still standing, until legs feel ok or until speed drops to say two or three mph less that what it was pedaling, repeat as many times as I can take. Also, stand for a change of position every 15 minutes or so on any ride. Being able to stand and not die right away is like having an extra three gears. (So, when you really do stand on a hill, shift down about two gears while you are still sitting, then stand and enjoy how easy it seems!) I am _not_ a fast climber- probably weight-related, but I'm working on that!

Nanci

[tulip]

Hills involve more than just your legs and lungs. You've got to have a strong body--as in core/abs/trunk/whatever you want to call it. I've seen great improvements in my hill climbing since I started doing pilates regularly almost a year ago.

Oh, and if you have any bridges, those are hills, too.

[SadieKate]

I bet it's flatter here than there! OK, depends on where in Texas you live. The Panhandle is probably as flat. Do you have any hills close enough to drive to once a week? Do it.

Last year I started driving down to the Bay Area or up to the Sierras to ride long climbs with some of the others on this forum. There are lots of things that will help, but the best is to actually ride hills once a week. If you have to, find a bridge that you can ride repeats but you need also need a long gradual hill for training. You'll learn how to sit back, relax, spin and keep your heart rate down. If ride repeats on a bridge, be sure to practice sitting and spinning, not just standing and stomping over the top.

From riding the flats for years, one of the big things I learned was to change my expectation of speed. I expected to be rolling along at a pretty good clip all the time because I never climbed anything but a freeway bridge. When faced with 10-20 miles of unremitting UP, I learned to be happy riding very slowly for long periods and I learned how to manage gears to relieve muscle fatigue. Mentally learning how to ride slowly and in a level of constant stress gave me the patience to keep persevering while my legs and cardio got stronger.

I ride in headwinds a lot but it never really taught me the patience and pain tolerance needed for long hills. However, long rides straight in to a headwind for several miles will help and then you'll have the exquisite pleasure (hopefully) of a tailwind home.

Interval training and core strengthening are good compliments.

This may sound like heresy if you live where you can ride outside regularly, but the climbing programs from Spinervals (like the Uphill Grind) will provide an amazing boost to your climbing strength. If you can't actually ride any real hills, even doing the Uphill Grind once a week (no more than two) will be greatly beneficial.

[yellow]

My $0.02: hills (and riding in general) are at least 80% mental. I agree with all the other stuff here...but remember that your head can be your most valuable ally.

In the last place I lived, we had nothing but hills. The only flat stretch was Main Street downtown, which was about 0.75 mile long. And the pavement was awful (small, rural jursidiction). I only rode that part when I rode to work.

Riding up hills is hard work. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to ride up a hill? :p I had no choice (well I did: not to ride at all), so my mindset was "I'm going to go for a ride" not "I'm going to go ride a route that has hills! Eeeek!". I became a very strong hill climber because that's what I rode all the time. I have a triple and am not ashamed. I'm a believer in weight training and pushups to help build strength and muscle endurance.

Now....having said that...I must say that I have issues with the flats. And I know that most of these issues are in my head. You get no breaks on the flats (like you do when you are going downhill, the reward for the uphill)! They lack in variation (I was used to shifting often...you don't do that on the flats)! Headwinds and crosswinds! Riding the flats hurts my butt! But I know that in order to go faster on the flats, I have to wrap my head around all of those things that I dread about them. Someday I'll be faster. I just have to train my head.

Where I live now we have a mixture of flats, rollers, and what I call hard (but not extreme) climbs. Frankly, I miss my old riding territory. When given a choice here, I have so far selected routes with more hills. In this new place, though, I'm going to have to find something else to focus on since my 2500-feet-on-every-ride situation no longer exists.

So don't give the hills your mental energy...put that energy to better use. Just think of it as a ride! :)

[AuntieK]

Gotta agree with Yellow on this one...DO NOT let hills freak you out!!

When I first started riding I was totally fine on the hills (didn't know better :rolleyes: ). Then I started freaking whenever I saw a hill coming, and thus started hating hills.

I have recently learned that hills aren't as bad as I have built them up to be in my head. Actually, now that I know I can handle them, they're kind of fun in a challenging kind of way. :cool:

So go do the hills... you can do it!

[TexasKate]

Thanks so much for the advice and encouragement, ladies. We do have some overpasses here that I can do daily, and on weekends I can go out to where the slower, more gradual hills are. There aren't any real steep grades down here (bottom tip of Texas), but it does get VERY windy. I rested yesterday after my first 25 mile ride Saturday (I know I keep mentioning this, but I'm really quite proud of myself) and went out to ride 16 miles today, and took on the overpass that's about 8 miles into the ride. I took your advice and looked up only enough to make sure nothing was in my way, then just concentrated on getting to the top. It wasn't bad...AND the first 8 miles of the ride was into a really stiff headwind. Whew!

Thanks again!