Hill climbing/training advice, please!

[Jiffer]

I'm a newbie, but can give you some tips my hill climbing lover of a husband gave me recently. We tandem together and have been working on standing a little on hills. He said standing is good for several reasons. You can push harder which gets your speed up, even if only for a little while. However, I think more importantly, it gives the muscles you've been using a break for a while and helps build other muscles. I can only stand for like 10 seconds before my muscles are burning so bad I have to sit. Another plus is it also gives your "hoo ha" a break!

He said he has done a training method that Lance Armstrong used to use for hillwork. He would stand for 30 seconds and sit for 30 seconds. This helps build those standing muscles. You might try this on your shorter hills, or slight upgrades when you aren't planning any real hills. Whatever you can do to help strenthen those muscles so that when you really need them, they're there for you.

[Jiffer]

OOPS! I have to clarify the training method I mentioned Lance Armstrong did. Turns out, Lance wouldn't do a pidly 30 seconds standing! What was I THINKING?! He started with a minute standing, a minute sitting, 2 minutes standing, 2 minutes sitting, 3 minutes of each and 4 minutes of each and then worked his way back down to 1 again.

The 30 seconds thing was my husband's own modification of this.

Glad I could clear the air. Wouldn't want to taint Lance's reputation!

[rij73]

Bklynmom,

A Brooklynite cyclist friend of mine says that Prospect Park is great for hill training if you approach it correctly. He says you don't need anything steeper to train on until the hill is easy to climb in a very high gear. He suggests using Center Drive to make the laps shorter therefore decreasing the time between climbs.

What gear are you climbing that hill at? And, how comfortable is it there? How fast can you climb it? Specifically, what is the lowest mph you dip down to on the climb?

[Bklynmom]

I have done repeats on the Prospect Park hill using center drive. My low is about 9 MPH on the hill (started out with a low of 7!), high around 11. This is in a middle gear, with some tension, not a light spin.

What I have been doing in PP is to crank up the gear the minute I hit the bottom of the downhill, and try and maintain 16 MPH. I hit 18 on the flat parts, and 13 on the slight up hills in that stretch. I try to go at medium tension with some leg burn for 10 minutes, which includes the hill plus. I do 2 x 10 min. reps, with 5 min in between.

This is my own modification of Lactic acid Threshold building from my bike book.

I did this twice this week, then went back to my hill in Piermont Sunday and made it all the way up! I actually found it easer to go around 5.5 MPH up the Piermont hill than the 3 MPH I tried the first time. The chain did pop off twice because I was in too high a gear.

I do think that it is a very different psychological and gear experience with a long steep climb, and you don't get that in the Park.

I did have to get off and walk the bike on a short but very steep hill - I think that was a gearing issue, and also the fact that my legs weren't warmed up. Very steep short climbs are definitely something I need to work on.

[rij73]

Sounds awesome! I'm still at about the 7mph mark, but I think I'm not trying hard enough. Congrats on handling the hill this weekend!