Hill climbing/training advice, please!

[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!