Power to Weight Ratio

[Veronica]

You've been comparing yourself to the group. Are they getting faster?

Veronica

[li10up]

You've been compared yourself to the group. Are they getting faster?

Veronica

That's a good point. After a particularly hard ride a few weeks ago I looked up last year journal and saw that at the same time last year we were averaging 15 mph over the same routes. This year we are in the upper 16's or even into the 17's. I'm able to keep up on the flats but not the hills.

It's not necessarily about overtraining, it's that your muscles are literally torn to pieces during your workouts and they need rest time to rebuild and get stronger. Less so when you're young, but even so.

This too is a good point. But I thought that active rest would let them repair...but maybe I'm being a bit too active. I do work up a pretty good sweat on those days.

It's best to take a "rest day" from severe caloric restriction too, so that your metabolism doesn't just scale itself down. Eat the way you normally would on your rest days.

I don't think a 500 cal. deficit will cause my metabolism to scale itself down...that's not much of a restriction....which is why I chose it...slow and steady weight loss.

So much to think about.......

[pinkbikes]

I also struggled with this for years. I was a decent sort of a rider in general but really struggled when it came to hills. Part of this was in my mind because I had succumbed (as a young and silly kid) to peer pressure and spent years riding a nasty one-jump 6speed cluster of gears that meant I had NOTHING that was really suitable for hills. Nice for crits - crap for hills! So I just assumed I was crap at hills and let it go at that!

But two years ago I got a new roadbike (with sensible gears) and I got into mountain biking and that was a real education on hills. All of a sudden I had all the gears I could wish for and the sort of hills that would make my blood freeze with fear! They don't call them mountain bikes for nothing - because you can't have mountain biking without mountains!

Firstly, I found that the "interval" nature of thrashing up hills (because you really have no choice but to really go for it) and then picking my lungs up off the ground for a few minutes at the top made a huge difference to my strength on the road bike. I still wasn't much of a speed demon on the mountain bike, because really I am a time trialist by nature - wind me up and let me go at a steady pace as hard as I can rather than explosive racer accelerating and decelerating all the time!

But the thing that really improved me out of sight was when I started doing weekly hill rides. There is a rotten big mountain (for Australia - it'd be a pimple anywhere else) near home where you just climb, climb, climb for ever. And when you think it will end around the next corner the grade kicks up a bit and you climb some more. I hate it with a passion but for a few months there I forced myself to go out there and just climb it steadily for as far as I could get in an hour or two. The rewards were enormous and my legs ended up quite bullet-proof (for me) and I found I could blast up and over all sorts of things on the roadie.

So, in summary, I think specificity of training is the answer. Nothing makes you better at hills than training specifically for hills. Some of it long steady hills to build up climbing endurance. And some of it hill intervals to improve hill climbing strength and speed. I hate it because at heart I am a hillslug - but the rewards were enormous and it only took about a month for it to really start to show. I am about to start going out and doing it all again! YUCK!

[Zen]

This article from Active.com was recently in my mailbox.

[wildeny]

This article from Active.com was recently in my mailbox.

Thanks for the article. I agree with the mentality bits. Before I climb up a long hill, I often stop a little bit for water and regulate my breathing. I have found that this is helpful for me.

Also as pinkbikes said, go to hills for training. I often time how long I climb up on certain routes and see whether I improve a little bit or not.