Nate is correct. There is no magic to hill climb training. Just get your power up and your weight way down. You can do this on a trainer and a weight scale. This will get you 97% there. Power to weight is the number one thing you have to worry about. You can be a complete climbing stud witih a 4.4Watts per kilo FTP and never touching a hill till race day. The guy with a 3.3W per kilo FTP will be nowhere in sight.

If you want to get specific and you have a smart trainer, what you want to do is some repeats in a low inertia environment, meaning high power and low wheel speed. This will get you in the mode of maintaining more momentum and pedal force throught the pedal stroke vs the quad and glute based pounding downstroke for TTing. This piece gets you to 99% in that if you're the 4.4W per kilo guys and so is the other guy and he rides hills and you don't then you've simulated the low inertia of climbing and done some specificity on the trainer.

Final 1%, assuming all of the above is show up with the correct gearing so that when you're riding at 85% FTP "spiking your effort on a climb" you're still somewhere in the 70-85 RPM range and not bogged down at 55 RPM. If you are overgeared, you won't stay in your power band and instead you'll stay in your RPM band and rather than ride at 55 RPM at 85% FTP, you'll ride at 70 RPM at 130% FTP until you're no longer doing that 30 second seconds later, but doing that a few too many times, and you just added 20-120 minutes to your run/walk split.

Agreed with that.

I live in flat as a board Houston and I've done IM-Whistler 2x and Syracuse 70.3 3x. I just stuck to my power and went as easy as I could up hills. Power is power. Proper gearing is the key.

The run at both those courses ate me alive though. Especially that Syracuse run course from 2012-2016. That m'fer was brutal.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

Crazy helpful! I don't have a power meter, but I think I can figure this out on the dumb trainer by getting into gears that are harder.

I think it is better to turn up the resistance on the back wheel and turn a low gear at a normal cadence.

Plenty of Dutchmen have won the best climbers competition in the Tour de France, btw...

Equip your bike with the smallest inner ring and largest cassette sprocket your derailleurs can handle and just try to keep to the same feeling of exertion uphill as on the flat.

I live in Miami and did Choo in year 1. Luckily the choo course rides a lot easier than other hilly courses. The main chunk of the course is a big loop with the first half as a giant false flat with rollers. (Aka it doesn't feel like an uphill but you're def going slow). The second half is a long downhill. I also did Vineman the year before it moved to SA. Vineman had the same amount of climbing but rode A LOT harder because it had some major climbs. Choo doesn't really have any major climbs. For Choo, maybe just change out your cassette for the race to give yourself a couple easier gears and work on some miles of low cadence into the wind. Otherwise, you'll be fine. It's honestly not any harder than biking on flat road with a headwind.

On a dumb trainer you won't really be able to get to low inertia high power because high power on a dumb trainer happens at high wheel speed (meaning higher inertia). So the best way is cranking up the pressure on your tire, but if you do too much of that, your tire may overheat and you can flat. So keep the fan on high on the tire. Also keep in mind that low speed high-ish wattage climbing means way more personal overheating on sustained climbs than the same power on the flats with high bike speed (more cooling). Depending on your location of your hilly race, if the climbs are long enough, you may sweat as much as when run. This has happened to me at Nice and Whistler on the long climbs and I was holding my power, but the air was dead still and I was generating nearly zero cooling riding at my climbing pace. The cooling can feel like running. So you MAY want to do some trainer riding with minimum personal cooling if the climbing race is hot. This will actually torpedo more racers than having access to hills or not.

I train with no fans. I like heat. Even when running, I prefer 90 degrees with 109% humidity, and will run in the middle of the day in summer.

On the trainer when pushing power, sweat is not dripping it is pouring down my face. I love it.

Just go up and down the zwift mountain lots and lots of times.

It makes no sense to train always with no fans. All you are doing is that you are training at a lower power, meaning less load on the muscles. Your heart might have equivalent load due to the cooling requirement when you have no fan, so you MAY get some physiological gains from blood plasma expansion etc, but it's just generally better to work at a higher workload with cooling in general other than a few acclimatization workouts. Don't do everything no fan.

With a classic trainer and no PM, how does this work? What metric am I using to train?

I use Zwift in workout mode, but just riding the course I don't understand. Sometimes it says I am going 40mph, other times I am going 4mph... All in the same gear/cadence.

Assuming this adage applies even to as slow as I go up hill, there would be a significant advantage in having a comfortable enough aero position that you could sustain for the whole 112 (or 56 or whatever)
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If you are under a certain mph, roughly 14, then the air resistance difference in aero versus sitting up is nearly negligible. Sit up, get a power bump, and relax certain muscles. More than ~14 mph, stay down, hill or not.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

cadence is a red herring
the fitter you are the flatter every hilly course is
You can never have enough FTP
Your power/duration curve at the duration's your racing can always be lifted

keep those 4 things in mind and you should be ok

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Agree completely. In my experience, climbing is about being fit and body weight. It's a heart and lungs game, not a leg muscle game. There may be some value in being able produce power and varying cadences, but I doubt grinding away at low cadence makes you a better climber.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3907705/

As others have said, power to weight ratio is the main thing that matters on hills but there are two things that may catch you out if you've no climbing practice at all:

1. I think inexperienced climbers often overdo it early on a climb because they feel like they're not making enough progress. They avoid changing down the gears sufficiently, and work too hard so that they start falling apart way too early. You will go a LOT slower on a steep hill. Accept that, ignore your speed and trust that if you put in a measured effort the speed will take care of itself. I've always done quite a lot of climbing but last year I really focused on it in training in preparation for a big alpine Gran Fondo. I don't have a power meter and wanted a metric to use as a distraction and pacing aid while doing big climbs. I started using 30s altitude gain in place of speed and found it very helpful. On a steep gradient, this tells you a lot more about your progress than speed does. Without training with it the benefit will be reduced of course! I still have this on my screen. For most cycling I display HR, Speed, Distance and Cadence. When I hit a long steep climb I switch to an alternate screen where speed is replaced by 30s altitude gain. I recommend especially if you don't have power.
2. Climbing alters the effect of inertia on your motion. This makes the distribution of pedal load through the stroke feel different, and I expect changes the demands on your muscles. The more I climb the more I tend to spread my work across a greater proportion of the stroke, or that's how it feels anyway - perhaps those with pedal analysis capability can comment. There's no opportunity to back off or coast for a moment without an immediate change of speed or even coming to a halt. If you have a trainer that can provide a high resistance, without a big flywheel, that will help simulate it. You want high resistance at a low wheel speed if possible.

Depends on the gradient.
If I'm much above 20km/h I usually remain on the extensions. Below that, I do whatever's most comfortable.
If there was a headwind blowing down the hill, I might reduce that threshold somewhat and vice versa!

Standing requires more quads.

Sitting requires more from the gluts.

Anytime using more legs requires more lungs for the O2 requirements.

Best advice is to mix up the use of legs so sometimes spin, sometimes stand, & and sometimes sit; all on the hills.

If you're in aero you're either not racing hard enough or your not climbing hills that you need to train for back home.

https://www.cyclingpowerlab.com/...rSpeedScenarios.aspx


Have fun!


You can adjust the variable parameters to your weight (rider and bike) and the grade and wind situations you want to test. Then you can have multiple CdAs you want to compare either by power or speed.

I would consider investing in a smart trainer if you are already using Zwift. They have become a lot more affordable lately, especially if you don't go direct drive. It's light years more fun and you will then have power and the ability to measure your progress with FTP testing. You definitely feel the hills on Zwift just as if you are riding outdoors. In general, I also recommend big gear training (low cadence 65rpm) with high resistance to build cycling-specific strength (e.g. 5 x 4 min @ 65rpm and high resistance w/2' easy spin rest between) as others have mentioned.

Hi! I wonder how you do suggest training for the run? I also live in a pancake flat area...

I live in Flat Florida...And I'm doing IM Chattanooga this year. What do you suggest doing in terms of training for the run? Thanks!

I found a bridge/overpass and a levee crossing near me than I ran some repeats on. Seemed more difficult/realistic to me than the incline setting on a treadmill, but either option better than nothing. I'm not a seasoned runner and was only looking to complete the course, not really competing for anything other than pride.

Same here! Thanks for the advice :)

I didn't find it terribly hilly. mostly rollers and a few longer climbs but nothing bad that I recall. The run up Barton Ave. was pretty brutal.

Less than 90 days out from Whistler here. And that's not what I wanted to hear...