Hill training in the flatlands?

Triathlon Forum
1

Hello, this is my first post on ST, though I’ve been lurking here all summer. This is my second season of doing tris. I’ve mostly done sprints, but I just completed my first Olympic last weekend. My final time was disappointing, but it was a tremendous learning experience. In doing my race post-mortem, I realized that one of the biggest problems I had was that I was unprepared for the amount of hill climbing on the bike leg of this particular course. I made it through, but didn’t have anything left in the tank for the run.

My dilemma is this: I live at sea level, in a remarkably flat region (South NJ). The nearest significant hills are a state over! How do you train for hill climbing when there are no hills to speak of to train on? There are some bridges nearby that I ride regularly, and those give me 50-75’ of climb each, but that just didn’t prepare me for the 1000’ hill we rode on race day. None of my training rides quite mimicked the unique feel of losing all forward momentum and being unable to maintain a good cadence. Can I compensate by just increasing my bike training volume? Increasing the intensity? Dozens of bridge repeats? More time on the trainer (though I hate riding indoors)? HTFU and drive 90 min to the mountains every weekend? I know this is something I’ve got to conquer next year, as only signing up for local (flat) races isn’t a very good long-term strategy, haha.

Looking forward to hearing the collected ST wisdom here!

2

I’ve done stadium stairs at the local high school, 30 rows high. Run up, run along the top row, and back down the other side, repeat…

Do you have parking garages. I’ve run and ridden in them too, the ramps, not the stairs. Run up, take the elevator down.You have to check, cause some of the guards don’t like people tresspassing. Some have no attendant at all.

good luck

3

I moved from near you (Columbus) to Virginia Beach.
For riding, do over gear work. If the hill’s not that steep, 300 W at 85 rpm in 53-18 doesn’t really feel any different from 300 W at 85 rpm in your 36-28. But the over gear work will help you for when you’re out of gears and have no choice but to grind it out. Just shift into your highest or second-highest gear even on the flat, maybe into a headwind, etc. the thing to remember is that hills are just where you go slower
On that note, have the right gearing, don’t take your 11-23 cassette to a hilly race and expect to be ok.
For running, overpasses/bridges are decent enough, it’s again just a question of knowing how to meter out your effort. Don’t chase a pace, hold a steady effort just as you would try to hold a fairly steady wattage on the bike

4

Put the bike on a trainer and prop up the front wheel a few inches, then use a big gear.

For running, run on a treadmill with an incline.

5

I would skip stadium steps and not bother with propping up the front wheel of your trainer. Increase your power output and learn to ride smart. Your legs don’t care what the slope of the road is. You can train for a hilly race very effectively on flat training rides if you learn to pace yourself up the hills. The biggest mistake I see people make when they aren’t familiar with hills is pushing hard up the hill and then coasting down. Your power output up a hill should only be slightly higher than on a flat or downhill. Doing this will level out your effort and effectively “flatten” the course.

6

Get more fit and/or lighter and the climbing will take care of itself. Your legs don’t know if you’re going up hill or not.

7

I live in Florida - beach side Florida - not mid state hilly Florida. Bridge sprints - and then sadly but works best for me; spin class. 45 minutes of standing climbs in a heavy gear sometimes. Spin class sounds weak - but I come out of that class drenched in sweat some days.

Mon, Wed, Fri - spin class. I dont plan on doing any races where I will have to climb for more than a little bit so 45 mins of it works plenty well for me.

8

In general you probably just need to train to increase your power, as watts are what get you up the hill in the end. Then it helps to pace a little better and make sure you have the right gears. Barry and Ian both made good points. You can do it, you just have to get creative with some things. For riding I would say yes do those overpass repeats a bunch of times, do them hard, in a big gear, seated.

With running it is a bit easier to manage. Do some hard intervals with some sort of quad recruitment mixed in. For instance, find a grass field with a slight hill in it and run a ~2-4 min loop a bunch of times up/down and around the hill. For fast hill sprints all you need is like ~5-10 seconds of running so you can probably find something short and steep enough. You could also mix in some circuits with running/cycling as a way to prep your legs. Running/cycling for a bit + Step ups (or running stairs like Barry said), squats, 1 legged squats, maybe even plyos or jump-rope, then repeat. That stuff is more like sprinkles on the icing on the cake though.

9

Run: Use Parking Garages, but as mentioned by somebody else take the lift down, and its gone kill your knees otherwise. My Gym is on the 6th Floor of a parking garage, always a good warm up doing that a few times.

Bike: Train indoors and hit some heavy gears.

10

There is no magic for hill training on the bike. LOSE weight and gain watts. You can do this on the trainer. On the run, treadmill uphill is your friend. You won’t get the downhills, but you get the hardest part in.

11

I live in the midwest, where I am lucky to get 2000 ft of elevation gained in a 60 mile ride, and a lot of my riding routes are <1000 ft of climbing over 80 miles.
Last month I did a 3-day ride in the mountains - 180 total miles and 22,000 ft of total elevation gained.

The first lesson I learned was to have the right gearing. I did the mountain ride with my standard flat-land road bike setup - 53/39 front and 12-25 rear cassette. Big mistake. Any long grades below 5% were ok, but grades above 7% I was really struggling. I had always thought compacts were for wimps - maybe in the flatlands, but not in the mountains.

I did a lot of my training on an indoor trainer. While I worked on high intensity and high power intervals, I should have done more. Power is required, but I think it is also important to get your body used to what it takes for a long slog up a mountain. So this coming year, in addition to standard interval work, I will throw in some longer intervals pedaling at about 60 rpm in big gears.

12

Thanks for the advice, everyone! It’s certainly true that I could stand to lose a few more pounds so I’m not dragging as much up the hill. I think I’ll benefit from a lot more work to simply increase my power on the bike–guess that’s what this winter will be about. I may take a look at my gearing too: I realize I don’t really know the exact specs of the gears I’m running or what they’re optimized for. I’m still riding my old Bianchi road bike from college which is more oriented toward touring than racing. Another bike is on my wish list, but probably a couple of years away still, so I want to intelligently improve my performance so I can justify putting my engine onto a new frame. :slight_smile:

13

You live in South Jersey- how far from the Shore are you? There’s nothing like riding into a strong Shore headwind for 10, 20 miles with no breaks from the wind to make 1+ mile climbs in the hills seem short and easy!

14

I also live on the beach & NJ & although it’s a challenge, if you know how to structure your training, you can get amazingly fit for hills while living on the flats. I think the only negative w/ living in flat areas (as it relates to hills on the bike) is the inability to learn to descend well.

With that, the article below outlines a great method of training for hills on the flats. Depending on where you are, I know many SUPER fast triathletes & cyclists have spent hour upon hour in Island Beach State Park, doing variations on this.

FWIW - I wish I knew who wrote this as I’ve referenced it many times…

See below as this is a great article…

Ride Faster-Be Stronger!
Strength Training on the Bike
By: Author Unknown

This title is a bit misleading. If you become stronger on the bike, you will not only be a faster rider, but you will also be able to ride longer, push bigger gears, and run faster off the bike! Specific strength sessions are particularly designed for Half Ironman and Ironman triathletes, but also non-draft legal short distance athletes. Although, it should be part of the training regimen of triathletes racing ITU as well, it is not as crucial for them as it is for long distance triathletes, who have to be able to push big gears, during long periods of times.

By strength, we mean the force a rider can apply on the pedals. Because the power you develop on the bike is given by the speed multiplied by the strength you can apply, then improving your strength will make you a more powerful rider, and therefore a faster rider, provided you do not lose any leg speed. Indeed, if you can pedal at 90rpm on a 53x17, with 23mm tires, then you improve your strength to be able to push a 53x16 with the same cadence, your speed will jump from 35.6km/h to 37.8km/h! I guess it is worth it to give it a try…
The idea behind strength training is not to improve the force a fiber can generate, but more to recruit more fibers when pedaling. In order to achieve this, body-builders lift heavy weights very slowly to induce a near maximum contraction for a relatively long time. For cyclists, or triathletes it is the same principle which is applied, but still respecting the specificity of cycling. The best way to generate a near maximum contraction for a long period is to push very big gears at a slow cadence. When climbing, staying in the saddle, you will be able to develop even higher muscular contraction. These sessions are commonly done by professional cyclists. In the early season, to prepare for the classics, Frank Van Den Brouck (Cofidis) does between 6 and 10 times 3’ interval, in 53x14, on a 8% climb (actually, he does these session on the professional technogym trainer, similar to the computrainer, repeating 3’ interval at 500W, at 50rpm, 1’30’’ recovery). If you leave in a flat area, or if you don’t have climbs long enough, do not despair, these sessions can also be done on the flat (but the intervals need to be longer), into the wind, or on a turbo trainer, provided there is enough resistance to generate a high load on the muscles. If you prepare for a relatively flat Ironman, or an Ironman with steady climbs, a good strategy would be to couple specific strength sessions over hills, and on the flat.

Sessions over hills

Over 60km to 120km (depending on when your first race is, the distance, and your cycling background), after a thorough warm-up, start with 4x2km on a big gear, staying in the saddle maintaining a cadence between 50 and 70 (experienced triathletes could aim at 50 to 60rpm, but beginners and intermediate triathletes should not used gears with which they can not maintain between 65-70rpm). Use the downhill to recover. Build up to 6-7x3km for short distance triathletes, and 6x5km for Ironman athletes. Very experienced cyclists can build up progressively to 4x10km

Sessions on the Flats

We believe these sessions can be conveniently added in a long ride during the build period leading up to a big race, or during brick sessions, which will make the run even more challenging. Start with 10km efforts on the flat over a 50-60km ride maintaining a cadence of 60-65 during the beginning of the build up period. Ironman triathletes can build up to a total of 80km over a 6h ride, doing for example 4x20km, Rest:10’ on a big gear maintaining, 60-65rpm, if the goal is only to increase strength, and 70-75rpm if you want to make it more race specific.

Remarks
Do not attempt any of these sessions if you have knee problems (patella or ITB). If done over hills, focus on maintaining proper form (do not move upper body too much) avoid mashing the pedals, maintain the efficient pedal stroke you have (should have!) been working on during winter if done on the flat, and stay in the aero position, with our hands relaxed When recovering, try to maintain a high cadence (above 100rpm). As we said initially, power is speed x strength, therefore to be fully beneficial, you need to make sure that more strength will not decrease your leg speed.

This increased strength will make you a more powerful rider, and therefore a faster rider. But, it will also make you more economical on the bike, as at a given intensity, you will need a lower percentage of your maximal strength. Eventually, because the bike leg of the triathlon will be easier, you will have more energy when running off the bike, and indirectly, your improved strength will also be beneficial to your run.

15

For getting good information about gearing and potential upgrades, look at Sheldon Brown’s and Harris Cyclery’s websites.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/

http://sheldonbrown.com/harris/k7.html

You should be able to convert that Bianchi bike into something that is much better for climbing for under $200 easy. After my mountain tour last month, I converted my 650c-wheel bike to a climbing bike by getting an 11-36t rear cassette, a long cage derailler (Deore, with 4x20mm bolt). That dropped my gear-inches down to compact range, without having to spend money on new cranks. Sheldon and Harris have all the information one needs to put together non-traditional combinations of components that work (i.e., not having to replace entire drivetrains like manufacturers claim).