Yep, and as you learn those things you gain confidence, and that is HUGE. I’m a clyde, barely, but I am, too, but I can usually keep up with any of the local skinny guys on all but the steepest hills. In fact, I can beat some of them on the longer more gradual gradients. You get above 12-15% though, and they’ll beat me.
I agree with physasst, it’s more than just putting it in a hard gear or riding into the wind. That’s more basic strength. To get good you need to learn when you have to shift, when to get out of the saddle, etc. as the incline increases and decreases.
I agree. That’s why raising the front wheel on a trainer will only get you so far.
Bad advice. Ride with people who push you. This is particularly true for hills.
I agree here too. Riding with a group too often can throw you off your training plan. But once or twice a week, if planned, with people who ride harder than you can be some of the best workouts.
My favorite rides are long rides in the mountains with a group where most a better climbers than me. I pick a wheel and try to hang on for dear life. The idea is to beat myself up as much as possible, and whether in the flats or mountains, I find this best accomplished in with a good, strong group ride.
I just raced duathlon nationals for the third time at Mason and the bike course is nothing but relentless rolling hills. Pacing hilly races is very important, as is your positioning. Here is a quick example from Sunday. I had a rider pass me in the first 5K of the ride. We went back and forth for a couple of miles, him passing me on the uphills and me going back by on the downhills. I was not pedaling hard on the downills, but suspect having a wheel cover and much lower position contributed. Then we hit the only really steep hill on the course. He jammed it out of the seat and I sat and spun up in my lowest gear. He probably put 15-20 seconds in me on that short hill and the gap fluctuated back and forth for the next 20K. He was not positioned very low and I could see he was riding most of the hills out of the seat. At 30K he was toast and I rolled by him on a long false flat and left him behind for good.
When you ride hills you have to accept that you can’t keep a nice, constant output and in fact, you don’t want to do so.
Racing hills is more like doing an interval workout, with periods of higher (harder pedaling up the hill) effort and periods of lower effort (soft pedaling down the other side). You don’t want to jam up hills out of the saddle. On occasion it is not a bad idea to get up and do it as a change of muscles, but keep the effort reasonable.
I would practice doing a fartlek-type workouts on the flats where you constantly change gearing and effort with the focus on staying low in your aero position and keeping your pedal rpm constant.
If you have a PM, then so much the better because you can set your upper and lower limits as you pedal harder and easier.
Gearing is obviously important for the actual race because you need to be able to keep spinning and the typical stock 39x23 low on many bikes is not small enough. I rode the course Sunday at 24 mph and used a 40x25 on many of the hills. Put you effort into the uphills or windg sections and take it very easy once your speed goes much mast 25 mph.
Chad
Find a road or track where you can push hard and never ever let up. Riding flats is the same as riding hills if you ride them fast enough. You just have to force yourself not to stop and coast all the time.
Since you are a clyde though, the biggest factor will be to put the fork down. Nobody is inherently big, you can be as skinny as you want to be.
Have to completely disagree on this one. I have been training in FL all on flat roads, as that is all that is near me. I was doing time trials and races. Then just went up to NY in an area with some good sized hills and it is completely different.
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Riding flats is the same as riding hills if you ride them fast enough. .
Have to completely disagree on this one. I have been training in FL all on flat roads, as that is all that is near me. I was doing time trials and races. Then just went up to NY in an area with some good sized hills and it is completely different.
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There is a qualitaive difference between the two. 300W going uphill feels totally different from 300W on the flats.
If you are generating 300W going up a steep hill at 12 mph, you have very little momentum, and you have to maintain a constant pressure on the pedals throughout the pedaling stroke to maintain your speed. On the flats 300W will generate 25+ MPH (depending on wind and road conditions) and the forward momentum will smooth out the pedaling stroke to make seem easier to maintain your speed.
Thats why you have to force yourself to push hard. You can’t just do a normal ride. You have got to being fast enough that the wind makes it feel like a hill.
hard to do on real roads, with traffic and stop signs.
im lucky to have an oval track near me
I live in south louisiana where it is very, very flat. I just did IM Lake Placid and had a solid bike of 5:40. I trained all but two rides on the pure flats doing nothing but intervals. Short, medium and long intervals. They suck but they build strength. That is all you need other than no fear going downhill 
what are you training for? climbing the alps with your group or racing in a triathlon/tt event?
If the latter, I would focus on building your FTP and when you race use appropriate gearing to facilitate spinning througout - unless it is so steep that you need to drastically reduce your cadence on the climbs you should be racing a triathlon at relatively even power regardless of profile…
FWIW, I live in Miami (ie flat as a pancake) and just did IMLP using a 27 cassette and was spinning and aero virtually all day.
Find a road or track where you can push hard and never ever let up. Riding flats is the same as riding hills if you ride them fast enough. You just have to force yourself not to stop and coast all the time.
Since you are a clyde though, the biggest factor will be to put the fork down. Nobody is inherently big, you can be as skinny as you want to be.
Fabian Cancellara is on line 2 for you. He mentioned something about “Hey, dat zounds good in teory, but is boolsheet in practice” or something like that…
Interesting advice however I would caution readers that kenstpe is not you run-of-the-mill triathlete, his IMLP effort earned him a Kona spot in tough a AG (see rr on lafayettefitness.com for the details). On the other hand, I am a certified mop racer pushing 195 and do pretty well training strictly on flats (I find flats really help with maintaining intensity). But when faced with hills I tend to thrash about in gearing and end up losing lots of speed, not to mention style points (all that clanging scares children and pets). My advice, shift a lot, keep cadence up, don’t free spin, come out of the saddle at the top (excellent style), maintain effort over the top. I think it’s gear mgt and I get better at it the more I practice. I think ST had an article on this very topic in his training section. I’m going to reread it now.
Fabian Cancellara has 20 extra pounds on his frame!
I guess the shifting thing is a no brainer to me, but I come from a car racing background, so the concept of keeping the rpms the same is sort of obvious to me =)
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Fabian Cancellara has 20 extra pounds on his frame!
And the original poster does not?
Normally advice at this site is good. But this one seems off. To get better at hills you have to ride hills. You use your muscles diff. for flat and or climbing. Why do you think Phill kept saying the guy has found his CLIMBING LEGS. Also to push hard there is an old saying that is 100% true. YOU NEVER TRAIN AS HARD AS YOU RACE. Racing is where you will be at 100%. If not, the guy next to you will drop you. Because he will ride at 100%. To get as close as possible to that intensity you have to ride with people. People stronger than you.
Typically it would sneak up on me, like my mind is going ‘IthinkIcan, I think I can, I…think…I…can’, then I’m grinding and thrashing but as I said I’m cured (mostly). Here’s the link, good advice as far as I can tell…
http://www.slowtwitch.com/mainheadings/coachcorn/ascending.html
read my original response, in its entirety…
read my original response, in its entirety…
I did, but it was so much more fun to focus on the “ride hard on the flats” part than on the weight loss part that we all agree with. It gave me an excuse to make a poor attempt at an exotic euro accent.
I would agree that if the OP has no other options then your recommendation is better than making no changes to his current routine.
What Fabian disagreed with (or at least this is what he told me) is the implication that keeping the power up in the flats is an exact replacement for riding the hills. Robbie McEwan (all 5’7" and 145 lbs. of him) chimed in that if powering through the flats like a time trial is a perfect replacement for training in the mountains, he should be able to attack in the mountains like Contador because he does lots of fast, surging sprints.
Thats why you have to force yourself to push hard. You can’t just do a normal ride. You have got to being fast enough that the wind makes it feel like a hill.
hard to do on real roads, with traffic and stop signs.
im lucky to have an oval track near me
I think you agree that generating 300W on the flats is different than generating 300W on a hill.
You second point was that all you have to do to make the difference is increase your effort. How much?
350W? 400W? 500?
im not sure I agree, I think if you really focusing on keeping the watts at 300 and never letting them drop it would be pretty similar. I dont have a power meter though so I cant say for sure =)