Train hills, race flats? -- bay area

Triathlon Forum
1

Hi-

So here’s my deal. I live and train in the bay area and I can’t seem to find any place to ride on flats so almost all of my training is in hills. My question is, does anyone have any “rule of thumb” type advice on how to convert hill paces/distances to the equivalent on flats?

It seems the benfit of going down hills quickly never makes up for the slowdown of going up. For some emperical evidence, I do certain 50+ mile hilly loops climbing about 2-4k ft with an average pace around 15mph and when I raced the flat Cali 1/2 IM last year I averaged around 20+mph. Does a 30% factor sound right?

Also, it seems hard to do specific workouts (i.e. LT, recovery, VO2, etc…) with hills… any comments?

Thanks!

2

Ride on heart rate and time… miles don’t mean anything.

3

If you really want to train on flats, head out to Pleasanton/Livermore area. You can easily get 30 miles in with no hills and little traffic.

4

Agree with Pleasanton/Livermore. And, there are some parts up by Santa Rosa that are pretty flat (Alexander Valley side).