How to train for long climbs?

Hey there!

I’d like to echo what other athletes have been saying here and advise that you don’t overthink the cadence issue too much.

As you said, when you get out on steep pitches, sometimes your cadence just has to come down – and that’s totally fine.

The workout text we have in some of our indoor training sessions are generally just suggestions for you to dial in your form on the bike. If they don’t apply to your goals, then you can certainly ignore them as appropriate.

Since it sounds like you’re going to have to get ready for some lower cadence efforts, it would be a good idea to do that during some of your training days. You could focus on doing just a little bit at first (like 1 min “on” at low cadence, 1 min “off” at your normal, preferred cadence) and eventually build up to doing entire, longer efforts at the cadence you anticipate hitting during your race.

If you have long climbs you could possibly travel to that aren’t too far away, it might be a good idea to get out and see how things go in the real world! If not, no worries – you can prepare all the same. Flat roads with headwinds could be a good option, as well as simply using your trainer to simulate those steeper grades.

Additionally, consider how you might want to approach your race. The Climbing Road Race plan will incorporate surges and bursts into most of your sustained effort work to simulate how it usually feels to race uphill in a peloton. If you think you’d be better off riding at your own tempo without as many surges, the Gran Fondo or even the 40k TT plans could be better options that will focus more on purely sustained efforts without the spikes in power.

Hope this helps! Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions.

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Unless you are at 5w/kg+ even a compact chainset is too big. Put on a chainset that fits rings small enough to ride uphill at your self selected cadence.

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For low cadence practice, If you ride with a club, simply act like about half of my club and refuse the shame of every using the little chainring 99% of the time.

Seriously though, riding with a slower group and intentionally being in too hard a gear up hills is the perfect practice.

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  • train your aerobic ability
  • keep steady, pace conservatively
  • get the lowest gearing possible, running out of gears is a lot worse than larger gear jumps
  • fuel well (especially in advance)

That’s all I’d say is really necessary. Having done 5 different climbs with more than 2000m net elevation (Veleta, Haleakala, Mauna Loa, Teide (3 different ascents), and Roque de Los Muchachos), I’ve always found that you have enough to worry about, so don’t let cadence and power be among them.
I usually pace these at a high Z2 and research in advance, what gearing I need. 50/34 11-34 was perfect on all of them but Veleta (where I would have needed even lower for the beginning).

In racing, you will also want to keep in mind the event as a whole (considering there are more climbs than one). You need to train for repeatability as well and see a realistic pacing. I usually race events like Haute Route at Low to mid Zone 3, when the climbs are about 1 hour long and you have 3 in a day.

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If the climbs ar long, do big chunks of sweetspot or tempo work, you can do them almost anywhere. If the climbs are short and steep, do lots of threshold over/under work as you’ll be hitting the climbs hard to stay in the race and recovering after.
For gearing, I’d much prefer having a gear small enough that I never use than maniacally hitting the shifter praying there’s an easier gear left to change to.
If you’re going over 1800m, eating and drinking more than you think you should is the way to go. Altitude can play funny tricks on you.

Don’t worry about the cadence, you’ll just do it - don’t overthink. You’ll be in the 70s range for most long climbs (11-32 for me there). E.g.,

image

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My Ultegra came with 52/36, I already ordered a 50/34.

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Thanks. There’s so many talking about changing to Gran Fondo that at least I’ll have a look at it.

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I know this is almost a year old but just wanted to point out since we are talking about climbs specifically, if you hold tempo for the entire duration, it’s quite likely that given the altitude gain that you’re actual power may be sweet spot already.

My proudest ride was holding 83% for 3 climbs all going above 2’000m.

Conversely, you may want to plan to decrease power a bit towards the end to stay fresher.

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If you are worried about cadance, select the right gearing…
I did a lot of climbing a few months ago, up to 12-15% (Ventoux, Col de Forclaz, and many others)… My gearing saved me, i had 34-34 and could keep my cadance easily above 80 without pushing to many watts (180-210W or 2,5-3W/kg). The steeper sections I had to push a little harder towards 4W/kg, but these sections were only a 500-1000m long.

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My recent experience with 34-34 (all 5-10m+ sections of a longer climb) that you can use as rough guidance:

  • 3.6wkg - 9.5%, 82rpm
  • 3.2wkg - 7.7%, 82rpm
  • 3.7wkg - 6.6%, 89rpm
  • 3.3wkg - 8.1%, 82rpm
  • 3.4wkg - 10.7%, 74rpm
  • 3.9wkg - 12.3%, 72rpm

I’d say you’ll generally need >3wkg to stay in 80s on gradients above 7%.

this is a good workout on zwift → i’ve done it yesterday. i really enjoyed it.

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From everything I’ve learned about exercise science, a Z2 to Z5 increase appears „long climb specific“, but very likely does not yield great performance gains.

Most of the training is not specific, but just focused on improving general fitness. For that. 4 to 8 reps of 4 to 8 minutes of HIT, or the classic 30/15 intervals are shown to do that most effectively in the average cyclist.

Fit a smaller chainset so that you can maintain your preferred cadence, assuming the race doesn’t feature a pedally descent where you might get dropped.

The only physiological difference between riding uphill compared to on the flat is the the slight change in position which affects muscle recruitment. If you are training indoors prop your front wheel up on a thick book or some pieces of wood to recreate the gradients that you’ll experience in the race.

One more difference is the resistance curve on the pedal stroke. Riding uphill certainly feels different to riding on the flat. The torque peaks will be higher on the climb, and less even throughout.
Also, for taller riders like myself, a steep climb can make body weight distribution a little tricky.
Especially on steeper climbs, I tend to get traction issues, particularly on wet spots or loose surface.

While 90% of the climbing experience can be experienced and trained for on the rollers, the real thing still feels a little different.

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I’ve always found that indoor trainers have so little inertia riding on them feels like going uphill anyway, especially in erg mode.

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As someone who lives and trains in a pan-flat area, I can confidently say there’s a lot more to climbing than a “slight change in position”, assuming you’re talking long climbs at >6-7%.

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My main event of the year is 125 miles and 16,500 feet (200/5000). This year I did something different and trained exclusively on a flat rails-to-trails where I could put out consistent power for hours without coasting. Of course, I was a little concerned at how the lack of climbing would affect my performance on the day. Turns out it didn’t negatively affect me at all. I set PRs on all the climbs, and the only thing I noticed was some relatively minor tricep fatigue/pain.

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What is it?

It’s the Garrett County Gran Fondo in west Maryland. This was my 4th year doing it.

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