What should I be training to get up a steep hill without stopping?

maybe general build then? High-intensity is my weakness, I’m a diesel and taking my second shot at Fast After 50 this season. Before TR, my first go around at getting fast involved focusing on high-intensity 30-90 second max efforts, along with long 30-60 minute SS/threshold intervals, and also doing a lot of one-leg strength work in gym. Basically general build with gym work. That pushed me up to 280W and over 3W/kg, and made long climbs and high-intensity efforts pretty straightforward.

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Do not think of low gearing as an embarrassment. Think if it as the right tool for the job.

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Hah, I’m your height and about 5kg more! You’re one of those annoyingly slim climbers as far as I’m concerned :wink:

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Just gotta find our inner Emma Pooley

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I’d definitely look for lower gearing if 15% slopes is something you plan on doing regularly. Otherwise, with the current 34/34 it’ll force you into very low cadence. If you have Shimano 105 R7000 or Ultegra R8000 (long cage derailleur) you can use 11-40 MTB cassettes (you can find videos on YouTube), or you can look for sub-compact chainrings (like 46/30) or even both things together if one isn’t enough. I’d start with the cassette since it is usually a cheaper way of getting lower gearing.

Also, you mentioned that you get wobbly standing up. I think that is something you should practice more often, to get the hang of climbing while standing and to be able to alternate between seated and standing climbing. Standing is less efficient than climbing seated, but sometimes the road gradient will force you to stand up, since you can apply greater force and it fits more naturally with the lower cadence that 15% gradients will impose on you.

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So I wanted to see exactly how far out of reach that would be, hypothetically:

image

…seriously? I’d need to be over 6 W/kg to maintain 25mph on a flat?

SERIOUSLY?!

Fair to say out of reach, yes. :flushed:

I’ll be mostly housebound until maybe April if I’m lucky at this point (Norwegian winter), so for now I’ll concentrate on the indoor work, and then see where I’m at outside once I don’t have to worry about black ice. (Thanks very much for offering to help with a build, I may take you up on it in a few months.)

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Ooh, where is that calculator? I’ve been looking at changing my gearing because I find myself up on 36-28 very quickly on some hills around here, and then up in the red…

Looking at that graphic in the background, looks like http://bikecalculator.com/

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:smiley:

/me books eye test

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ha ha :rofl: and @ellotheth its not so out of reach… because flatland is a game of watts (without kg) and aerodynamics/drafting and wind :thinking: I’m a 2.x W/kg flatlander and two years ago the pro woman rolled thru here at start of 2017 Amgen Tour of California Stage 3. I’m still second on leaderboard with a 2.7W/kg (doesn’t matter) solo effort (no draft) at 297W (reason #1) for 7 minutes in small crosswind (reason #2 no headwind) and mostly because of luck :joy: - (reason #3) sailed thru 4 green lights and just had to slow a bit for 2 of the lights :vertical_traffic_light: as they turned from red to green!

For that 24.1mph segment, the bike calculator - drops not hoods! - predicts a speed of 24.08mph and changing from my 95kg to your 63kg the speed prediction only goes up 0.5mph. Just showing once again that in flatland the game is watts and aero/drafting and wind. Scan down that leaderboard and it appears Lizzie Holden was pulling the peloton at 310W (nearly same as my 297W solo effort).

After leaving the city the pros turned south for a long ~10 mile flat cruise with a good tailwind. If you had same tailwind and good aerodynamics, you have a good shot at holding 30mph on the flats for at least a few miles in a smaller peloton if you bumped FTP up by 20%. Goals! :muscle:

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HA that’s amazing, your name is basically in lights with that kind of company.


Oooookay.


:eyes:

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sheer dumb luck that I went out after a 4 day business trip, with fresh legs and no headwind, and didn’t get stopped at a single stop light!!! Unbelievable to this day!

Emma White clearly has great aerodynamics and sitting in the right spot of the peloton! And Lizzie Holden - pure beast pulling down Franklin Road!

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@martinheadon is this the calculator you used to come up with those figures? If not, what calculator did you use? Thanks…

Mallorca doesn’t have many 15% hills, but they’re usually long and the gradient varies. Take Sa Calobra as an example. Avg gradient is either 6 or 7%, but some of the switchbacks get up to 20%

My advice to the OP would just be to keep riding. Don’t change your gearing, just add a hill to each of your rides and carry on with the TR workouts when you ride indoors. Hills are hard, but getting a little further each time you try them will eventually get you there!

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Yes, that’s the one. And then this to calculate the required cadence in whatever gears you have:

Great. Thanks for the info and link. This will be helpful.

You sound like you are doing great for only 1 year into the sport. Honestly, you need to just keep riding consistently and you’ll keep improving year over year.

Consistency is huge. Don’t slack off in the winter or stop riding if you lose focus mid to late summer. The people that slack off are the slow people in my club. The fast people ride all year and show up to our Saturday ride even with it’s cold and chilly at 8am in the winter. You don’t have to hammer all year but maintaining the aerobic engine year round will keep you fit.

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Cheeky follow-up:

Since October I’ve done roughly SSB1MV → SSB2MV → holidays/illness/injury → SSB2MV → GBMV → SSB2MV. FTP is up, but it’s hard to say how much because I swapped power sources. Regardless, made it up this sucker on Saturday:

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1.2km at 8% overall but that steep bit was like a wall. I stayed seated and sort of held on for dear life. Thank goodness it was short.

Also survived this one, which has almost the same overall profile as the ones I couldn’t make last year, but without any steep kicks. I have some optimism :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

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