Training for Hills in the Flatlands

[iggibizzle]

Hi. I live in Blackpool. Similarly flat but plenty winds. I'd never set foot on a road bike until 2 years ago and hadn't done a 'climb' until 18 months ago. I've now done most of the norths major ones, and done them in pretty decent times. Sometimes on rides of 100+ miles doing one after another in the lakes / Yorkshire (11/12,000ft). I'm 5ft 9 and 14 stone so no lightweight. I put it down to cycling day in day out on the flat in whatever weather. Sticking to a vague training plan with a hr monitor. I do a lot of miles but only get to some hills on a Sunday. I also do tt's, 1st season done, which I've found has improved my climbing even more. Whatever you do, make it very hard.

 

[PK99]

Hi. I live in Blackpool. Similarly flat but plenty winds. I'd never set foot on a road bike until 2 years ago and hadn't done a 'climb' until 18 months ago. I've now done most of the norths major ones, and done them in pretty decent times. Sometimes on rides of 100+ miles doing one after another in the lakes / Yorkshire (11/12,000ft). I'm 5ft 9 and 14 stone so no lightweight. I put it down to cycling day in day out on the flat in whatever weather. Sticking to a vague training plan with a hr monitor. I do a lot of miles but only get to some hills on a Sunday. I also do tt's, 1st season done, which I've found has improved my climbing even more. Whatever you do, make it very hard.

TT's push heartrate/power to maximum sustainable - excellent training for hills!

 

[iggibizzle]

Yep once you have a number on you can push way harder than you can just out training or whatever. In winter (or any windy day!) I sometimes do wind repeats. Do a few mins hard into the wind, turn around and recover then repeat. Does a pretty good imitation of some hills. Maybe not the ultra steep ones but it's better than nothing

 

[iggibizzle]

One day a week or every couple of weeks I do drive out of the area to park up and do a few hours in the trough of Bowland / lakes wherever though and try to do at least 100ft per mile. I don't do it all on the flat. Would send me a bit doolally if I did.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Yep once you have a number on you can push way harder than you can just out training or whatever. In winter (or any windy day!) I sometimes do wind repeats. Do a few mins hard into the wind, turn around and recover then repeat. Does a pretty good imitation of some hills. Maybe not the ultra steep ones but it's better than nothing

You should have been on the Reading Curry ride.

 

[clid61]

Evening. I live in Norfolk where hills are few and far between. I recently got copies of "100 greatest climbs" and used them to plan a ride of four of the hills in the book in the Sevenoaks Weald area of Kent. This is quite close to my mum's home so thought it would be an ideal opportunity. Hmmm. Talk about sobering. The hills - chalkpit Lane, Toys Hill, etc - were graded between 5 and 7 out of 10 in the books, but they might as well have been 107 out of 10 for me!!!!!! Could not believe the gradients or the lengths! Nothing in the whole of East Anglia can compare to these hills in Kent (and I do realise we are not talking Mont Ventoux here!) I had to stop several times on each hill and was completely shafted when I finally crested each brow - at 5.4 mph! Part of this rubbish performance was a lack of familiarity with the actual hills - not knowing when and where each steepened/ended for example - but most of it was due to total lack of ability to climb hills. Now in my local area I can easily keep up 17 mph for 20 miles and laughably have several Strava KOMs on the flat round here but on different terrain I was completely useless today: literally 4800 out 4900!!! Now I know one solution is to lose weight (I am about 15 stone at 6 Foot) but apart from that, can anyone offer viable training tips on getting better at climbing hills in a flat area when one lives in a place where the biggest hill is virtually a mole hill!?

Or come up to Lancashire for a week , trough of bowl and, parbold hill , billinge hill , sheep's hill up rivvy !