ventoux training

[jonny jeez]

I live in the south east of England and am considering a climb of ventoux next spring (not the mad triple thing, just the one for me).

I am looking for advice on the best hill training for the job. I imagine doing reps of ditchling beacon would be good training but am happy to travel north for better hills, more variety and also more altitude.

Any good suggestions of hills that will give me a good familiarisation with something like ventoux....but in England

 

[Rooster1]

My approach would be
- Do a few hill repeats on any given ride
- Try and cover 2000 feet of climbing on a given (weekend) ride, e.g 30-40 miles
- Go out during the day if an option (I go out every lunch time and do a small hill each time, 800 feet)

After a year of this I got quite fit.
After five years of this, I love climbs

 

[TissoT]

http://cyclinguphill.com/100-climbs/
Hill repeats should get you fit .

 

[Dogtrousers]

I don't know anything about effective training, but I am familiar with quite a few hills in the SE.

First of all, note that the Beacon, with its stepped profile isn't the most Ventoux-esque. If you want it to be similar to Ventoux you'd need a smooth profile, and I'd suggest Kidd's Hill for that. Both the Beacon and Kidd's are similar sized (about 1.5km @ ~8-9%). Ventoux is like that but ~20km long and we haven't got anything even remotely like that in the SE.

The Greensand Ridge is another good place to look for hills (nr Sevenoaks) there is Toy's Hill, Ide Hill, Bayley's Hill, Carter's Hill, Hubbard's Hill ... but they're all pimples compared to where you're going. And of course there are the Surrey Hills - Leith, White Down, Box, Ranmore. Or SE of Maidstone there are hills on the N Downs, particularly one that I cycled down not long ago, heading SW into Charing.

 

[Citius]

Ventoux is a steady 1hr+ climb. Pointless doing repeats of UK hills, as they will give you nothing like the duration you need to train for. Riding up a short hill and then freewheeling back down it several times is not going to give you any sense of the 1hr steady-state effort you need for the alps.

Focus on holding high outputs for 1hr plus. You don't need hills for that. A turbo will do.

 

[bianchi1]

Ventoux is a steady 1hr+ climb. Pointless doing repeats of UK hills, as they will give you nothing like the duration you need to train for. Riding up a short hill and then freewheeling back down it several times is not going to give you any sense of the 1hr steady-state effort you need for the alps.

Focus on holding high outputs for 1hr plus. You don't need hills for that. A turbo will do.

Better still, set the turbo up in a sauna and now and again get a mate to replicate a 70mph gust of wind by pushing you over.

 

[e-rider]

I live in the south east of England and am considering a climb of ventoux next spring (not the mad triple thing, just the one for me).

I am looking for advice on the best hill training for the job. I imagine doing reps of ditchling beacon would be good training but am happy to travel north for better hills, more variety and also more altitude.

Any good suggestions of hills that will give me a good familiarisation with something like ventoux....but in England

lose as much weight as possible from your body and your bike
get as many miles in as possible over hilly rides
IMO riding up and down a hill will be boring and not that much help really - if you are overweight or riding a heavy bike you will never be quick uphill no matter how much training you do!

 

[Simpleton]

Do some work on a wattbike. After knowing your threshold of course.

 

[jonny jeez]

Ventoux is a steady 1hr+ climb. Pointless doing repeats of UK hills, as they will give you nothing like the duration you need to train for. Riding up a short hill and then freewheeling back down it several times is not going to give you any sense of the 1hr steady-state effort you need for the alps.

Focus on holding high outputs for 1hr plus. You don't need hills for that. A turbo will do.

This was my thought really, I recall riding up shap fell in Cumbria once and whilst it wasn't steep it did feel long...and high. The beacon is close (enough to ride to for me) as are the North downs like box hill but I wondered if these were pointless (or would show small gains) compared to something higher.

 

[jonny jeez]

lose as much weight as possible from your body and your bike
get as many miles in as possible over hilly rides
IMO riding up and down a hill will be boring and not that much help really - if you are overweight or riding a heavy bike you will never be quick uphill no matter how much training you do!

Yep, the weight needs to be addressed, which is one of the reasons to focus on a goal. I lost a lot of weight for my leJog experience and loved the process, the training and the ride itself.

I am hoping to get "into" ventoux as much and to show as many benifits beyond just climbing it.

Speed is not a goal for me, completion is. Perhaps speed will be a goal the next time.

Look at me, talking like I plan multiple attempts!

 

[Dogtrousers]

Perhaps you should head the other way to the Romney Marshes, and zoom around on their flatness, in a very high gear. Possibly on an old MTB with soft tyres.

(I did say that I don't know anything about training).

 

[jonny jeez]

Perhaps you should head the other way to the Romney Marshes, and zoom around on their flatness, in a very high gear. Possibly on an old MTB with soft tyres.

(I did say that I don't know anything about training).

Dragging a bag of road steel framed road bikes!

 

[Citius]

Perhaps you should head the other way to the Romney Marshes, and zoom around on their flatness, in a very high gear. Possibly on an old MTB with soft tyres.

(I did say that I don't know anything about training).

Long flat roads are ideal training for long steady climbs, ironically. Anywhere where you can ride at threshold for an hour plus without many (or any) interruptions would be ideal.

 

[Joshua Plumtree]

Ventoux is a steady 1hr+ climb. Pointless doing repeats of UK hills, as they will give you nothing like the duration you need to train for. Riding up a short hill and then freewheeling back down it several times is not going to give you any sense of the 1hr steady-state effort you need for the alps.

Focus on holding high outputs for 1hr plus. You don't need hills for that. A turbo will do.

Agree with this for the most part, but I would also include a couple of one hour+ efforts on the road at near threshold a couple of times a week, taking in as many hills as possible. That way you'll be replicating the effort required to climb Ventoux - albeit on the flat for large parts - and your legs won't have forgotten how it feels to climb - which is the real danger if you spend all winter on the turbo IMO!

 

[Dogtrousers]

Long flat roads are ideal training for long steady climbs, ironically. Anywhere where you can ride at threshold for an hour plus without many (or any) interruptions would be ideal.

Then the Romney Marshes would be ideal. And if @jonny jeez feels he really must go up a hill, I can recommend Battery Hill on the way into Bexhill from the East.