Hill Climbs

If you've finished your last race of the season but you're still in the mood for inflicting pain on yourself then entering a few hill climbs should do the job.

Hill climbs are essentially a time trial that goes up hill, they can take the form of very short steep inclines of a couple of miles to longer mountain type climbs such as The Cat and Fiddle in Cheshire.

The national Hill Climb Championships are in Matlock this year on October 19th, so you have a few weeks to prepare!

A typically accepted minimum block of training for a particular discipline is 4 weeks. Focus on that discipline and recovery, mixed bag training will usually mean mediocre performance in several areas but not stellar performance in any one area.

Hills are your friend till the hill climb. So for 3x's a week I say go for some hills. Short sprints to long ones.

In a nutshell, the hill climb is a relentless period of non-stop peddling at constant power output keeping the body just below its anaerobic threshold. Expanding upon a few points: First, given the average 12% grade and assuming a typical speed of 6 mph, the maximum glide time is about 2-3 seconds if one stops peddling. Hence, there is no opportunity to rest while on the bike. This leads into my second point of keeping constant power output. There is very little opportunity to go hard for some time period and then go easy at other time periods since you will likely not have enough forward momentum to keep upright during these easy times.

Pacing yourself over the length of the course is vital. It is best not to start too fast because once you go "into the red" there is no place to recover on an all up-hill course. Ideally you should ride just at your aerobic-anaerobic threshold with a dip into the anaerobic zone (the red) only in the last couple of hundred metres. So as you cross the line you can expect blurred vision and be just about ready to puke! (puking on the course is generally regarded as bad practice as it makes the route slippery for your fellow competitors).

Training for hill-climbs (unsurprisingly) should involve riding up hills. A general goal should be to increase your tolerance to lactic acid. Riding hard up long hills will allow you to identify the sensations resulting from reaching your aerobic-anaerobic threshold. Pushing too hard will increase your lactic acid to intolerably painful levels! With a bit of practice you should be able to get to know your body and be able to ride "on the limit". A simple but effective training method is then time yourself up a suitably tough hill a number of times with a gentle free-wheel back down acting as recovery. With each ascent you can expect lactic acid levels to build more quickly and fatigue to set in. Simply repeat until you take more than 20% longer to climb the hill than your first attempt.

Personally, training for hill-climbs is the least enjoyable type of riding. If one enjoyed the training ride while doing it, one did not ride hard enough. If one enjoyed the training ride after the fact, well done, you are on your way to the top.