Getting back on the bike and the hills
AdrianHix
Posts: 24
I've recently come back to cycling after too many years of drinking and smoking. I've been out on rides of circa 20 miles aiming to average 16-17mph. I've been avoiding hills as much as I can as I'm carrying a bit of a tyre and the old lungs haven't been kept in tip-top over the years.
I've been doing hillwalking and mountaineering so I'm not a totally lost cause, I just feel I should get back on the bike and get the enjoyment I used to get from it, whilst getting some of the health benefits back from it.
I've decided that I need to start working on the hills and from reading around on here I've figured that it's best to just start doing repeats of hills and just concentrate on getting up them without giving up.
At the moment I've got 53/39 and 12-23 which seems a bit long for me, I cant maintain a reasonable cadence and end up grinding, and so blowing out after a while. To that end I'm going to get a 12-27, to help the cause until I've built up some climbing ability again.
I've singled out a couple of short hills nearby to do reps on, they are short and medium, with what I perceive to be reasonable gradients. My question is; am I going about it in the right way if I do something like 5 reps of the hill with a coast back down in-between to recover? I know the only way to get better at hills is to DO hills, are the two profiles below going to be enough or do I need something more gentle with a longer run?
Any input gratefully received..
The Killer Hill
Not that bad but hurts hill
I've been doing hillwalking and mountaineering so I'm not a totally lost cause, I just feel I should get back on the bike and get the enjoyment I used to get from it, whilst getting some of the health benefits back from it.
I've decided that I need to start working on the hills and from reading around on here I've figured that it's best to just start doing repeats of hills and just concentrate on getting up them without giving up.
At the moment I've got 53/39 and 12-23 which seems a bit long for me, I cant maintain a reasonable cadence and end up grinding, and so blowing out after a while. To that end I'm going to get a 12-27, to help the cause until I've built up some climbing ability again.
I've singled out a couple of short hills nearby to do reps on, they are short and medium, with what I perceive to be reasonable gradients. My question is; am I going about it in the right way if I do something like 5 reps of the hill with a coast back down in-between to recover? I know the only way to get better at hills is to DO hills, are the two profiles below going to be enough or do I need something more gentle with a longer run?
Any input gratefully received..
The Killer Hill
Not that bad but hurts hill
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Comments
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I think if I was you I would stick to getting plenty miles in. Hill repeats on a 53/39 with an out of condition engine sounds a bit like torture at best and injury at worst. If you are grinding those out you are overstraining your body. Maybe it would be better to give your tar filled lungs an easier recuperation for now. For sure a 12-27 would help. Take it from me - better to improve gradually than get injured trying to be like a pro.0
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Oh, I'm no stranger to torture, climbing at 4000m plus makes cycling very tame.
I just need to get my hillclimbing muscles back.
I want to know if short sharp hills are better than long easier hills?0 -
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If they are easy then you are not trying hard enough.[/quote]AdrianHix wrote:I want to know if short sharp hills are better than long easier hills?
I was referring to gradients. I.e a longer hill with less inclination over a steeper climb.
Despite being a smoker, my base aerobic isn't too shocking, I can and have gone up mountains at a better pace than a lot of non smokers.
I'm just out of practice with a bike.
I wanted to find out whether the best route to train would be slight inclines for a lot of distance or lots of reps of more severe gradients.
I'm happy banging miles out but want to specifically improve my bike climbing.0 -
And before someone pipes up with lose weight, I know, this is the single most important aspect, watts/kg is basic physics.0
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Adrian, good for you, mate, getting back into it.
I'm now a year into my return to cycling after a 20+ year absence at a young 48 - I've been windsurfing and climbing between but needed my cycling strength to be built from scratch - and had the same target as you, to be a strong climber (on a bike, that is!). I was obsessed with cycling to my mid twenties but I needed to reawaken the old legs after the layoff despite being pretty fit generally!
I'd say (from my past year's experience) that you need to combine both the steep hills and the shallower gradient ones in your training. After copious research, the consensus seemed to me to be that for my target (to be strong on long distance hilly rides) I needed endurance training (long steady distances) and strength training (including interval type stuff). I have done my training (now at well over 100 miles a week) almost entirely on the road and the results are amazing. I've lost a stone (and I wasn't what you'd call overweight) and improved my cycling and general fitness massively.
I live in a hilly area and so am spoilt for choice, but I tend to incorporate the shallower hills in the long rides and the steeper ones in the shorter ones, the latter rides focusing on strength and taking my heart rate to very high levels and then down again on the downhills/flats. For the endurance training a very rough rule of thumb is to try to keep your heart rate at less than 80% of max. It's possible to do this on shallower hills but not on steep ones.
Hope this helps. And all the best!0
