Training for hills when I live on the flats

Lefire

I live in Essex where it is pretty flat.
I only manage to get out on rides at the weekend with the odd mid week ride now and again.
I plan to do the Manchester 100 later in the year and want to make sure that I manage all the hills without my legs falling off.
Any tips on preparing myself ?

smoggysteve

Buying a turbo may help you simulate hills.

Froomes Edgar

Lefire wrote:

Any tips on preparing myself ?

1. Get fit enough to ride 100 flat miles comfortably
2. Don't nail it up the hills in your event
3. There is no step 3

smidsy

Riding up hills is basically about sustained hard effort and depending on the type of hill can be extremely cardio heavy.

I guess you could use intervals to simulate the efforts required.

Standing is also often a good technique on hills so you could also do out of the saddle hard efforts on the flat to get used to that.

Not ideal but its better than nothing.

If you do find a hill or two you can do hill repeats on it to simulate the longer efforts you may encounter elsewhere.

Flexisurfer

I'm doing the Etape Caledonia in May and live in Suffolk, my plan is to try and increase strength by riding over geared and there's quite a good training plan on the Etape website to use on a turbo. Also as said above get use to riding longer distances.

herb71

Where in Essex are you? I used to live in Essex and I remember some pretty big hills. I used to train around Old Woodham, Baddow, Danbury and Laindon and there are some decent hills there. Ok, it's not the alps but certainly far from flat.

paul_mck

knock up a few gears, up out of the saddle and pretend youre going up a hill

or create a strava segment about 1/2 mile long and cane it each time you pass it. will soon get the lungs pumping.

there must be hills somewhere surely.

Lefire

Herb71 wrote:

Where in Essex are you? I used to live in Essex and I remember some pretty big hills. I used to train around Old Woodham, Baddow, Danbury and Laindon and there are some decent hills there. Ok, it's not the alps but certainly far from flat.

Around colchester area.
I do use the hill in Danbury and that does help but thanks guys for the other tips.
I try and stay in the saddle, so will give a few sessions out of it to see how I get on

rick_chasey

smidsy wrote:

Riding up hills is basically about sustained hard effort and depending on the type of hill can be extremely cardio heavy.

I guess you could use intervals to simulate the efforts required.

Standing is also often a good technique on hills so you could also do out of the saddle hard efforts on the flat to get used to that.

Not ideal but its better than nothing.

If you do find a hill or two you can do hill repeats on it to simulate the longer efforts you may encounter elsewhere.

More or less this.

Hills make the psychological issue around pushing yourself to ride harder easier - since often you have to go flat out just to get up the hill. That's tougher to do on the flats, but with a bit of effort and some mental trickery that's easily overcome.

xscreamsuk

Do you mean the bike events Manchester 100? If so it's flat, just ride.

twotyred

I doubt very much you'll need to do anything more than 10 min efforts at threshold for any of the hills you encounter. Training for that can be done on the flat. just get some 10-15 min hard efforts into your rides.

I don't know why people worry about specific training for hills. Just get some training in and get properly cycling fit and the hills will take care of themselves

Froomes Edgar

Yer. If you have to make a massive effort to get up a hill (and its not something daft e.g. 20%+) then you need smaller gears. Anything less than 10% you should be able to take breathing through your nose in yer granny gear - and if you want to go faster, you have the other 9/10 cogs and a big ring.

d87heaven

Brantham, manningtree, nayland and bentley near east bergholt all have decentish hills. Not far from colchester and can be done in a loop.

Lefire

xscreamsuk wrote:

Do you mean the bike events Manchester 100? If so it's flat, just ride.

That's the most relieving thing to read this morning :-)

Lefire

d87heaven wrote:

Brantham, manningtree, nayland and bentley near east bergholt all have decentish hills. Not far from colchester and can be done in a loop.

Good tips thanks. Haven't ridden over that way for years.
I used to go down that massive hill near manningtree but suppose I better start going up it now.

Slack

One doesn't need specific hill training to cycle up hills. The best thing you can do is shed excess body weight.

When you cycle up hill, your muscles will demand more from your heart and lungs. Your aerobic conditioning determines how effecient your body is at doing this. I assume you have gears on your bike to adjust your effort for hills.

As others have said, ensure you have the endurance for 100 miles and carefully pace your efforts on the hills (which usually means taking a lower cog than you feel you need).

Garryboy

Flexisurfer wrote:

I'm doing the Etape Caledonia in May and live in Suffolk, my plan is to try and increase strength by riding over geared and there's quite a good training plan on the Etape website to use on a turbo. Also as said above get use to riding longer distances.

Honestly wouldnt worry too much about hill training for the Etape Caledonia, it is mainly flat with one reasonable climb over the schiellallion(?) practice riding into the wind instead!

chill123

d87heaven wrote:

Brantham, manningtree, nayland and bentley near east bergholt all have decentish hills. Not far from colchester and can be done in a loop.

i trained for the marmotte on these roads. quite a good loop out manningtree > brantham > hadleigh > kersey > stoke by nayland > boxted > dedham and back. there are quite a few hills out that way through the lanes and it is a beautiful part of the world.

i also used indoor sessions at the gym @ work. big gear and mash away for an hour, getting out of the saddle every 9 minutes to sprint for 1 minute.

mosamahab

Manchester 100 is pretty flat, with a small hill here and there. I did the 100k without any training and although i was pedalling squares at the end it was delightfull experience. But there are quite a few training regimes out there to help you train and get in shape for the century rides.