Whats the quickest way to get quicker up a hill.

NITR8s

My clubs hill climb is coming up soon and want to put in a quick time. I was thinking of doing hill repeats up the hill with 10kg of weights in a backpack. So when it comes to hill climb day I am hoping I should shoot up the hill as I would be carrying much much less weight.

dnwhite88

You can carry weight if you like but the best thing to do is to keep riding a variety of hills with different lengths and gradients. Unfortunately they will never become 'easy', you'll just do them quicker.

antsmithmk

I think the 10kg idea is terrible. You might injure yourself. I would advise riding the hill as many times as possible to learn it... Where is it steep, where can you spin, where can you sit.... Etc

meursault

Pedal faster?

styxd

Loose weight?

pkripper

intervals that simulate the effort you're planning to expend on the day, followed by appropriate rest to ensure you don't go too far down the fatigue curve.

VeloPeo

Hungry Rottweiller behind you?

meursault

Lock on target to rusty chained mtb, half way up the hill?

Bobbinogs

Funnily enough there is this exact scenario in this week's Cycling Weekly with a response and training plan by a BC coach. Might be worth finding the comic?

I agree with the 'do a few recces' and also interval training. Also agree that extra weight is a bad idea.

The problem is that you have not got enough time to transform your performance, just fine tune it so accepting that would be a good start.

hatch87

just find steeper longer hills and hit them after a long ride so when you get to it, it will feel easy in comparison

napoleond

The quickest way to improve hill climb speed is weight loss.

markhewitt1978

NITR8s wrote:

My clubs hill climb is coming up soon and want to put in a quick time. I was thinking of doing hill repeats up the hill with 10kg of weights in a backpack. So when it comes to hill climb day I am hoping I should shoot up the hill as I would be carrying much much less weight.

If you have access to the hill just ride up it, time after time after time, getting faster every time.

As others have said, it's more important to know the hill and know yourself and your bike on it, where you can push and where you have to save your effort for etc. Putting an extra 10kg backpack on won't help with this knowledge.

leodis75

Pedal harder

NITR8s

Ive already ridden the hill about 20+ times this year including 8 times in the same day (for the ralpha rising challenge)

http://www.strava.com/segments/2414067 - this is the hill. My current position of 15th on Strava with a time of 11.53, which doesnt cut it with last years winning time of 9.56. I need to knock off an extra 2 mins.

I dont have any weight to lose, being a skinny short ass I only weigh 9 stone and if i lost more weight i would be too skinny.

sloppyschleckonds

2 minute out of the saddle hill repeats

Rocketman.

I've been training on a particular hill. Not for any reason, only the fact it's a quiet road and hill climbing is good for the soul. I've been pushing myself harder and harder up the hill and yes my times have improved. However, last week I rode the hill at a relaxed (so I thought) pace as part of a longer ride and my time improved massively. Yes this is down to fitness, but what I've taken from it is: it's all in my head! Relax, enjoy it and just have fun.

Bozman

The more weight I lose the quicker I get, obviously there's a limit to this but it's working for me.

bernithebiker

Weight is key for hill climbs like this.

Seeing as you're already light, lose some off the bike wherever you can. Take off any unnecessary item - you won't need a water bottle for this.

Good example - on holiday in Sardinia in July I spotted a segment very similar to your hill climb - same gradient, bit shorter. Looked to be quite an easy KOM, 20km/h. But I had no bike, as had promised the missus it was a bike free holiday...

But managed to sneak out and hire the only bike on the island one day - a 14kg MTB compete with stand, lock I couldn't remove and 2.5in tires (which at least I managed to inflate to 60psi!).

Attacked the segment, but the bike just would not climb, it felt like dragging an anchor. I set a new HR max, just trying to force the thing up the hill. I didn't get the KOM (by one second!)

So lugging at extra 8kg will seriously knacker your hill climb speed, and so 1kg will too but by 1/8th as much.

kajjal

markhewitt1978 wrote:

NITR8s wrote:

My clubs hill climb is coming up soon and want to put in a quick time. I was thinking of doing hill repeats up the hill with 10kg of weights in a backpack. So when it comes to hill climb day I am hoping I should shoot up the hill as I would be carrying much much less weight.

If you have access to the hill just ride up it, time after time after time, getting faster every time.

As others have said, it's more important to know the hill and know yourself and your bike on it, where you can push and where you have to save your effort for etc. Putting an extra 10kg backpack on won't help with this knowledge.

I would recommend the same, experience and confidence on a hill mean you climb it faster. Practice on the hill in question.

butcher of bakersfield

Reading Tyler Hamilton's book at the mo, and it's interesting that he says given the choice of one or the other he'd take weight loss over EPO in terms of performance gains.

It would seem the key to success is getting rid of 10kg, rather than adding it...

al_kidder

If you haven't already done it, check your saddle position. A few weeks back, I dropped mine about 4mm and moved it backwards in the rail. Resulted in over 5% consistent improvement in my times on climbs of 5-7 km at 7-10% grades.
Getting skinny is also good

diy

Don't eat before hand.

I'm 10-15% faster for high intensity rides of up to 1 hour on days when I don't eat anything.

kajjal

diy wrote:

Don't eat before hand.

I'm 10-15% faster for high intensity rides of up to 1 hour on days when I don't eat anything.

I am completely the opposite , if I haven't eaten anything recently a ride of more than half an hour at a good speed turns into a world of pain

The upside is I don't get affected by eating and exercising.

smoggysteve

Learn to be in the right gear at the right time. Don't go hell for leather at the start. Build up your pace as you ascend. You could lose weight and the rest but if your technique is crap your going nowhere fast.

sloppyschleckonds

Al Kidder wrote:

If you haven't already done it, check your saddle position. A few weeks back, I dropped mine about 4mm and moved it backwards in the rail. Resulted in over 5% consistent improvement in my times on climbs of 5-7 km at 7-10% grades.
Getting skinny is also good

Not sure this is an improvement, more not having your bike correctly set up in the furst place.

al_kidder

SloppySchleckonds wrote:

Al Kidder wrote:

If you haven't already done it, check your saddle position. A few weeks back, I dropped mine about 4mm and moved it backwards in the rail. Resulted in over 5% consistent improvement in my times on climbs of 5-7 km at 7-10% grades.
Getting skinny is also good

Not sure this is an improvement, more not having your bike correctly set up in the furst place.

I don't think that the most efficient set up for going up a big hill is exactly the same as the set up for riding on the flat. If it was, you'ld see TT bikes being used in hill climbs

Pross

NITR8s wrote:

Ive already ridden the hill about 20+ times this year including 8 times in the same day (for the ralpha rising challenge)

http://www.strava.com/segments/2414067 - this is the hill. My current position of 15th on Strava with a time of 11.53, which doesnt cut it with last years winning time of 9.56. I need to knock off an extra 2 mins.

I dont have any weight to lose, being a skinny short ass I only weigh 9 stone and if i lost more weight i would be too skinny.

If you are already that light then the only option is really to improve your power. Whether you have enough time to make a meaningful improvement before the race is another matter. Probably worthwhile asking for advice on the training forum for specific ways to improve you 10 minute power output.

Bobbinogs

Pross wrote:

NITR8s wrote:

Ive already ridden the hill about 20+ times this year including 8 times in the same day (for the ralpha rising challenge)

http://www.strava.com/segments/2414067 - this is the hill. My current position of 15th on Strava with a time of 11.53, which doesnt cut it with last years winning time of 9.56. I need to knock off an extra 2 mins.

I dont have any weight to lose, being a skinny short ass I only weigh 9 stone and if i lost more weight i would be too skinny.

If you are already that light then the only option is really to improve your power. Whether you have enough time to make a meaningful improvement before the race is another matter. Probably worthwhile asking for advice on the training forum for specific ways to improve you 10 minute power output.

Pah! Far too sensible. I think he should ditch the big chainring, cut the drops off his bars and then take a drill to his saddle and anything else he can find...in fact, having a saddle at all seems a luxury for a 10 minute hill climb.

Pross

In that case just chuck a crankset on a wheel and have it as a super lightweight unicycle.