Spring Training: Hill Repeats

[jblande]

Who out there is doing hill repeats as a part of their training regiment?

Do you have a particular schedule how often you do hills?

How many repeats per session?

How do you structure such a workout?

I am looking for ideas, as I have been doing these once a week since moving from Chicago to a place with lots of hills (Konstanz, at the border between Switzerland and Germany). I have never structured this further, only done more as I've gotten stronger. Just looking for ideas and input. Thanks.

[Peter P.]

Repeats are repeats, whether done on the flats or on a hill.

The problem with hill repeats is you go down faster than you go up, so your rest period won't equal your work period. It doesn't have to, but know that insufficient recovery between efforts can matter, and here's why:

One rule of thumb is to continue doing the repeats, timing each one. When you see two consecutive repeats with increasing times, you are fatigued, and it's time to stop doing the intervals. With insufficient recovery periods, you'll either have to do something to slow down your descent from the turnaround on the climb, or meter your efforts so you can handle a given number of hill repeats before fatigue sets in.

Here's one suggestion: one measure of fitness is a 20 minute timed effort. I would suggest doing hill repeats until you've done a total of 20 minutes worth of repeats, not including the recovery period.

When I train for my roughly 1 hour TT, I do intervals which are roughly 7 minutes, recover for 8-9 minutes then repeat, until I complete 30-45 minutes of interval work. Sometimes I'll increase it to close to that hour, but I have to work up to that time during the season.

That's one of the training games I play. You could adapt this program to your hill repeats.

[hairylegs]

I did repeats on Latigo this AM. Went all the way up, the did the last portion 3x more. I'm told this will help to simulate a longer climb (like the one at Ironman France!) ;)

[regularguy412]

Repeats are repeats, whether done on the flats or on a hill.

The problem with hill repeats is you go down faster than you go up, so your rest period won't equal your work period. It doesn't have to, but know that insufficient recovery between efforts can matter, and here's why:

One rule of thumb is to continue doing the repeats, timing each one. When you see two consecutive repeats with increasing times, you are fatigued, and it's time to stop doing the intervals. With insufficient recovery periods, you'll either have to do something to slow down your descent from the turnaround on the climb, or meter your efforts so you can handle a given number of hill repeats before fatigue sets in.

Here's one suggestion: one measure of fitness is a 20 minute timed effort. I would suggest doing hill repeats until you've done a total of 20 minutes worth of repeats, not including the recovery period.

When I train for my roughly 1 hour TT, I do intervals which are roughly 7 minutes, recover for 8-9 minutes then repeat, until I complete 30-45 minutes of interval work. Sometimes I'll increase it to close to that hour, but I have to work up to that time during the season.

That's one of the training games I play. You could adapt this program to your hill repeats.

This is very similar to what I do. And as was already stated, you can do this kind of interval on the flats. The climbing aspect just works your muscles a little differently. I generally do not do true 'hill intervals' more than once per week.

'Hill sprints' are a completely different matter. But, once again, I only do them once per week. These are performed on a fairly steep hill, but the hill can be climbed in approximately 30 seconds (from a rolling start @ 10 mph). These are done both in and out of the saddle, in a fairly large gear (53x13 or 14), with concentration on power and not leg speed. Hill sprints are not the same as hill repeats, which generally consume a longer, more aerobic interval. The rest period between hill sprint efforts is approximately 1 to 1.5 minutes.

Mike in AR:beer:

[stephenmarklay]

I do for variety. My cycling coach has be in my third build stage and I have anywhere from 3-5 repeats of 10 minutes at threshold intensity. My first build weeks were 1:1 rest/hard and now they are .5:1 rest hard.

I have a hill that takes me about 9:15-9:45 to go up full steam and half that down. So I do this and really like the variety. It is about a 8.5% grade at most for a mile and then levels to maybe 5% and then a other steep section at the end. Lovely hill to train on.

[martinrjensen]

The hill in front of my house is 12% for .2 miles. I do it twice then go home adding an additional .2 miles at a much lessor grade (probably 5% or so) every other day during the week, if I can't get a decent ride in. On my weekends I try to do 80 miles at least. If I have time, I will ride longer during the week but in the absence of that, this hill climb only takes 15 minutes and does a noticeable job of keeping me fit. I'm just a fitness rider, kinda old, and don't race but want to stay in decent shape.

[John M]

I think Peter has a reasonable strategy. Hills is a form of interval training that can combined with resistance training if you use a big gear/lower cadence.

Since I live in a hilly area, I can mix it up with hills that range from 3 min to near 20 min to climb. I generally shoot for 30-45 minutes of effort with about equivalent amounts of rest: i.e a 3 min interval gets about 3 min rest and a 10 min climb gets about 10 min rest. Some days I try to do short rest intervals to keep the HR up. This sort of simulates the feeling of a hard climb in the middle of a race.

[jblande]

Thank you everyone for the helpful advice. There seems to be some consensus about how to structure the workout, so I will give it a try next week, going for a total of about 20-30 min of climbing with an equivalent amount of rest. It takes me about 25 minutes to get to and from the relevant hill (which is about a 10 minute climb itself). If I can get up to 60 minutes of climbing by summer I'd be happy. At this point, I never do it more than 4 times for a total of 40 minutes of climbing on a given day. Thanks again for your help.

[stephenmarklay]

I should have mentioned that I do this for specific HR training rather than hills for the sake of hills. Climbing a hill is easier with a higher power to weight ratio so you can do that by developing power of the flats too.

It does put you in a different seated position but the carryover from the flats is still a lot.

[Ti Designs]

It's a very open question. Is the goal to be doing interval training or to work on sustained climbing? Most of my interval work is done on the trainer 'cause I'm pushing myself harder that I can still control the bike. Just the same, the resistance of a hill is different than the trainer, so there's a hill by my house I use for 30 second climbing intervals. My real goal in those is acceleration at the top, more so than just heartrate or a steady power output. On my intervals on the trainer I start using large muscle groups first and add smaller muscle groups to finish out the interval (glutes first to get the gear going, quads added to bring up the speed, hamstrings last to hold out). On the hills I start out with more of a balanced start and shift to overloading the glutes and quads at the end. Both cause wheezing, but it's very different.

Intervals are really about recovery. If you want to become a better climber, you need to learn how to sustain the effort over a much longer time. One of the hardest things about coaching riders where there are no significant lenght climbs is in getting across the idea of riding the hill, not hammering the hill. Get a couple of guys on some 1/2 mile hill and it's a race to the top. Put the same guys on a 4 mile climb and you see them staggering up it. The trick in using smaller hills to train for the bigger ones is to ride them like they're 10 times longer than they are. Settle into the hill and limit your efforts to what you can handle and still sustain the normal pace when you settle back into it. This is an area where power meters do well, set a power number for yourself that you can recover from while still climbing and ride hills with a group. When there are surges on the hills, pay attention to your own numbers (it's rare that I say that). If you need to go over your limit, it means they are either more fit or weigh less, or they are also over their limit (and probably don't know it) This is where tactics come into it. If they are better climbers it's a judgement call - go with them if you can, but speed over the top and cresting with the break are what counts. If they're not, and they don't draw any of the better climbers, let 'em go. They'll come back and have a hard time getting back on when they do.

There's nothing more boaring than sustained hill climbing work on a trainer.

[jblande]

Quick question for you Ti, based on what you wrote. Would you suggest attempting to increasing the number of total intervals while keeping a slower pace, if my general goal is to get faster on some of the major climbs here or in preparing for Alp passes this summer? How would you think about cadence in this situation? By the way, I don't have a power meter. Maybe someday, but I have not forked out the cash yet and don't really intend to any time soon.


This is my real goal: get faster for days with 5000 feet of climbing.

[Ti Designs]

You missed my hill climbing class over the winter. The idea was to break hill climbing down to the basic 4 ways of climbing, and make the workload so hard that it would be impossible to stick with just one. So, four ways of climbing: Seated, pushing a big gear. I've gone over this a lot on this forum, the idea is to get your body weight perched over the pedal and use the glutes to drive the pedal down. It should feel like your almost falling into the pedal, if you've ever seen Eddy Merckx climb... Seated spinning - this is an easy one to understand, but it uses too much of the quads which tend to burn out. Standing and sustaining. This is where the hip is right over the pedal, the knee is almost straight, the body is upright, and you drop your body weight into it from the hip. Feels odd at first, but I've found I can bring my heart rate down while others are suffering by doing this. Lastly there's sprinter's position when you have to muscle through a steep section or you're doing the Pantani thing, sprinting to gain speed and sitting and spinning to maintain.

If you have a good grasp of all four of those you understand that longer efforts become a problem in asset allocation. use any one method too much and you start to pay the price. Those who don't learn the different methods still pay the price - their quads burn.

[fogrider]

ti design is right and to train of the hills, there is nothing better than riding hills. but if all you have is trainer, work with what you have. first you need to build a base. that means mileage and if you want to climb, that means climbing mileage. for me, I do intervals every time I ride up a long climb...I'm not a climber and I have to work hard at it. I go hard but not all out. if I go all out, I pretty much get completely wasted. for intervals, I go just above my anaerobic threshold and recover and go hard again. by going too hard, you will get too fatigued to get in productive training. which is why you want to increase your intensity at the end of your workout.

in the bay area, a flat ride will have 2,000 feet of climbing.