Preparing for Hills

After spending last week riding in Tennessee and receiving a request for suggestions on training for hills (Tennessee is nothing BUT hills), I decided while it may still be early in the season, it might be time to post this.

Training for hills is not much different than training for the flats, except you have to think more about shifting and your power output may have to go up briefly if, or when, you run out of gears. Always remember that your cadence (the speed that your pedals, not your wheels, are turning) is the single most important ingredient in managing long distance riding and hills. You should be maintaining between 70 and 90 RPM with your pedals, irrespective of your speed over the ground. Some folks liken this to always keeping only a light pressure on the pedals. You do this by shifting to an appropriate gear to maintain the appropriate RPM.

As you head up a hill, or even into a strong wind, your effort (pressure on the pedals) starts to increase and your RPM starts to decrease. This is when you need to shift to a lower gear. As the hill steepens, you continue to shift down to maintain the proper cadence (pedal rotation speed) until you run out of gears. At that point, you either tough it out, stand up, or you get off and walk to the top. There is no shame in walking up a hill. Personally, I have walked up many hills. The thing to remember, is to shift before you need it. You need to anticipate the down shift, because once you start to slow down and increase the pressure on the pedals, it becomes difficult, or sometimes impossible, to down shift.

What kind of gearing does your bike have? Make sure your bike is in good shape and sufficient gearing for hill climbing. The number of gears makes less difference on hills than the lowest gear available. A small 22 gear up front together with a large 32 or 34 gear in the back makes for some awesome hill climbing ability. That is what I use.

As far as training goes, realize that the hills on PALM may be steep at times, but are usually short. This means you need to train your anaerobic capacity. This is different from the aerobic training you may be used to. I won't talk heart rate here, but in aerobic training, you put forth an effort that you intend on maintaining for a long period. In anaerobic training, you train for maximum effort that you only intend to maintain for a short time. You can accomplish this by interval training. If you don't have any hills nearby, like me, once you have warmed up for 10 to 15 minutes, you can do intervals by shifting to a higher (that is, harder) gear and stand up to pedal. Presumably, your cadence will remain the same, but the pressure on the pedals and your power output will increase and you will start to breath hard. Do this for one minute then rest at your normal gear and cadence for 4 minutes.

Do five or six of these intervals a couple times a week and hills should become much easier for you.