Imagine you lived somewhere horrifyingly, tediously, flat.

Imagine you wanted to be a strong-ish climber when you got to go on holidays to the mountains.

How would you train in the flat land so you could climb like a goat when you got to the mountains?

Send us your reckons…. 🙂

Lean your turbo trainer up the stairs?

Let’s assume turbo trainers are soul-sucking engines of sadness.

🙂

The wind in The Fens is tougher than any hills. If you OK on the flat then losing weight is probably the best way.

Ride into the wind. Which if it’s as flat as you say shouldn’t be a problem.

Edit – great minds think alike / fools seldom differ.

I don’t think it makes much difference if you train in HR/power zones. You can only output a certain amount of power on the flat or going uphill.

I was chatting to an old ex-pro about this last year and he said when he used to go on training camps abroad he always stuck to the flat roads because a five hour ride was five hours of turning the pedals, whereas a five hour mountainous route had a large amount of freewheeling and was not as good training.

Bottle dynamos. More of them = more gradient. I recon you want about six. Would you mind charging my phone while you are at it?

Ride harder(grrr) and more often.

Ride with your brakes on. It worked for Froome.

lose some weight (off yourself first before wasting money on bike) Turbo sessions 2 x 20s worked for me. Similar results can be achieved on flat roads but living in London it is often hard for me to get a good clear run in the correct zone without having to stop every 5 mins.

I talked to a coach about long climbs being a weakness once as there’s little longer than a few km here even though they’re fine for strength as you can easily find 2km with an average of 16%. Anyway, his advice was to train like for a timetrial; paced maximum effort over a predefined distance. So in spring I do a lot of 10-20km TT like efforts to help out with riding longer climbs but with different efforts within that (so building up the effort in 5 min blocks). Normal intervals will work to train for shorter climbs.

Climbing’s mainly power:weight – increase one and decrease the other.

(Get them the right way round.)

After that, there’s some technique and some psychology.

I would suggest working on your FTP (Functional threshhold power). This is the limit of how hard you can ride for an hour. There are set training programs to do this or you can crudely do it by riding really hard for about an hour or doing shorter intervals 20-30minutes at a slightly faster pace. The other one I would consider is riding just below your maximum with the odd 30second sprint thrown in. Not having the easy recovery parts is more related to hill climbing where you stand up round a hairpin or tackle a steep bit.

With that in mind you ride differently up a hill, lower cadence (in my case), standing up etc.

Can you drive anywhere? Roadies always seem to want to ride from the door but mtbers wouldn’t think twice about a drive to a ride. Can’t be many places in the UK more than 60minutes drive from some hills?

Been said already, but you don’t need hills to train for hills. Interval sessions will work just fine – for the mountains focus on longer intervals. 2×20 @ LT, 3×20 @ SS.

That said, I hop in the car for a 30min drive once a fortnight or so during the spring/summer to go hit a perfect training hill.

Aaahhh, i live in the MTB mecca that is Norfolk, so can feel your pain. I trained a few years back knowing that i was doing Dragon Devil at 4500m of climbing in a 186 mile road ride, as above lots of FTP training and intervals.

Plus i found riding a singlespeed for commute and purposefully hitting the few hills we do have here, along with some gym work, doing 10-12 reps for 3-4 sets for squats and leg press.

IME running fitness translates OK into biking fitness. Find the biggest flight of steps you can find and run up them a lot of times.

EDIT: And ffs get a montage, you’ll need a montage.

Is that a holiday on tarmac or off-road?

If off-road I’m not sure how you could train in the flatlands for mountains, except to just be very fit.

FWIW 12 miles on Monday equated to 3000ft of climbing…

A Bob trailer loaded up with a few bricks ought to help.

I used to live in the Fens and hitting the hills with gusto was the only way, and it still hurt for a few months when I moved somewhere with actual gradient. Lost a load of weight though…

Put drop bars on a fat bike and run it at 10 psi. One for the nichecore-ists.

Long hard FTP efforts +1 (2×20 etc).

The only benefit of actually riding on hills is you can’t avoid them, so simulating a 20 minute climb effort on the flat takes willpower.

The only benefit of actually riding on hills is you can’t avoid them, so simulating a 20 minute climb effort on the flat takes willpower.

Unless you are a fully certified member of the pie eaters association, it’s not much different as you don’t go and do 20 mins @ LT on a climb during normal riding either. Plenty of willpower required for both, as that duration of interval is an exercise in hurting yourself for long durations.

Well worth the pain in advance though – mountains are awesome when you are fit enough to enjoy them.

You cant replicate actually doing it but your fitness is pretty good so if you can retain that I would not be too concerned.

Looks forward to beasting BigDummy on climbs sometime in the future 🙂

A Bob trailer loaded up with a few bricks

Seriously; carry extra weight for the training you do do. The extra weight will help you develop more power. Although you’ll only feel it when you ride without the added weight! 8)

Do like I have been doing for cycle touring training. Get some panniers and fill them with sand. Certainly, gets the legs working.

Got to say i’m very confused by all the suggestions to carry around more weight. 200W for 20mins is still 200W for 20mins regardless how heavy you make the bike.

Got to say i’m very confused by all the suggestions to carry around more weight. 200W for 20mins is still 200W for 20mins regardless how heavy you make the bike.

I guess the same principle as I stated about hills being unavoidable, it makes it harder to wuss out of efforts if you’re forced into them.

200W is 200W and 20 min is stil 20min, but a 1 mile climb is also a <1 mile climb, you can’t make it bigger but you can make it slower for the same power.

Imagine you lived somewhere horrifyingly, tediously, flat.

Is this somewhere in the UK, or an Orbital ?

Even Cambridgeshire has quite a few hills, or are we talking Lincolnshire flat?

Is this somewhere in the UK, or an Orbital?

Somewhere in the US as it happens. I’d be talking to Hub rather than you lot if I needed some help getting to the bulkhead ranges though 😉

Belgian hills. Ride into the wind in a higher gear than feels comfortable. I like to ride fixed for this reason, it makes it harder, with no bailout option.