Daft question – I need to get some miles in, in preparation for a big ride I have in September, but I don’t have much access to real hills – how many flat miles would I have to do to replicate ‘hill miles’?

Or should I just ride my SS for the next 2 months for better leg strength?

Training is about effort.

wont an ss on flat just develop spinning ability unless you put a huuuuge gear on it?

Don’t think flat could ever ‘really’ replicate hill miles. You could add ballast to the bike (loaded panniers) and reduce tyre pressure to increase drag and increase the amount of force needed to maintain a given speed.

I prescribe a holiday to the Alps or Pyrenees 🙂

Just go as hard as you can for 15mins, then a similar length of time at an easy pace…..repeat

Hill repeats. You must have some hills?
Or are you in The Netherlands?

Maybe spinning classes, ignoring the instructor and simulating hills that way? Works pretty well for me when I want to replicate the prolapse inducing effort of singlespeeding without actually going anywhere 🙂

live in North Notts – its quite flat, not too far from the Peak, but can’t get there every weekend.
Edit; Its for the MTL, anybody any tips on breaking it up to part-ride the MTL before attempting the whole thing?

Not the Bealach Mor ride in September is it?

its the Mary Townely Loop challenge, 16th Sept

dawson

Do you have a linky for the website for the challenge please.

Also I have done the mary townely loop and its not easy if your going fast and challenging yourselve like I do. If i was you I would come up and do the loop first, theres lots of climbs and descents both technical and non technical.

http://www.rpmrt.org.uk/mary-towneley-loop/

Hill intervals, north notts has plenty of hills suitable
You don’t need big hills, attack the hill hard as possible, ride back down to recover, repeat till you fall over!

Ever wondered why dutchmen and belgians are so good at cycling, even in mountainous races?

They ride hard on the flat into headwinds. Over cobbles.

Going up hill is easy after that.

I don’t really have what I would call hills here in Hampshire either. I ride 40-45 Hampshire miles which equates to about 30-35 Welsh miles. It comes down to effort I think as said above. I mix up my riding and ride a lot on the road and hammer it [or best I can] which has improved my fitness dramatically when returning home to ride/race