Got a few visits to the Alps planned for this year with some big days in the mountains planned so need to get my climbing legs on!

The big challenge is how do you train for 30km long climbs in the UK? Even on long rides in the Peaks i’m not clocking up anywhere near enough ascent, so looking to do some hill repeat sessions. The question is what kind of hill do I choose. My options are longer hills (2 – 3 miles long) at up 6% or so, maybe with very short steeper sections, so probably more representative of French Alpine climbs. Or much shorter hills, maybe quarter of a mile long, but up at 10%+ gradient.

Am I better off doing fewer longer but shallower repeats, or more steeper intensive repeats? My main aim is just to finish…i’m not looking to post any impressive times and i’m certainly not racing…it’s all just for the fun of it!

Go longer. And practice riding at threshold. You can do that on the flat to. Just puah yourself to sit At 85-90% of maximum for longer and longer times. And ride into the wind. It’s not called a Belgian Hill for nothing.

just getting fitter will inevitably improve your climbing, as of course will getting lighter.

For climbs of that length (probably 2-3 hours) you need to be fit enough to continue to move uphill at an effort level that is sustainable for 2-3 hours, ie: Z2/3. Once you can climb a 6% gradient without needing to go Z4 or Z5 in order to just keep moving, then it’s just a matter of how fast you’ll be moving at before you start to break your effort limit.

So – get fitter, which will increase your power output in all bands;  get lighter, which will increase your p/w ratio further still, and accept that whatever speed you can manage is the speed you can manage.

How do you get fitter…. you don’t need to ride up hills for hours on end, look at structured intervals, sweetspot, over-unders, a FTP builder program, etc.

There is a bit of a mental aspect too, but that’s easier to manage when you are riding ‘easy’ and know you can sustain to the top. If just keeping going is hard, then your mind starts to bother you about how long it’s still going to be hard for [oo-er!]

how do you train for 30km long climbs

I do that on a simple Tacx roll (low cost 950 Watt Tacx blue motion). Every day or every second day 30 min on fairly high power setting. As bike I have an ages old road race bike on the Tacx.

First long, long climb than in the year: amazing how much the roll does for you. In my opinion no better way to train for those climbs.

Ride at threshold. Lots. Gradient doesn’t matter.

Enter some time trials.

If you really really want to do hill reps, do the 2-3 miles 6% hills not the shorter 10% ones.

And think about hydration and nutrition as well. If the sun shines, you will sweat. Lots.

Your best bet is to do it indoors which has the advantage of being properly structured and the disadvantage of being even more soul destroyingly dull than actual real hill reps.

If you really want to go full “training” mode, try using one of those Wahoo Kickr things that simulates gradient. Most of the online turbo training programmes have numerous hills / mountains that they can simulate.

IIRC it’s been proven that training on climbs does work better than flats.

I wouldn’t worry about too much OP, just keep it varied enough to be interesting and don’t overtrain.

The only thing with turbo and indoors even on Zwift is that yes you’re simulating uphill, but you’re not carrying the weight uphill… it just feels different, harder, trickier when you are actually outside and the weight comes into it.

The big Alpine climbs can’t be done at threshold. They are too long. I would just do long steady rides at the weekend building up to the trips, back to back days are good. Power output for the hills would be zone 3 so more like sweetspot or just below.

Suggest get the miles in shorter sweetspot stuff during the week then longer rides at the weekend. Hills are fine but no need to blast up them better keeping it steady and trying to spend a fair chunk of the ride in zone 3/ zone 2. You don’t need the hills to train on just long efforts at a hard enough pace, but not too hard.

i struggled with this, trying to train for Torino-Nice rally and climbs up to 2700m high when i live in Norfolk!

I found it helped to throw in some weights work, squats, lunges etc and i rode my drop bar singlespeed with increasingly larger front chainrings, so we don’t have many hills, by riding a high gear into our Norfolk headwinds, meant you couldn’t escape the work load.

But the harder you train the fitter you get!

The big Alpine climbs can’t be done at threshold. They are too long.

Correct, but by training at/around/above threshold, and improving your power output you improve your power output at all levels, not just the one you trained in.

So you can then climb in Z2/3 at a decent pace (or at least, a pace that keeps you upright). It’s when you aren’t sufficiently fit and to just keep going you have to be above threshold, then problems occur, because as you say you can’t ride at that level for the length of an alpine climb.

But the harder you train the fitter you get!

Mmmmmm not sure that’s strictly true…. if that were the case i wouldn’t be so slow/rubbish.

A smart turbo with an app like Rouvy will allow you to ride many of the actual Alpine climbs with a a video of the route playing on your screen and the turbo simulating the gradient.

Having done many of the big climbs both in real life and on the turbo I have to say that they are pretty well replicated.

You need to get yourself to a place where you can pedal at the top of your tempo zone (comfortably uncomfortable) for between 1-2 hours as this is the pace you’ll be climbing at in the Alps. As a previous poster said if you climb at threshold you’ll cook yourself.

Get yourself as fit as possible and that includes the climbing repeats you mentioned but also include longer sessions between 1-2 hours long at tempo. This is best done on flat roads against a wind. Starts off feeling easy but gets surprisingly hard towards the end and takes concentration to stay in the zone. Alternatively this type of session can be done on a turbo.

Get as light as you can and think about your gearing. Unless you are Chris Froome I’d recommend a compact chainset with max 30 or 32 tooth on the rear cassette. This not only gives you a bail out gear but allows you to spin a more comfortable cadence than grinding out 60 rpm all day.

My view is that as has already been said, you won’t be riding the alps climbs at threshold, more like tempo.
My training plans include weekends away in North Wales, there are a lot of climbs that have duration of 20 minutes, not alpine by any means. But they are one after the other. I tend to do a 60 mile route and a 35 mile route the next day. Bwlch y Groes is my “training hill”.

http://outdoornorthwales.com/en/list/activity/road-cycling

During the week I use Sufferfest, have just started a new 10 week training plan (same plan Sufferfest have put together for Dan Lloyd). For me indoor training doesn’t give quite the look and feel of real hill training, but its still good enough. Also no UK hills have the same feel as the Alps. I actually find the Alps easier, when a climb has a steady average gradient I find it much easier to spin in an easy gear. UK hills which aren’t anywhere near as long tend to have shorter sharper sections, I tend to get out of the saddle more.
If you think about a 30km climb, Col De Forlcaz is approx. 1200m in 32kms, Col De Romme is 1300m in 30kms, Colombiere is 1650 in 17kms, the Joux Plane is 1700m in 60kms. UK climbs are obviously less high, but as an example Bwlch y Groes is technically 376m in 2.7kms. But the real climb for Bwlch y Groes can start at 30m above sea level ending at 545m, depending on where you start your ride, you will have already climbed 150 metres, then about 15 mins of rolling countryside followed by the actual ascent averaging 12.5% for the 3kms (according to Climbbybike). As mentioned not Alpine, but still very good training, you then link the climbs together to get a very tough training ride.

Wow, lots to digest there chaps thanks. I know I need to get fitter full stop but didn’t want to waste time with dead training hours and want to focus the training as I’ve got a specific goal for once. I’m already pretty fit generally, but not necessarily the right kind of fitness for what I need…I think I need more aerobic capacity. But the underlying message is clear…just get fitter. I could do with losing some weight too, which will be the bigger challenge, but every KG I can lose will have a double whammy in terms of power/kg and simply not hauling dead weight to the top of a hill.

I’ve got the gearing (compact and 32 cassette) but tempted to try sub compact following some suggestions to a question I asked on gearing a few weeks ago. I hardly ever use the higher 3 or so gears…I tend to roll the descents, so can sacrifice some gearing at the high end to give me some contingency at the lower end. Also it will probably move the chain lower down the cassette giving me a better chain line for flat riding as I tend to be in the larger chaining and higher up the cassette for chugging along the flat.

I’ve got the gearing (compact and 32 cassette) but tempted to try sub compact

Wise, it’s ages since I’ve ridden in the big mountains but I’d want lower than 1:1 (I used 24:28 with 4 panniers when I was fit, it was just about OK)

I’m like you in that I hardly ever use the higher gears with 34-50 11-32, I’m well under 60kg so I’m never likely to be pushin 50-11. One thing you could do is go sub compact then when you are back home go for an 11-28 at the back. Then you’ll keep a similar low end to what you currently have, lose the high end you don’t need but have closer ratios which is always nice.

if that were the case i wouldn’t be so slow/rubbish

apart from the fact that isn’t true……

how much more rubbish would you be if you didn’t ‘train’ hard.

Some of us will never be racehorses, always donkeys….. but we can still be fast donkeys with the proper application

apart from the fact that isn’t true……

Tell that to the 100 or so people who had to overtake me last Sunday 🙂

Contrary to the above, I do think there is benefit to riding at threshold – AdH is doable in an hour or so for a reasonably fit rider. 25 mile TTs could be an option…

I lost about 5kg training for La Marmotte and saw a big improvement in my hill climbing. I’d also recommend a ramp test so you can set your zones properly.

My recipe for uphill Alps fun:

good old 2×10 Shimano.
Front 24+34, rear 11…42.

24 / 42 = 0,571

For multi day biking witch backpack: need this ratio to be able to pedal uphill that long. Without backpack such an extreme “mountain goat” ratio might not be necessary.

The big Alpine climbs can’t be done at threshold. They are too long. I would just do long steady rides at the weekend building up to the trips, back to back days are good. Power output for the hills would be zone 3 so more like sweetspot or just below.
Suggest get the miles in shorter sweetspot stuff during the week then longer rides at the weekend. Hills are fine but no need to blast up them better keeping it steady and trying to spend a fair chunk of the ride in zone 3/ zone 2. You don’t need the hills to train on just long efforts at a hard enough pace, but not too hard.

This makes sense to me, but gradient is a factor worth considering.

My best frame of refernce is me and a couple of mates having done Tiede back in November for three days, there was no particular preparation for any of us just squeezing in steady miles at sustainable work rates back here in flat old blighty (SW). On the day it was simply a case of keeping mostly in Z3 and managing effort to a sustainable level….

We all agreed by the end of the three days that any of us could climb 5-6% stuff all day long at about the same pace, kick it up to 8% and we all suffered to some extent, beyond 10% we were all operating at unsustainable (threshold or beyond) levels and could probably not do more than an hour of that…

Of course without a local mountain available to test yourself fully you’re simply not going to know for sure until you try, the best you can do is to get used to monitoring and managing your physical stress levels….

Our planner for that trip was talking about maybe trying the tourmalet later this year “Just for for gradient”… the bugger.