I spent the winter thrashing around on the singlespeed CX bike, some short hammers spinning fast around the forest, and some longer days of 60-100k. I also got some good winter walking in, so I felt overall I’d still be pretty fit.

Did my first decent road ride of the year today, 65-70mile of hilly roads in Argyll. I was significantly faster overall, especially on the flats, but my legs were absolute mince on the uphills, when last year I’d have stomped up the hills then bimbled on the flats.

I reckon its something to do with muscle mass or fast twitch/slow twitch or some such physio chat but I’ve no idea. Whats going on?

Perhaps you were gunning the flats and then are a bit knackered for the climbs?

You need a bigger gear and run it fixed.

this allways happens to me if i ride a road bike to much.

Also – where are the hilly roads in Argyll?

Well I did consider that 😀

In this case though, all the climbs are bunched at the start-ish of the ride, so I wouldn’t have had time to knacker myself on the flats before hand. I’ve also noticed it on my commute which is far too short to knacker myself on.

Beginning to think I’ve just gotten fitter in general at the expense of ‘uphill’ fitness, which is annoying because I’d rather be a good hill climber than someone who can just plug away on the flats 😕

SBZ, leave me alone, if I tell you where the hilly roads are you’ll just retort by telling me you road them fixed, with luggage, at twice the speeds I managed 😀

If they’re on the road down to the Kintyre Peninsula from Oban or anything around Taynuilt then you might be correct. In either case it would be the shape of the hills that would wipe you out. i.e. steepening.

Well… south of Oban there’s the Kilmore to Musdale road, its an out and back and its savage, with some beautiful hairpins at the end.

Today though was Arrochar, up the rest and be thankful, down the lochgoilhead road, up hell’s glen, down to cairndow, on the flat to inveraray, up and over to dalmally, almost up the Cruachan road till I bottled it 😳 then home to Connel.

Technically most of that probably isn’t ‘Argyll’ though, buts its wet and green so it counts.

Given that it sounds like you didn’t do any significant hill work over the winter it’s hardly surprising you’re not faster at climbing hills.

I’d suggest that given your overall speed is up though that your base is better & a bit of hill work now will reap benefits. ‘Course you could just be shit a climbing ;o)

…yeah, thats the obvious answer I suppose, I thought lots of high cadence/high heartrate stuff on the CX, coupled with some hard pushes up hills on foot would replicate lots of hill climbing on the road bike, guess this is why it pays to actually read all those god-awful training articles in magazines… 🙄

I wasn’t shocked that I was slower, it was how much slower that shocked me, pretty much stalling and having to get out the saddle before reaching the top in some instances.

What is ‘hill work’ anyway, intervals?

Seems to short a time period to have changed your muscles.
Perhaps the more traditional LSD approach over winter would have given you a more balanced fitness.

I spent the winter thrashing around on the singlespeed CX bike, some short hammers spinning fast around the forest

This is probably the bit you could have left out?

Anyway still a bit early for racing just yet.

Find steep hill. Ride up it at tempo. Ride back down it. Repeat. If its a short hill do it 5 times, if its a longer hill do it 3 times. If you can find a hill where there is a junction at the top so several roads meet then you can vary it up a bit.

Your tale seems very familiar.

After a Winter mountain biking I am 2 minutes slower up the tricky side of my namesake hill at ‘tempo’ pace – 12’30” against 10’30” in late Summer. But on a 50km + ride overall, my avg pace is not much different.

But the top end power comes back soon enough once the clocks go back the weather improves and evening roady training rides become much more frequent.

Like you I also find that the first hour is off pace, but the second hour feels much more like Summer fitness.

This is only the first Winter I have had a decent mountain bike and gone out loads rather than roadying and I would say the big difference I have noticed is threshold/top end power on climbs. Base fitness and pedalling smoothness are all good, but on an MTB you are grannying climbs and have to concentrate much harder on technique rather than murdering yourself so its not surprise to lose a bit of top end.

It will come back with enough sufferring.

My take on it is that cycling fitness is very very specific, even to the point where you can be quicker on the flat bits yet struggle on the climbs. I used to train doing lots of climbing, actively seeking out the bigger hills but we used to race a bit in Belgium and Holland and that climbing stuff just seemed to make me slow on the flats.
Conversely, coming back from racing abroad I could blat along on the flat with no effort, but found any significant cimbing to be more of a struggle.

Well there’s your problem. Did you rest at the top? And were you thankful that you got there?

Bizarre, i’ve been thinking this recently too. With all the snow over december etc, i was able to still get out but mainly flat/slower stuff but was still able to get around 100miles in a week/drop down to build base fitness. Now the weathers better, my speed/miles has shot up on the flat but my climbing isn’t as good as before. I hate it as i’m a climber, love the hills, and hate being as slow as i am on them. My plan is to hit the hill reps hard at some point – i’ve a hilly sportive in april so need to get my climbing legs back. Interesting though, i seem to have so much more power and speed on the flat, sprints etc than i’ve ever had before, but i’d rather it wasn’t at the compromise of my climbing ability.

It is the different muscle type thing thats to blame. Riding in snow gives people lots of power but heehaw in the way of endurance.

i’ve a hilly sportive in april

Kinross?

Lots of great hills to be climbed if that’s the one you’re talking about. The roads are all local to me so I’m intending getting some practice miles in before the event. I’ve spent the winter punishing myself on a turbo with a gradually increasing road mileage but, like 13FM, I feel really sluggish on hills at the moment. I think it’s coming though – rode from Kinloch Rannoch over the Braes of Foss on Saturday and apart from the really steep bit early on, it felt pretty easy.

Yeh that’s the one. Signed up for the black option, glad it’s a few months away yet. 😯 Do you know any other stw’ers doing it? Could maybe organise a reccie, although maybe of the red rather than black.

Not aware of any others doing it but be keen for a recce.

Drop me an email and I’ll get something organised in the next few weeks.

2 hilly races reliability runs in Angus (next two weekends) .Always a good wake up call after the winter 😉

Having the same problem,after 4 years of only ss and bmx I got a proper road bike a started hammering out flat spinny miles.Despite being pretty handy on the the ss I sucked on the road.A winter of 600k months and I’m much better on the road but my ss climbing ability has been decimated.Do you have to choose?Is it possible to be an all rounder or do you just have to train ‘smarter’?

If there is a mellow option of a Kinross loop recce, count me in too, Stuartie? I’d be up for it. I’ve got a 30 mile loop from Kinross over to the Path of Condie, Dunning, Yetts o’ Muckhart, Kinross. It’s a hilly 30 miles. There’s the option of heading over to Gleneagles, Auchterarder, Dunning as a second loop.

Pretty much what I’ve got in mind McM but I’d add in the Col du Cleish and if perhaps try to fit in the Glenfarg climb.

I’m away to Paris with 32 skool kids until Tuesday but I’ll post something up in a week or so.

How’s the log-splitter coming on?

mcmoonter – Member
If there is a mellow option of a Kinross loop recce, count me in too, Stuartie? I’d be up for it.

Ditto
I did the western loop of it towards the end of last year but the roads were pretty filthy so the downhills were spoiled. Put me off entering for the sportive, but I kinda wished I’d MTFUd.

How’s the log-splitter coming on?

I’m searching for an new power source. Sitting on top of the splitter and eating cake is not a credible alternative to hydraulics.

Not sure this is particularly scientific, but I find that if I train; 1) specifically for hill climbing, then I can climb hills better, 2) for endurance, then I can endure longer rides/distances, 3) using intervals then I can climb short hills quicker and sprint better.

Haven’t had to analyse this, but the upshot to me is that what I do repeatedly is what I get better at. Oh, and diet + recovery + ignoring the odd ride where it just doesn’t work out = just crack on with it …

Specificity – you need to structure your training to address the things you want to get better at. Good advice above about hill intervals, but in simple terms, if you want to get better at hill climbing, you need to climb some hills!

If you get a balanced variety of training, incorporating endurance, intervals, flat and hill work, you can be faster on both the flat and uphill – there is no reason for these to be mutually exclusive for the average rider.

Using a geared bike, rather than a singlespeed, will also allow you to do a range of different types of training much more effectively. With one gear you are going to spend a lot of time over geared or under geared, and spinning or grinding all the time is not the best way to get faster.

AS I’ve got heavier, I’ve become faster on the flat (slightly) and worse on the hills. Though so far this winter I’ve upped the mileage, and simply pushed it on the flats and pushed it on the climbs.
Blindingly un scientific but it’s had results, and strangely I wasn’t going to race this year.
Hats off to anyone that can do hill reps, my longest climb is 2.4km but perhaps it’s different if you have big long hills to spend some time on, something you don’t have in Bedfordshire.
Anyway your’e lucky to have races that include hills, I think they banned that sort of thing some time ago down here.

Had been wondering about organising another stw meet like the etape one we did a few years back, looks like kinross it is then 🙂

The only other thing is over training and as said above – just ‘grinding’ up the hills is not going to make you faster up the hills? Also training should be, I am told, a mixture of disciplines inc speed work, hills, intervals and REST. Doing 40-50 miles training runs all the time and not mixing it with 1 hour hard hill runs etc will not make you faster ( I speak from experience this winter).

I seem to be able to push it quite hard on the hills but not on the flat.

Hmmm, yes, a bit worried about this sort of thing myself, in terms of general fitness / stamina loss mainly, but also that the ‘fire’ has gone from my climbing. Hopefully, it’s only temporary, with only being out 4 or 5 times since mini-me came along in December, on Sunday afternoons when the bod’s in max-relax mode.
Might try for some evening laps around Kirk Brae – Exponential, for e.g., once the daylight’s longer; will post up on bookface if anyone fancies it. Ultimately, hoping to get round the Sheildaig – Applecross circuit again later this year, & ATM wouldn’t be confident…

Beginning to think I’ve just gotten fitter in general at the expense of ‘uphill’ fitness

There’s no difference. It’s all pedal turning.

There IS a difference between stomping up hills and spinning up them, but they both work.

Sounds like you’ve lost your stomping ability but that’s ok – change your technique, sit and spin (hard) instead and you will find you’re going up the hills just as quickly.

Training for hill climbing is more a mental thing imo/ime. Not to say it’s not significant, of course.

Funny, I’ve been thinking the same thing recently – good to hear its not just me! I have no ‘hill form’ at the minute at all, but I’ve hardly been climbing hills at all in the last 4 or 5 months so I guess that’s why.

My local 30 mile training loop takes in two decent hills (the Crow and Tak Ma Doon roads in the Campsies/Carron Valley) but I don’t really do that loop regularly until its light in the evenings. One stretch in particular is used as a split hill climb in a local 25 TT – my time up it if I did it today, on the winter bike in winter clothing, is probably going to be anything up to 90 seconds slower than when I do it in August on the good bike in summer clothing. Between now and August I’ll climb that hill regularly and that gap will come down.

I figure for now I am best working on mid range power/endurance to go faster on the flat and focus on the hills in about month’s time.

In retrospect some blindingly obvious answers there, but all good stuff none-the-less.

The stupid thing about me posting this sort of thread is that I don’t ‘train’. If I’m riding in the evenings it’ll be singlespeed singletrack, and if I’m riding at weekends it’ll be something long distance.

However, I think what hillclimbing form I had last year was on the back of my commute, which co-incidentally is a series of short sharp hills, which I attacked so hard I felt ill at the top and would be all red-eyed by the time I got home, which sounds suspiciously like ‘intervals’ to me! Time to start that again I think.

Yep. Those are sprint intervals. Same as doing them on the flat but much easier to put your back into it going up hill somehow.

I’m glad I’m not the only one feeling a lack of pace in certain aspects of my riding. After months of mostly riding the SS mountain bike on flatish routes, I took the Anthem up to the Pentlands last night. I was barely gaining on a commuter up the Water of Leith (nicely resurfaced in places BTW) and due to poor skills failed to clear the climb up Poets Glen(which I used to be able to do on the old hardtail).

Clearly to be faster at a particular type of riding, you can’t beat doing lots of that. Nipping up the Kirkgate on the rigid singlespeed over winter obviously doesn’t help for proper geared off road climbing, as the riding styles are so different.

I’m thinking Broughton Road – top of Leith Walk – Market St – Top of the mound – Royal Mile – Castle Esplanade – Lothian Road – Home street as an Edinburgh interval/commute, with an added loop of Arthur’s seat if its a nice night.

I killed myself on home street last time trying to drop an older guy with a rucsac on a slightly knackered looking racer, I know he was racing me too as when I botched a set of lights and went the wrong way, he was right on my wheel 😀