"Up and Over"

Want to get stronger climbing hills? Then test yourself during your next training ride.

When planning your training ride consider one of the following:

• pick a course with rolling hills
• or a course that has one hill that you can climb/descend multiple times safely
  

During the ride:

• When you reach the bottom of each hill, stay in the gear you have been pedaling in on the flat part of the ride, at least for the first part of the hill. Your normal inclination may be to put it in an easier gear as you are anticipating the harder effort.
  
• Remember you want to "challenge" yourself
  
• Keep chanting to yourself "up and over" throughout the climb
• When you get to the top of the hill, don't stop, keep pushing until you are "up and over" the hill
• Reward yourself once you are over
  
• Recover for 2 - 3 times it took you to climb with high cadence pedaling
  
• Prepare yourself for the next hill - mentally and physically. It will only hurt for a few seconds - a minute, then it will be over until the next one.
• Repeat 5-6 times
  

Note: If you don't have many hills in your area, then just pick one hill. Complete a good warm up prior to attempting the hills, say 15-20 minutes with some hard efforts. Try a few repeats up and down the same hill, remembering to recover at list 2 - 3 times the amount of time it took you to climb with high cadence pedaling

What will you notice after a few repeats:

• If you do this several times through out your ride, you will notice that you will be able to push a bigger gear on the flats
• You should be able to push a harder gear as you get to the 3 or 4th hill/repeat - remember, mind over matter
  

What will you notice after a few sessions of repeats you will find that:

• you will be able to push a harder gear for longer periods of time during any workout
  
• you will be able to climb each hill with greater ease and in less time than the time before
  
• you should be able to challenge yourself and pick a longer climb next time
  
• you have less lactate build up in your legs while climbing

How did you do?

Try it - I did. I pushed 401 watts on Saturday. My hard work is finally paying off.

Happy Healthy training,


Lucy