Indoor Cadence for Climbers

Watoni

Yes, it does!

How long are the climbs you are doing? That might help inform whether the gearing is too high.

For an effort of 5 minutes or so, I would say 50 rpm could be good force work or an opportunity to punch it for a VO2max interval. Anything above 15 minutes should be more in the threshold watts range at a doable cadence.

For instance, I was out of shape when I did the Pantani Granfondo last year where the two big climbs are the Gavia and the Mortirolo. I can say that the middle 6km of the Mortirolo that come in at an average of 14% are no picnic, especially when it's hot and you have a few climbs in your legs already. Many hacks like me were walking or falling over due to improper gearing. I just plugged away in a 34x29 at about 50 rpm (and occassionally lower) for the better part of an hour -- its 12.4km @ 10.5% average!

Don't avoid hills, but perhaps lay off the steepest hills and do ones where you can maintain a more reasonable cadence. I am sticking to 5, 8, 15km climbs that average from 6-8% rather than doing 5-7km climbs that average from 10-12%

On the trainer, why not train for optimum cadence --

On the question of what cadence is best, here is one coach's view


http://53x12.com/do/show?page=article&id=27

dhk2

Duration of "steep climbs" around here would normally be from 3-5 minutes at 4-6 mph. What I call "steep climbs" are those where desired cadence of 80 rpm can't be maintained despite being in bottom 30/25 gear. Longer climbs are usually more like 6-8%, but they don't present the same problem since I can keep the cadence up. Of course, long climbs often include some steep sections.

Appreciate all the input. The concensus as I read it seems to be to continue to work on FTP at optimum cadences primarily; that will be the main route to faster climbing and overall time reduction on hilly century events. Also could include some high load/low cadence trainer intervals for maybe 3-5 min duration, or more real hill climbing for short-duration power, but that shouldn't be the main focus.

dhk2

watoni: We've got essentially the same bottom gear ratio, and it sounds like we're climbing at similar speeds. The reason I'm focusing on hills this spring is that I'm going to Italy in April when I'll be riding the hilly routes around Riccione for a week. Won't be riding the "Nove Colli" or anything crazy, but I don't want to be embarassed on the climbs, or get back too late to enjoy the afternoon pasta buffets

doctorSpoc

hills of this length are what some call sprinter's hills.. i.e. short enought that sprinters can get up them fast. Improving your anarobic capacity can help for hills of this length...

you are right though... work SST and Th as much as possible.. in the winter almost all my training consists of SST/Th training. this is going to be the bedrock apon which everything else is built. then ~3 weeks before your important event you can start working in some AnCap intervals 3-5min @ about 1.2xFTP with 2-3min recovery. can start out with sets of 3 and then as you get better work up to 2 sets of 3... and again you don't need to be doing them at 50rpms, do them at a comfortable rpm. doing them on your group ride is an option, but i have found that the best way to do them is to do them alone on a hill or otherwise (trainer or flats... with hands on tops and sit upright as you would on the hill) under very controlled conditions/intensities and recovery... in the group you can't always control the amount of recovery and intensity so doing them as part of a group ride is not allways as effective as doing them alone... i wouldn't recommend you doing these workouts more than once a week.. not because you can't do them but mostly because doing these takes time and energy away from doing your longer (10-20min interval) Th work.