Remember this thread? I thought I owed you all an update, since the advice I received over there was extremely helpful. Sorry about the logorhea; I'm hoping some of my experience might be useful for other posters and readers here.
To recap, I've had a long-standing goal of getting up a local hill in 20 minutes. The hill climbs 1260 ft (384 meters) in 3.3miles (5.3km), at about a 7.2% grade. At the time I posted, I weighed 152 pounds (69kg), and had recently tested at a depressing 23:20 up this hill. My best ever time had happened at an even higher weight, with 21:45.
I'm pleased to report that one week ago, I achieved my goal with a time of 19:40. How did I do it? By increasing power, decreasing weight and grossly improving my climbing technique. While all three of these are easier said than done, I'm amazed at how "doable" these improvements were for me, and a little shocked at how much time I've wasted in getting around to making them.
Decreasing weight was accomplished via plain calorie restriction. The "slow" weight loss pace often recommended of 1-2 pounds/wk works out to about a 500-1000 kcal deficit every day. This "slow and gentle" weight loss style isn't as slow or gentle as it sounds. A 1000 kcal deficit is something you notice. You feel hungry. You go to bed hungry, and wake up hungry. But it worked for me. It's funny. I haven't weighed this little since I was about 14 years old. I've always vaguely wanted to be skinnier, but never done much about it. When all is said and done, I've achieved it not to look better, or to feel better about myself (at least not directly), but to excel in a sport I love.
I was lucky to not have any real trouble restricting calories while training hard. I still ate on the bike, especially during hard sessions. I stopped restricting calories about 3 days before my attempt, and man, for a few days after returning to a roughly even caloric balance, did I ever feel on top of the world. Energy! The ability to think clearly and effortlessly! It was all mine.
To increase power, I followed a conventional interval plan. Intervals had never worked for me previously, and now, I realize that what I was calling "intervals" weren't really body-and-soul intervals. To be perfectly honest, I just wasn't going hard enough. Why? Not entirely because I was lazy. I think it had more to do with my attempts to use heart rate to measure intensity. Without really understanding what I was supposed to be doing, I would start an interval out way too hard, blow sky high, and then continue going just hard enough to keep my HR from recovering (which usually was nowhere near the target intensity). Even though I don't yet own a power meter, thinking in terms of power (tension on the chain, heat on my back tire, etc.) really aided me in correctly doing these intervals.
The intervals themselves were a month of 2x20s 2/wk, then a month of 5x8-5s on Tuesday and 2x20s on Thursdays, then about 10 days of taper, with a climbing race thrown in two days before my actual effort. I did all intervals on climbs over 7%, to keep the work and adaptation specific.
There were also some technical changes. Now that I'm much lighter, I find that I'm much more comfortable climbing out of the saddle than I used to be. And I'm not talking about brief little hops; nowadays, I like to spend 2-3 minutes at a time standing. Like biker-linz, I also see higher power outputs (measured as splits on repeats performed at the same perceived effort seated and standing) out of the saddle. I'm not overgeared; when seated, I tend to kind of flail helplessly at my lowest gear, turning it over pretty quickly, but still not really getting anywhere. Maybe I have some sort of positional deficiency when seated that I self-correct when standing? Who knows.
So, anyway, I just wanted to thank everybody. I feel that my reading of this forum over the last few months has really helped me get over some hurdles that training by "conventional wisdom" had erected for me. Reading here has helped me learn that:
- Heart rate is a vicious, vicious lie.
- Even if you can't measure power, at least think in terms of power.
- Climbing comes down to power, weight and technique, and they're all more trainable than you'd think.
These last several months, I've made strides I had literally begun to doubt I was capable of making, flailing away with HRMs and base miles and ridiculous weekly volumes, and blah blah blah. Who knew that it wasn't so much a matter of hard work, as the right work, done in the right way. As I rode back down 84 after accomplishing my goal of three years, just a few short months after feeling as far from it as I'd ever been, I had to come to a stop at a turnout to let the tears of joy pass.
Thanks for reading this far, and bonne route!