Road Cycling - climbing and fitness level

I am 40 years old and only get to ride about 20 to 30 miles a week. My area has many rolling hills at 4 to 12% grades. I average about 16 to 17 miles per hour average speed on an 18 mile ride. I have a large hill about half way thru my ride that is 12% grade and about a quarter of a mile long. I can get up this hill with a minimum of problems.I ride sitting down on hills the whole route except on this bigger hill. I consider myself in pretty good shape,working out with weights and doing a boxing routine twice a week. The question is this, I have a large hill of about a half mile long at 8% grade then going to 18% grade about half way to the top that I have tried to get up,the operative word being tried,this thing makes me want to puke about 3/4 of the way to the top, heartrate is 190. I am really nervous about pushing my self to the limit on this thing,my breathing rate is really fast. I sit down for about 2 minutes and recover to finish the ride to the top. The question is at my age should I be careful about pushing my self this hard?I

The advice you get here is going to be worth what you paid for it.

Go get a physical and let the doc know that you're a cyclist. He'll let you know if there is anything you should be worried about.

An old rule of thumb (that is probably innacurate) is that your max heart rate is 220 - age. That puts you at 180bpm. You've already thrown that out the window by hitting 190bpm :)

You want to puke going up that hill because lactid acid is pumping through your blood and your heart (at 190bpm) is not giving you enough oxygen.

If you don't have any heart problems, you will probably be fine. Like you said, you take a granny gear for the rest of the hill. You simply cannot push past this limit. Your body will not let you kill yourself. Again, assuming there is nothing wrong with your heart. Add a pack of smokes a day and some clogged arteries to the picture and it's a different story.

Whether this is effective training or not when you only do 20 miles a week is a different story.

Great Question!

My father is wondering the same thing lately, he's 48 and in great shape (ran a marathon in June...). Somehow though, cycling is different. I guess it's because you can exert so much energy at such a high intensity, relatively easily to other sports...not sure if that makes sense. In regards to Heartrate, what is safe once you begin to age? I'm not sure! I know that elite atheletes like Lance Armstrong or some Kenyan endurance runners have Max HR's into the 200's. They can push their Lactate threshold and VO2 Max to obsene levels. How did they ever get to be that fit??? In order to build any type of fitness, you need to push yourself, let alone THAT type of fitness. Imagine how hard you would have to push! So, I guess I feel that it's all subjective to the individual. If you have base fitness, I don't see why you can't get that heart rate up there for a while... BUT, I AM NOT A DOCTOR! And, I'm not 40 years old yet... So that's where the subjective part comes in to play...

Hopefully someone else can shed more light on this.

Mike

I think you should work on it gradually focusing on improving your aerobic fitness first before pushing on too hard at too high a heartrate. This is different and often even conflicting with anaerobic fitness gained through weights but you can definately improve both at your age and much older .l

An indication of cardiovacular health is recovery time. If you can push your heartrate to 190 and return to normal within 2 minutes (after resting), that's a good indication you're not pusing too hard. If you have a persistently elevated pulse after redlining your heart rate, I'd definitely talk to your doctor.

Palooka hit the nail on the head for me with the 20 miles a week comment. I have a habit of pushing myself too hard . I have a good base fitness level but maybe I just have to ride more miles to have the correct level to get up that hill without getting off. The thing for me is time which I am sure is a problem for most people, I would love to put in a 100 miles a week.

Also, keep things in perspective. Without seriously low gearing, 18% would reduce many members of this forum to tears. I am younger than you, and I get more miles in, but with my current gearing (42-24) I would probably blow out my knees on that hill.

Which reminds me of my old orthopedic speech: one is much more likely to hurt a joint or a tendon than a muscle, and joints and tendons don't heal very fast. So, as stated above, unless you have a heart problem, I'd be on the alert for other injuries.

Cheers,
Jamie

One comment; one question:

Comment: why not use it as a goal. Do as much as you can one week, go farther the next week, etc. All without blowing up. You'll feel good increasing each week and you'll feel GREAT when you finally make it clean.

Question: how does one measure the angle of the road? I always here about a 5% grade or a half mile, 8% road. How do you know?

Well when I climb, I try to avoid going over my anaerobic threshold. That is a good way to avoid that "puking" feeling. Once you go anaerobic, the time you can spend in that zone is very limited before you blow up or crash and burn.

Now is it "good" to exercise that hard at your advanced age? Well if you routinely exercise, it probably is beneficial - that is if your cardiovascular system is in good shape. You can have that stuff checked - blood pressure OK? cholesterol level OK? LDL and HDL levels OK? EKG OK? Heart sound OK? Of course, I have heard the horror stories of people who got clean bills of health going out and keeling over - sort of makes you wonder doesn't it? The thing is if you exercise aerobically motivation is important. And there is nothing like the sense of accomplishment one gets at being able to climb the nastiest hill in the area. I think statistically aerobic exercise is beneficial to one's health even hard aerobic exercise. You are less likely to smoke, drink to excess, be obese (it is mighty hard to climb 18% grades if you are morbidly obese), eat a terrible diet etc etc. So you may have a slightly higher rate from a heart attack whilst red lining but given the life style one needs to live to do this stuff in the first place, you probably greatly reduce your risk to a heart attack.

I have 12 years on you and I still do that sort of stuff. I have friends who are my age and older who live for hard competitive riding. And if red lining one's heart rate was very dangerous, they all would have been dead years ago.

Now an 18% grade is just plain nasty. I have ridden a few but they have all been pretty short.

Rompus... I am a bit older 53yrs and I am in pretty good shape. I work out every other day at the gym, progressive leg press' to 400lbs, 120 situps with 100lbs on stomach, 60 crunches with 60lbs using machines and include some cardio work. My ave BPM at the gym is 135-140 range. I ride my exercycle at home on off days when time doesn't allow outside rides.

Training inside :( just isn't the same as wind and the pavement in my face :)

I too, live in an foothills/mountainous area similiar to yours. Most roads have some hills, many with progressively difficult grades, and some really long. Mt Palomar is a killer which I haven't tackled...7 or 11mile climb uppppppppp ... not on my calendar yet :eek:

I am running a double 53/39 and 13/26. I not sure if that's good or bad. My average local ride is 17-25 miles, with speeds from 12-20mph and sprints to 27mph. Two months ago when I started back to road cycling, I'd ride for 1.5hrs and was unable make it up the 1/2 mile hill to my home without walking the last 1/4 mi... and I hated that. :mad: Now, I am taking longer rides and finishing in the saddle in my driveway. MyBPM ave 155 and averages 170-185 when climbing or sprinting. Many hills I can make it up sitting down, but some of the biggies I stand up, and that's when my BPM hits 181...my recovery appears to be relatively fast, but I've never timed it. IMO It's all about how much time you spend in the saddle.

BCF/ABCC/WCPP max guidelines for you @40 is 182, and me @53 is 171
these are my guidelines,
161-171 Anaerobic Sprints/Intervals
152-161 Speed training, above aerobic
140-152 Typical average road race intensity
128-140 Aerobic endurance, and so on.

Sally Edwards says 154-171 is Red line zone!
Who knows... I am not dead yet... :)

So, be patient, consistent, determined and be safe, check with your doctor.

To Eureka's question:

The grade of a road is the rise in elevation divided by the distance traveled. If you cover 100 meters on the ground, but go up 5 meters in elevation, you have climbed a 5% grade. Or, a mile (5280 ft) which rises by 264 ft. will be 5%.

What a lot of folks call a "killer hill" will usually still be under 10% (if not under 7%). U.S. interstate highways rarely get steeper than 6-7%. You'll rarely find a paved road in the U.S. which is steeper than 10-12% for more than a short distance. I have seen small roads in Europe which grades around 10-18% (and they are usually marked with warnings on maps).

Somebody else in the forum may know where to dig up the UCI categorization for hills. If memory serves, 18% would be in one of the toughest categories (although it depends on its length).

In short, our friend Rompus is attacking a real monster.

Cheers,
Jamie