Training & Nutrition - How much flat riding?

I am pretty new to cycling, but enjoy it immensely, the problem is all I do is climb hills (currently I ride just for fun, and to work on my fitness, but I want to do some competitive riding). My rides now average 30-50 miles with 2500-4000ft of climbing. Almost all of every route I do is either up or down, I just love climbing. I recently read that you can not achieve your max fitness without doing some flat riding. Am I understanding this right? and anyone have any suggestions as to what % of my rides should be flat? or maybe some reliable literature on the subject.

I also run a little, and do some strength training (2-3 times/wk). I ride typically 4 times a week, and am 36 yrs old, if that matters.

thx

I'll be interested to see what the opinion is on this topic. Did they give a reason for having to ride "flat lands" to achieve max fitness. I live in a hilly area and while sometimes I travel to a level area, if I could only choose one or the other I would choose hills because I get a better workout. I feel sorry for those who don't have hills to ride, maybe I'm kidding myself on this one.

I do like flat riding on recovery days after a hard ride. This way I'm getting an extra ride in which I think is beneficail, but I can't give a percentage of total rides.

No reason, what I read was that one reaches a plateau that can be overcome with more flat riding, more of a passing comment then anything, I am not really sure how significant this is, if at all. I would prefer just to ride the hills actually, but I want to get as strong and knowledgeable as I can. My sense of well being has never been better, and I have never been fitter, so I want to take it as far as I can.

I am pretty new to cycling, but enjoy it immensely, the problem is all I do is climb hills (currently I ride just for fun, and to work on my fitness, but I want to do some competitive riding). My rides now average 30-50 miles with 2500-4000ft of climbing. Almost all of every route I do is either up or down, I just love climbing. I recently read that you can not achieve your max fitness without doing some flat riding. Am I understanding this right? and anyone have any suggestions as to what % of my rides should be flat? or maybe some reliable literature on the subject.

I also run a little, and do some strength training (2-3 times/wk). I ride typically 4 times a week, and am 36 yrs old, if that matters.

thx

The converse is true - if you only ride on the flats you will die on the hills.

A few thoughts on the problems with only climbing.

First of all, you may find it hard to do long rides at tempo (ie right around lactate threshold) because of the terrain. That's important to raising your lactate threshold. If you have long rides and you don't ride them too hard, that's fine.

Second, you may find it hard to do recovery rides.

Third, there is different muscle recruitment in climbing vs flats, so your climbing muscles may not work great on the flat.

Finally, unless you are going to do time trials, competition requires riding in groups. Not only do you need good group riding skills - which you only get by riding in groups - but group riding consists of very changing levels of effort. One minute you're riding at a low heartrate, the next you're going all out trying to chase down. Or, if you're in a paceline, you work at a really high level for 90 seconds, and then recover for a few minutes. Climbing is much more steady-state.

There are ways to train many of those, but you'd need to make a specific effort to do so.