Road Cycling - Climbing repeats with small hills

I'm planning for the coming season and I've run up against the same old problem. I live in an area littered with small hills and rollers. The longest hill I can find is about 1 mile and it's not even a steady climb.

I'm looking for advice on how to use the terrain that I have. I need a program for hill climbing that makes use of little hills, not the kind that take 10 - 15 minutes to climb. Can anyone recommend a way to do climbing repeats up hills that take only a few minutes to climb?

Thanks,
Rob

I was in a similiar situation a few years ago. I lived in very flat south Ga. but I had to train for a multiple day event in the north Ga. mountains. The only hill anywhere around was a RR overpass. Fortunately it was in a new, mostly unused industrial park. It had a decent incline for about 1000 yards and then got very steep for for the last 100 or so yards. Once over the top, the back side was more gradual than the front and went on for over about 3/4 of a mile. Being the only hill around, I spent two months during an extended lunch repeatedly climbing the overpass. I worked up to the point that I could sprint up it in a big gear and keep pedaling hard on the decent. Then I would turn around and go the other direction, back and forth, over and over again, for an hour. My thinking was that I would spin as big a gear as I could, for as long as I could, and the RR overpass gave me the opportunity. It was boring as crap but it did work. When June came around I didn't have any trouble in the mountains.

Good Luck

What Bikedud said. There was a really steep hill by my apartment that I would sometimes just climb over and over again.

It was great for days where I didn't feel like doing a long ride.

When I was in college in Lafayette IN we had a couple of good hills and we would just go up and down for hill training. It's gets boring, but it does the trick. Now I have more hills than I know what to do with. Even a flat ride usually has at least one good hill.

Woah woah, I grew up in your neck of the woods, Baltimore/Annapolis

Email me at arsbars@hotmail.com I'll give u directions to some hills

You can actually get a similar benefit if you ride into a stiff headwind. You need a whole attitude change for this. You need to wake up and see the trees really blowing and instead of saying - crap, another windy day - you say Yay, its a hill climbing day.

You can actually get a similar benefit if you ride into a stiff headwind. You need a whole attitude change for this. You need to wake up and see the trees really blowing and instead of saying - crap, another windy day - you say Yay, its a hill climbing day.

:D Couldn't agree more! (I have to: I'm a flatlander, wind is all I have.)

Hill and wind, they are completely different for me. I love hills, the steeper, the better.
Try riding intervals up your little slope. Try carrying a load on the bike for resistance training..

The thing about big hills is the length of time that you have to exert without any chance for recovery. Repeated rides up little hills doesnt do this. Riding into wind will do this, but you can also do you interval training to make you high power intervals match the time you will be going up the big hills. On the flat you will be going faster and using a higher gear, but the training for yor legs and lungs will be the same.