swlightn

Hi,

I'm a short (5'6") light (130lb) rider.

During club riding, I usually feel weaker on flat road and downhill, but relatively stronger on uphill.

I found up to 10% of steepness, I'm okay to stay with top riders or can do a break away.
In the long distance hills (+10 miles), I'm still okay.

But, I found that I am weak on extreme uphills over 10%.
I fell behind when the steepness increases, but can reduce gap when the steepness is moderate as 7-8%.

I'm quite curious why this thing happens for me.

I already know my absolute power is lower than this group, but power to weight ratio is same or a little bit better on moderate uphill.
If this is the right assumption, I should be better on extreme uphill.
So, I'm confused.

Is there any one who experienced this?

Is there any difference technique / training is needed for extreme uphill?

alpha_bravo

This is pretty common and you're definitely not alone. Steep grades require more strength. Your cadence will naturally decrease on the steep stuff and it takes more muscle to keep the pedals turning. It's pretty much the same reason Philippe Gilbert can drop the Schlecks on the steep finish at Liege Baston Liege but the Schlecks drop him in the Alps. Different horses for different courses.


If you want to get better at steep grades, ride more of them more frequently.

hhnngg1

There are weight differences that make it harder for a big guy to keep up with tiny guys the steeper it gets.

However, for a small person like yourself, by far the likeliest explanation is that the stronger folks are hammering it harder on the steep stuff. That's how it plays out in every hammerhead group ride I've done - power is highest on the biggest climbs.

A lot folks on this forum bemoan "I'm great on flats and terrible on hills because everyone ONLY drops me on hills" when the real explanation is that on hammerhead group rides with hills, far more often than not, the group cruises at an 'easy' pace on the flats, and only puts the hammer down on the climbs. So if you're just keeping up on the flat, odds are 100% that you'll get dropped on the climb. Not because you're a particularly bad climber, but because the other guys are putting out nearly 2x as much power as their flat riding when they hit the climb.

pallen

This. exactly. Better trained riders are also more capable in the hard effort, recover, hard effort, recover cycle than lesser trained riders. On a lot of rides with rolling hills, I can hang with a fast group for a while, but eventually they wear me down and I just cant keep doing it. I'm also too fat for this sport, but that doesnt sound like your problem.

echappist

it's likely you are out of your optimal cadence range and will need to fight your bike up. it's also possible that your anaerobic power is low and you can't get much out of it to fight up the 10% grades.
Those are very imprecise terms. More muscle has nothing to do with it.

Schlecks drop PG in the Alps b/c they have higher wattage at lactic threshold where the key is sustained aerobic power. In case you haven't noticed, many of those climbs have sustained portions at 10%. L-B-L is a series of power hills that require you to dig into anaerobic reserves and then recover in the next 5-8km before you have to go at it again, and many are less than 8% for no longer than 2km. Many 130lb puncheurs (Bettini and Valverde) do just fine in L-B-L and Amstel Gold but will still struggle in a GT climb.

edit: should also be added that all of these depend on how the hill are ridden. If someone ups the pace on the 6% sections to a pace in your anaerobic zone, you probably can't handle it either.

gregf83 

The simplest explanation is that your short term power/weight ratio is lower than the others. Steep, short hills favour those with more fast twitch muscles.

AdelaaR

Two possibilities here:

It could be that your gearing isn't low enough for you to keep a comfortable cadence for extreme hills.
This isn't very likely since your buddies probably have similar gearing.
It could also be that your anaerobic power isn't sufficient.

hhnngg1

I think use pro rider analogies to this situation would be completely missing the point.

Rider needs more power (fitness on the bike)

/end.

swlightn

Thanks for good replies.

I missed one thing in the original posting.

I always thought I'm strong in zone 3 and zone 5, but not in zone 4.

I don't have enough absolute power to do sprint in the flat road, but it works well during uphill sprint.

In the long moderate hill, it will take more than an hour and it requires zone 3 effort, not zone 4.
So, it is also okay for me.

The problem of steep medium distance uphill requires zone 4 and it looks like my weak point.

In the long distance riding (70-100 mile), I feel getting stronger in the later part of riding.
Maybe this is resulted from zone 3.

If this is true, I need to practice zone4 more.

hshearer

There's definitely technique to be learned; it's not just power, but how you use it. It's also about learning how much power output you can maintain to optimize your climbing effort. Steep grades you're going to be pulling up HARD on the bars... pulling the bike up against your foot as the pedal goes down to add to your power. Your arms and shoulders should get tired. You're going to use your calves more as you pull up on the pedals. If you can stay seated, focus on applying a lot of power right around the whole pedal stroke, and you might still be using your arms some for this. Put your hands on the bar tops and sit up to use more of the power from your glutes. Put a lot of power out on the hill, and it's over that much faster. Try not to lose momentum, and keep the power high at the crest until you get your speed back up. There is so much to learning to climb hills, and you'll be developing your muscles as you refine your technique. it just takes practice. I like to challenge myself not to let my speed drop below a certain point on hills I know well... gives me that racing feeling of hopeless exhaustion, and once in a while, a sense of accomplishment.

As a small rider, maybe the weight of your bike also has a relatively higher penalty to you as the pitch gets steeper?

Creatre

This is my exact problem. I am 5'11" and 140lbs.

Here's the deal: I have really good 1min, 5min and 20min power w/kg compared to people I ride with. I theoretically should be able to stomp out almost anyone over these climbs. However, climbs over 10% cause me to get out of rhythm, and always make me turn to muscular strength/endurance instead of relying on my aerobic strength. On long and sustained 10%+'s, I will walk away from others, but on short to medium (30s to 5min) 10%+, I struggle. Other people that may have more weight, usually have greater muscular strength than me because of pushing their weight around. They can pedal at 50-70rpm no problem. I start pedaling the low cadence and try to keep up with the watts they are putting out and my legs start to lock up.

There are a couple things you can do though: One thing that helped me a good deal was stomps: ~10-15s efforts starting at 50-60rpm, and going full blast/stomping out the gear until spin out (130rpm+). I felt a lot more comfortable using low cadences after a month of this in the offseason last year. Another thing, learn to suffer! Sometimes you think you are going as hard as you can go, and you just have to give up. A lot of times you can stick with the group significantly longer than your body/mind is telling you that you can. Push through the pain!

It's possible to overcome though! Last weekend I did a race with a 3 mile climb @7% average in the middle. I was doing OK at the bottom, but when the mountain kicked up to higher %'s I actually rode away from the guy I was in the breakaway with. I've always gotten destroyed as the % climbs, so my body is adapting to something I did! Hopefully yours will too!

merlinextraligh

At lower grades, and higher speeds, how fast you climb is not purely power to weight ratio; power to frontal volume still comes into play.

The steeper the hill, and the lower the speeds, the less power to surface volume matters, and it becomes almost totally power to weight ratio.

Thus if your absolute power is relatively high, but your w/kg are compartively lower, you'll be more competitive on shallower grades than you will be on really steep stuff.

AdelaaR

A trick to getting better at steep hills is to do hill repeats of those steep hills while remaining seated and staying relatively fast and in a high gear.
This'll totally hammer your muscles and should give you more power over time when done right.

To give you an example: I regularly ride "De Beerendries", which is not far from my house and is a 14% max incline of about 600 meters.
It's short enough to really go all out anaerobic and so I ride up on my TT bike while staying seated and not dropping my speed below 16-17 km/h which is about 10 mph ... that calculates to power levels between 400 and 600 Watts ... that's way above my threshold and by the time I'm up there I can sense the burning milk in my muscles

wphamilton

OP I'm a bit larger than you and probably quite a bit older, and I might have asked the exact same question (except that I expect the answer is HTFU and train on hills). At a certain combination of grade and distance I'll get really hosed, even though I feel pretty strong at anything up to that point. Looking at it from a brutal objective perspective, most of my riding is at threshold, just above or below. I think it's simply a matter of not having trained enough at a hard anaerobic level of effort. Your situation may be similar.

carpediemracing 

This is what I was thinking, it seems like when you have problems when max power becomes a factor.

For example, on the short hill at Bethel (150m), I'm regularly hitting 800 watts, more than 3x my low 200w FTP (210w or so, and I weigh 79kg). I do well on that hill, on that course, because I'm okay with hitting 800-1200w while going up that hill (my max is about 1450-1550w).

There are much, much better climbers that have problems on that hill because their MAX power is about 1000w so they're going 600-800w peak on the same hill. No matter what they have problems when faced with a 1000-1200w surge, even from a heavier rider.

I don't know where you are in SD but if you go up north to the Carlsbad area, or even to Torrey Pines, those are some "medium" grade hills. There are a few that I've gone hard over (Airport Road heading inland from Carlsbad, the hill that ends up at the airport entrance, with a wide driveway on the right about halfway up), turning a 53x15 or so up the whole hill. Okay, I'm absolutely wasted at the top, but that's the kind of effort one might put down to go "hard" on a short roller.

Also, as an FYI, no matter what my weight was while I raced (103 lbs as a 17 year old, after 2 years of racing; 112 lbs at 21; 140 at about 28; 160 at 33; 220-ish at 36; 158 at 42; etc), I always always had a sprint and never never could climb.

So part of it is working within your genetic limitations. Well, all of it, actually.

swlightn

I know this place well and going there frequently, but usually using easier than you. 53x19 or 21?

In Torrey pines hill, my problem still happens in the park side steep section. In the PCH side, I'm still okay. In the park side uphill, I usually fall behind in the steep part, but catch up one by one in the last moderate part.

Thanks for the comment.

Drew Eckhardt 

Fatigue at a given power output depends on cadence. When forced to pedal too slow or fast (where the specifics depend on individual physiology) you'll take less time to fatigue.

_Training and Racing with a Power Meter_ includes an anecdote about a racer who got dropped whenever his cadence dropped below 70 for five minutes at a power he could otherwise sustain for an hour.

I noted that I could ride zone 5a intervals on back-to-back days at 90-100+ RPM but not around the 85 RPM I'd naturally pedal.

The other thing is that 10% grades tend to be short. Even legendary climbs don't average close to that - l'Alpe d'Huez averages is just 7.9%. With steep spots being short you can power up them at intensities you couldn't otherwise maintain. Riders whose power to weight ratio you match at threshold (your one-hour power) or fractions thereof for longer periods may do better approaching VO2max (sustainable for 5-6 minutes) or anaerobically.

Hill repeats or flat intervals in a bigger gear than you'd normally use can help where you run out of gears but there are limits to how trainable that is. A bigger cassette, compact crank, or triple crank (30x21 is like 39x26) are all technical solutions to running out of gears.

Riding 3-5 minute intervals to improve power at VO2 max can help some but it doesn't respond as well to training as FTP.

carpediemracing 

In normal climbing I'm in a 53x19/21/23 or 39x(something) as well, even my 39x25 if I'm dead tired, but if I'm going "hard", I'll be using a much higher gear. One of the first years I was there my friend and I hit the climb hard (I think we either just rode back from Swamis or from Torrey Pines; either way it was after a few hours of riding). I took off in the 53x13 for a while, then shifted down as I ran out of momentum and legs. I was still rolling a 17 or 19 at the top, dying, but I'd distanced my friend by a lot. My friend is my host when I'm out there training, a former teammate, former leadout man, and a best friend. He knew my strengths but he was still surprised by how ferociously I attacked the hill.

You should try it, even if you only get to the driveway halfway up. It's eye opening when you realize that you can use a much bigger gear than you think you can. For example, if you have a green light at the bottom of the hill, start going hard in a 53x15, stand out of the saddle, hold the drops, and start trying to do a Cavendish up the hill. See how far it gets you.

If you have a red light and you're stopped, start in the 19 but start shifting as you get going so that by the time you are in the meat of the climb (i.e. the angle is now constant) you're in the 15.

On a different day try it on the hoods, maybe the 17T, maybe the 15.

Then try it in the 21, sitting, almost spinning.

Are you shifting on the steep Torrey Pines hill? Or are you just going in one gear? It really helps me to shift a bit on the steep bit, for various reasons. I may shift up to power through a steeper section, shift down to try and stay on top of the gear, etc. It's not an easy climb as you can work really hard up it, but you should be comfortable shifting under 100% load. This allows you to shift while standing or sitting, adjusting your cadence however you like.

I hate the PCH side of TP. I just grind some gear to the top. I'm never happy on that side. I prefer monumental efforts with little pauses in between.