Machka 

Coming from Manitoba, it sounds perfectly normal to me. I was doing that much cycling there, and would have had a tough time climbing more than about 100 metres a week.

I was deliberately going out and doing hill repeats on overpasses to get some climbing in.

kzin

I overlooked this is the training forum not the geography forum but even as and after implementing the fine training advice long rides from Yreka call for a triple.

Personally I happily use the equivalent of a NINETEEN / 32 every day and couldn't stand to go back to a bike without truly low gears.

Heathpack 

Ok, I'm going to take one last stab at talking sense into this thread and then I'm out.

Have any of you done much climbing on a TT bike? Although I cannot understand 100% what OP is saying about his fit, it sounds like he has gotten himself as forward & as low as he can on his bike. These are things that you do on a TT bike to improve aerodynamics, accepting that these deviations from a "normal" road bike set up may result in decreased power output. You can fiddle, tweak, and optimize your TT set up to try to maintain the same power as you have on your road bike, but it's difficult and some people can never accomplish it, they're always down on power on their TT bike.

For me setting up my TT bike, my steps are: go to elite, world-renowned fitter, ride, have trouble making power targets, ride, have trouble climbing hills, go back to fitter, get better at hills but still struggle, send video to coach, modify position, feel better on hills, send more video to coach, feel even stronger on hills but still wonder if I've found the optimized fit that will give me both speed on the flats & sufficient power.

My point being: I have two expert people helping me and I've still spent hours over many months hunting around to get it right. And I was *never* as low as I could have been aerodynamically because that position was less powerful. I was *never* as far forward as I could have been because that is UCI-illegal (and less powerful on hills, and I knew there were hills in some of my TT races). My guess is that OP, being a newby, has not spent as much time as me on modifying his position nor has he had much help. The chances it's optimized are slim.

OP is physically big. He needs a to generate certain amount of power to propel his body up a 5% grade- lets say 200 watts. Being a newby cyclist, this may be his threshold. He is probably engaging less muscles using the Tri fit than he would on a road fit. If he's riding at threshold from the moment he starts going up, all the gearing in the world won't help him- he has a few minutes in his legs and then they will fatigue and he is done. Changing cadence won't help him, either. You can very easily wind up in a situation like OP where you just never make progress because to progress you need practice. And you can't practice if you simply can't do it.

You just don't have the same degree of leverage on the TT bike. You engage fewer muscles or at least different ones (and in different people, different muscles have differing ability to metabolize lactic acid/work over threshold). You need a really strong core (which if you read OPs original rationale behind going to the Tri fit, you can see between the lines he does not have) to climb hills in aero.

OP, good luck. My final advice is: 1. Change your fit, 2. Improve aerobic fitness, 3. Lose weight. It wouldn't hurt to work your core so that you can tolerate the road fit better.

Machka 

Thanks!

And no, I haven't checked my climbing cadence. I should try to do that. I must remember to bring a watch with me on a few of my trips up the building.


I think one of the reasons why the stair climbing worked so well for me was because it is something I can do during the day, consistently, 5 days a week. When we have desk jobs, we're supposed to get up and move once an hour ... and so the stair climbing fits neatly into that. Get up, climb a bunch of stairs (and I'm reasonably quick now), make myself a cup of coffee and refill my water glass, and I'm back to work.

Then after work, I can choose to go for a brisk walk, or cycle, or lift weights or whatever I want to do depending on how much energy I have.

wolfchild

Climbing hills is a lot easier for me while riding out of the saddle and standing on the pedals. There is no rule which says that you absolutely have to be sitting in the saddle while climbing...I can climb some serious hills on my fixed gear bike with 46x18 gear ratio. I also use bull horn handlebars which gives me a lot of leverage...You should try standing up on the pedals and see if it helps you

kzin

Just out of curiosity are we actually talking about climbing on the Aloha triathlon bike?

If so 32t rear seems odd.

Carbonfiberboy 

It's easy to say that's the whole problem, in fact that's my instinct, except that I once did a serious climbing ride in the mountains with a woman running a full-on tri bike with typical chainrings and cassette and she did just fine. OTOH she was quite athletic.

That said, the OP would obviously be better served by a road bike.

C_Heath

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ all that

chaadster

Yeah, 5 miles at 5% average grade, for a +200lber, takes a good amount of power, and a very hard effort. I don't have climbs like that around, but I have dragged my 220lbs butt up a 5% average grade, with plenty of double-digit pitches, and peaking north of 22% grade, for 3.3 miles, while riding up to Montescaglioso from Matera. It was hard; the bike was rented, and ill-fitting, and I think geared with a standard 52/39 up front, and 12-27 out back (Campy Xenon, so guessing), but it was hard, and I was grinding that climb out, and several times well past threshold. And to your point, Heathpack, once you hit threshold power or HR, the clock starts ticking...faster.

5 miles at 5%, as I call it, is a pacing game; finding the sustainable effort level below threshold, and settling in. It's very easy to overcook it, and burn out.

OldTryGuy

During Six Gap last year there were numerous times I was on my aerobars for far more than short bursts while climbing and comfortably passing other riders. Hog Pen comes to mind in particular because after passing some riders and cars I came up to the back of a car and had to slow way down. Some riders in front of the car had dropped their speed resulting with the driver doing likewise. I was not prepared for this, got caught on my aero's at a virtual standstill and did not recover-went right-and wound up off to the side of the road. Thankfully I fell over before going into the drainage swale.

Seattle Forrest

In all my years, I've only seen anybody on TT bikes once on any mountain road. It was a small group on the North Cascades Highway. They looked like they were having as much fun as I was.

Justinzane, how much elevation gain do you normally do, in a week let's say?

Gyrine

I'm with Heathpack - trying to get 100+ kilos up a hill fast isn't going to happen. There is no magic in being a good climber - no magic training scheme, no magic exercise or silly core strengthening ritual, no magic bike fit. If you are looking for an easy out - hope you enjoy walking up hills. First and mostly, get rid of xs body weight and second, build aerobic shapes.

chaadster

True, sustaining the power required to get 100kg uphill fast ain't really happening, but training to work comfortably at high L3/Tempo power can be a great aid, and I think many clyde riders have good "diesel engine" capability. We won't be the first to the top, but we don't need ro carry the lanterne rouge, either.

Ajkollme

My climbing abilities improved after I got a singlespeed bike. I commute a short distance to work on the bike, but also substitute 1 or two longer rides per week. Not only will your legs get stronger, but it forces you to change how you think about getting up the hill. Rather than gradually downshift through the gears until you can't anymore, you are forced to attack the hill. It's a more aggressive way of getting your butt up the hill.

Richard Cranium

If you say so.

Maybe some one on the forum knows how to identify what a "typical" power-to-weight ratio is. The we could determine if in deed - you have under-average climbing ability.

At this point - all I can recommend to taking hills as slowly as possible from the very start. Practice changing you position, and your effort after climbing some hills successfully.

Corbah

Power to weight is all that matters in the hills. That's it. That's really it. Everything else is 0.005%

Flinstone

I'm a little amused at how much many cyclists like to discount strength as irrelevant. There is a huge thread here from a few years back of people massively deriding anyone who thought strength training would help them as "ignoring science", and since then there have been some clear scientific studies that strength training can help.

I've been semi-seriously riding about the same amount of time (and I've been a little shocked at my improvements). I don't ride anywhere near that far as it doesn't fit my life, but anyway, I reached a point where I wasn't getting faster (for a few weeks). I wasn't out of breath or at high heart rate, and my cadence was plenty high enough, but I just couldn't push the next gear. Legs just wouldn't go. So that's not strength? I also noticed that my threshold speed was getting maybe too close to my sprint speed, not extra gas available.

So I spent a couple of weeks doing very short rides, with long recovery for muscle, mashing up hills at low cadence, something I was also bad at, and doing a little off the bike strength training. Sure enough, I've gotten better at hills, and on the flats I've had a huge speed breakthrough too. I have no idea if any of this applies to the OP, but in my (regular joe) opinion, strength matters.

My whole "training" plan has just been, whatever is hard... do that. When something else becomes the weak link, push on that. I try to detect weakness and pivot quickly to attack it, with little routine. And I've been thrilled with the results of that plan. The thing I've found the least fundamental though, is endurance. I have to ride long to get good at riding long, but it helps nothing else. If I work on riding fast and hard, in short rides, it helps speed and strength, but it helps them in the long rides too, which makes the long rides shorter.

Just anectodal experience from someone who is probably still worse at hills and everything else than you are.

Carbonfiberboy 

Agree. I also work on what hurts worse.

Endurance is complicated. In my mind, there are two components: fuel and performance. Most base training, including mine, focuses on fueling, the idea being to convert the metabolism over to burning more fat for fuel, thus sparing glycogen on long rides. This is critical for endurance performance. Speaking of which, I define endurance performance as the ability to repeat, say to do multiple pass climbs while riding as hard as possible or to do multiple hill sprints, etc. One should be able to climb in zone 4 and recover in zone 3 before the next zone 4 climb. A variety of training inputs is necessary to produce endurance performance as you have found.

Yes, strength training is helpful for cycling performance. This was poorly understood for many years because the general model for strength training used in studies was that of bodybuilders which is not particularly helpful.
Modern studies:
Combining explosive and high-resistance training improves performance in competitive cyclists. - PubMed - NCBI
In-season strength maintenance training increases well-trained cyclists' performance. - PubMed - NCBI
Maximal strength training improves cycling economy in competitive cyclists. - PubMed - NCBI

It turns out that the number of reps is not terribly important. The important thing is to work to failure: until you can't do another rep with good form. The object is to recruit all one's muscle fibers. Fewer reps takes less time and burns less glycogen so usually pre-season programs have more reps than one does during the season. Exercises which work one's cycling muscles through the exact cycling range of motion are most helpful.

Heathpack 

I see endurance as having two components as well, but for me it boils down to high-end and low-end endurance. I'm still figuring some of this stuff out so I can't promise this will still be the way I see it two years from now.

To me, the low end endurance is what you use when riding well below threshold- say 70%. It translates on a practical level into being able to ride all day long. It's what you use for rides 150 miles and up (or when doing a casual century). It reall is fundamental to all other types of training because it develops a lot of your physiologic ability to deliver oxygen to muscle cells and for the muscles to be able to "absorb" that oxygen. IMO you can't have too much of this low end endurance at the beginning. But it creates a lot of fatigue, so limits your ability to work your high end endurance. So once you've got great low end endurance, it's time to cut back and work the high end endurance.

By high end endurance, I mean an ability to work for long periods of time at threshold. To me, this is where you get into fuel management, cellular metabolism and the ability to metabolize lactatic acid to resist fatigue. This type of endurance translates into speed. I was massively confused by all this before I started working with my coach because I assumed you'd increase speed by riding faster and faster- ie you'd increase you top-end speed first and this would drag up your speed at 5 minutes and 10 minutes and 30 minutes and 2 hours and so on. Maybe that approach does work for some people, I have no idea.

But what we have done is fill in my ability to work at threshold for longer and longer periods of time. That pushes your speed up from the bottom it seems. This is hard for me to articulate but I can see it very clearly in my mind.

Anyway, none of this is directly relevant to OP. However, for him to ride up a 5% grade only requires 200-215 watts which is not much for a big guy. It's very weird to me that he describes not being able to push the pedals around on a 5% grade. I guess he couldbe really weak but that seems doubtful for a guy who was carrying 240 pounds of weight around until recently. Because *I* can easily push the pedals around at 200 watts and I'm a middle aged woman with far less muscle mass than OP. Which is why I suspect the issue is with his position on the bike, I think the guy has handicapped his ability to climb because he is not describing just getting fatigued like most people would but instead being unable to generate force on the pedals right from the start.

12strings

I know it's been mentioned in passing, but I wonder if PACING isn't the main problem here? 5 miles is a long enough climb that it seems the OP should go to that climb, (warmed up, but feeling good) and then take it about half the speed he wants to go...just settle in, plan for it to take a long time, but discipline yourself to not try to hard, and pick a pace that is sustainable.

I ride in. Group rides with some large guys who can absolutely kill it on the flats....we're talking 225lb men holding 23-24mph on flats for 30-40 mins....but when we get to the hills, they go to the back, and are dead last....but they can make it because they simply take their time and don't try to kill themselves as the hills start. (Our main hills are more like 6% for 2-3 miles, so not quite as long.

Flinstone

It does seem counterintuitive to me how much some people seem to need reminding of this (or maybe don't know how?), but justinzane has said he's not breathing hard (didn't mention heart rate, but ok) and is "mashing" pedals.. ie can't push them faster. How is that not an issue of force? It might be lack of force because of bike setup, but it doesn't sound like a pace thing in the usual sense. Also cramping doesn't sound to me like typical "blowing up", although cramping is I think not a very well understood thing.


So it sounds like a force thing. Indeed maybe the explanation is in the tri bike setup. I know nothing about this. BUT maybe ONE solution is elsewhere. Again, he said "mashing". To me that means low cadence. This is good. Power is cadence times force. He's maxed out on force but has room to spare on cadence... so get it increased. In other words, adding lower gears should work. This of course doesn't have to mean lower speed. At the right gear you can get the same force at a higher cadence, with thus a bigger product of the two, which means you're going faster, assuming you've got the power output to handle it.


Is this the ideal solution? Would weight training or bike fitting be better solutions? Probably depends on the goals doesn't it? Are you unwilling to compromise your tri-bike setup, assuming it's well setup in the first place? Can you redline on the flats without going into some insane cadence (in other words are you force limited there too)? Do you just want the fastest solution to start applying the power you have to those hills?

Salamandrine 

If you have the time, ride lots of miles. If you can ride 300/week consistently or even 400+ for a few months, the hills will seem like nothing.

Use the clipless pedals and pull through the stroke. Stand up once in a while to shift the work and rest various muscle groups.

AFA weight, you might be able get down to 190 or so, but at 6'3" you may simply have to accept that you are big.

79pmooney

OP, three questions. Do you have pedals that your feet are secure in and that you can pull up with? Do you stand when you go uphill? And is the reach to your handlebars long enough that you can fully expand your chest and diaphragm?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you may want to look into it if you really want to be better uphill. Going uphill is an activity governed by your oxygen processing and muscle use. A bike that cramps your torso is cutting directly into that oxygen capacity. Alternating sitting and standing is a very effective way of extending what your leg muscles can do IF you have an effective way of pulling up on the pedals as they come up. To do this, you pull on the handlebar of the side of the pedal coming up. The motion is very different from sitting and spinning and a very effective break for those muscles.

We all vary a lot on how much we ride out of the saddle. But nearly everyone who climbs well does it at least some. IF you are one who has a body that is made to climb out of the saddle and yhou aren't doing it, you aren't giving your body a chance.

Posted by an out of the saddle climber who never would have found his calling staying seated.

Ben

Road Fan

One thing about squats is they can be deep enough to cause knee pain. That's counterproductive, we don't want to wear out our knees! Stair climbing is not so deep. You can also Google and try a Yoga pose called "Chair Pose." It's similar to a squat but not as deep, and as well as the quads and glutes it works the core and shoulders.

andr0id

I'm going to agree here. A strong young guy ( < 50) should be able to get up a continuous 5% grade in a 34 x 25 all damn day long. You need to examine your fit and form some more and figure out what is limiting you.