During a small group ride today, I noticed someone wearing a full Dominican Republic kit (it looked awful). I'm Dominican myself so I started to make conversation. He mentioned how he used to do races over there and there was a big one coming up in August. It's a 4 day "vuelta" and one of the biggest races over there. I was excited and actually considered doing it, until he told me one of the days is a 90km mountain stage with some 19% climbs. Well, I live in South Florida and this is a problem for me...... I don't climb....... At all. He also told me that one of the bigger bridges down here (Miami), which I thought was fairly big, is only 3.9%.

I would like to do the race, but how can I train to climb? Will doing constant repeats on those bridges help? The climb is about half a mile long. Or just "HTFU" and hope for the best. I think only one of the 4 stages has climbs though.