Here is the situation; where I live on the front range in Colorado I can leave my house, do a hundred mile loop back home and never do more than a couple hundred feet of climbing. This weekend I left my house and headed west, now that is a completely different story, I just barely touched the bottom of foothills and quickly learned that no matter how many miles you put on the flats, they do nothing to prepare you for the hills. I want to be able to ride in hills around Colorado unfortunatally all my weekday rides originate from my house so I don't have any big hills to regularly ride on to prepare.

Here's my question: obviously the only way to get good at riding hills it to actually ride them. I have a few smaller hills I can ride up and down daily to prepare. What is the best way to use these smaller hills to prepare for the longer hills? Do I drop gears and try and spin up or do I go higher on the gears and mash until I can't pedal anymore?

Thanks for your help

Find a climb you can do in 10-20 minutes and do hill intervals up it at maximum constant pace. 2-4 intervals, two or three times a week and you'll be flying. Time yourself between two landmarks on that hill and use those times as benchmarks to get faster. Your power/weight ratio is directly proportional to your climbing speed.

Mashing vs. spinning; doesn't matter. Just get the job done.

Why can't you just go to the real hills and ride them? Is it too far & you don't have time? Hill repeats on smaller hills will help some, but you probably need to go bigger to get more benefit.

Mashing vs spinning is a personal choice. If you can mash, you'll be able to generate more speed if that's what you want, but it's hard on the knees.

Timing makes it hard to go the real hills regularly, I do most my riding after 8pm when my kids are in bed. I guess right now I am not really looking for speed, I guess I was thinking if I mash up the smaller hills it would help strenghen me to spin up the longer ones

You must live a couple miles from me in Thornton.
The more you can spin the better of you are IMHO.
I rarely train for climbing. My normal training plan and group rides prepare me adequately.
You can find the longest hill near you and perform repeats on it.

Go ride them on weekends anyway.

Most of the big climbs around here are long rather than steep, so working on your LT on the flats during the week will probably help. DO some 20 minute sweet spot or LT intervals. It's pretty easy when you are riding flat to never add any real intensity - add some, and see if that helps.

Oh yeah - it helps to be skinny like me and DataJunkie, too. ;D

I live in flat country. I usually do a combination of hill repeats (find the best hill you can find and go up and down and repeat). In its own way this is interval training. You can also do intervals on flat ground.

I don't think mashing helps much. Spinning is useful all around.

I am of the opinion that riding hills takes a little bit of practice in terms of technique and strategy. This may come naturally to those with hills all around. But us flatlanders tend to just put our heads down and go. With hills I think you need to be able to spin. I think you need to be able to get out of the saddle (if just to stretch). And I think you need to learn how to pace yourself.

The only way to do that is to go and practice.

I think the best way to get better at hill climbing is to find the hill you am beat and just keep doing it. I can ride up really steep hills that are short without any problem but a hill that isn't as steep but is much longer just kills me. So, my goal is to find to find a four or five mile hill and climb it once a week and and track my speed improvements.

Close, I am up in Windsor. For some reason I had it in my head that I could just drop a gear and keep on riding up the hills but it didn't work that way, I will work on repeating the hills around here and see if that helps me out

LT and intensity are both good points. Training at LT is probably my main reason for not having too many issues.

lol
A nice power to weight ratio is helpful.

I didn't think I was overweight until I started riding

How do you work on your LT, is it just going balls out until I have to crawl in my door when I get home, intervals, or just increasing my intensity in general?

A good mixture between both of those methods works for me. Last week I could hardly make it up the twenty steps to my door.

I followed the time crunched cyclist program earlier in the year. That has quite a few intense intervals. This time of the year is just fun for me.
Racing and club rides helped me as well.

To further Brian's point - if you use strava you can create a segment on a hill near you and monitor your progress. Stick some on your normal training rides and attack them, don't just dawdle up.

I stink at climbing but doing more of it on a regular basis, whether long or short hills, helps.

I use nearby strava segments more for sprinting but I think they could help climbing P\R tracking.

Not carrying any extra weight is a huge help uphill.

Strava depresses me. When I can hit third place, but then 1st place is 10mph faster up a 4% grade. Gotta be kidding me! Are they hanging on to cars up the hill

I live in Florida, but I can ride into the wind or ride a big gear... However, there is no practice for descending...

I have wondered if some bikes climb better because they are stiffer or is it just weight. A lighter bike will climb better? I have a Calfee Tetra Pro which is a good all around bike. Calfee makes a bike called a Dragonfly which cost $1,000 more and the frame is a half pound lighter. The bike is also stiffer.

I find it more useful for P\R tracking. Folks take it too damn seriously. If competion is that important register for a race.
Anyhow, most of the riders in my area KOM on windy days.
I remember on my birthday there was a huge tailwind. I flatted a couple miles into my ride and had to head home. Another guy recorded a 4 mile segment with an average speed of 30mph on that day.

I ride around Fort Collins when visiting my SO's family... if I were you I'd just concentrate on pushing hard on your normal rides and once or twice a week try riding out to Horsetooth Mountain and do hills around there...

In order to conquer the hill you need to act like the hill, think like the hill, BE the hill.

Choose your line, then PIN IT.

You're going to do well in this sport.

I was thinking... they're riding scooters.