kreeess

been wanting to improve my climbs wondering whats a good speed/cadence/watt to have as a goal for an X% climb.. as for the grade feel free to fill in what you want to suggest, itll give me an idea of how fast i should be going at different climbs. thanks in advance

btw im a 175lb-ish rider about 5"8 planning to drop 10lbs to be at 165lbs... if that makes any difference

caloso

How fast can you climb now?

kreeess

not sure how to describe the inclines but on steeper climbs when on granny gear im in between 5-7mph then on gradual climbs im at 9-11 mph

grafsk8er

We'll....there are no magic numbers to hit. It's just what you can do at that current fitness level. You will always improve and get faster the more you ride. But a hill of 10% that we both climb at the same speed! my wattage will be lower because of my 135 lbs. I could potentially still put out less watts and ride faster. It's all individual.

caloso

That's not bad. Have you ever done Mt. Diablo?

Carbonfiberboy 

There are a few good posts in a similar thread over on T&N:
https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...proving-climbs
Be sure to click on Greg's link.

znomit

You're too fat for this sport, sport.

145 is probably a good target. Not ideal but you wont get hassled too much about being anorexic and you should see a nice bump in hill speed.

Clipped_in

Dare I say it--Strava...

Seriously though, find a group ride that suits you. Riding with others will make you faster as long as those you ride with (at least some of them) are faster than you.

kreeess

this makes sense! just wanted to see if the rate im going is a descent pace/speed so I know what areas I should focus more on....

Thanks, before I got serious in to road biking I used to ride a fixed gear everywhere, so cadence and some strength is there just want to know how and when to use it. Mt. Diablo is actually on my list of hills to climb, hoping this summer I can do it since WC isnt far from where I live.

yeah a group definitely helps. I used to have a few riding buddies but they got busy with life and eventually stopped riding, I actually just recently started riding again after a 2 year hiatus..

grafsk8er

Wow sorry for the extreme typos! Lol damn spell check

cthenn

It's impossible to look at "chart" so to speak, and say at this height and weight, you should climb this fast. Even saying "your cadence should be X" is hard, because some people climb better spinning, while others are better at mashing. Totally unhelpful, I know, but I would just start to make a log of your climbs, and then strive for improvement to those times.

hueyhoolihan

OP, regarding weight.

i'm same height, or at least used to be! about 150-155. i THINK i could get to 140, but i've already got some flak about being too thin, but only from non-riding friends. (i think they are jealous, hehe).

you will find some improvement from 10 lbs for sure. whether or not it's even possible to get to "not too fat for this sport" weight, as mentioned above, may or may not be possible. if you have an average bone/weight body-style, morphology, or whatever it's called, i'd consider 145 doable. but remember, as i have just found out after being forced to a non-ambulatory state due to a recent crash for 16 days, that your body, i should say MY body, will pile on the LBSs (and i'm not talking Local Bike Shop here) to the tune of 1/2 lb per day with ease.

Drew Eckhardt 

Watts: the highest Watts/kg you can achieve without fatigue that will limit you on the remainder of the ride or tour and is congruent with your training schedule (as in not going hard for too long on your rest days/weeks/months). Loosing weight helps a lot.

Speed: whatever results from that

Cadence: whatever it takes to minimize fatigue given your physiology unless your training plan requires something else (like climbing short hills in your big ring to build strength). You might need to make equipment changes as extreme as mountain bike cassettes and/or triple cranks.

rangerdavid

Get a power meter! ! Learn to train with it and you'll know what you can maintain and for how long

caloso

Don't wait until the summer to do Diablo. It gets pretty hot during the summer so go now. (Maybe not this weekend, though.)
Ride to the top and note the time. That's your benchmark. Then start trying to knock a minute off every time up. If you can do it in an hour, you can win a t-shirt.

pdedes

Get skinny, ride above your ftp for extended intervals, don't hit anyone with your vomit

rm -rf

A method to track your climbing improvement?

VAM is the vertical meters per hour of elevation gain. So hills with different grades can be compared. At the extremes, steep hills tend to get higher scores, since you can only go some minimum speed before you fall over, and very shallow hills are fast enough that wind resistance is the biggest factor, so the VAM is reduced.

If you have a gps you can get the VAM score for the climb. Strava shows VAM for all big hill climbs automatically. Ridewithgps.com will show VAM on the Metrics tab whenever you drag to select a hill climb.

Or even just time the climb, then lookup it's elevation gain on ridewithgps.com or on strava.com. The VAM formula is: meters climbed / hours. That's (feet climbed / 3.28 feet per meter) / (minutes/60)


I had couple of previous posts on VAM scores, here and here.

I'm usually in the 550-650 VAM range when pushing hard on medium grade hills, or about 1800-2100 feet per hour. The top riders on Strava will typically show 1000 ot 1200 VAM scores, or even higher.

The hour goal to climb Mt Diablo is right near 1000 VAM score.

rm -rf

Speed/cadence/watts? If you have a power meter, that's the best way to set a goal. I use heart rate to pace myself without a power meter.

It depends on how long the hill is, of course. On long hills, climbing for a half hour or more, I have a heart rate range that I try to keep. There's a much higher limit on short hills.

kreeess

thanks for all the advices guys! I'll def take them in to consideration !

gsa103

The nice thing about Mt. Diablo is that its basically a power meter. Since its almost all climbing you can calculate average power easily.

That and the best way to lose weight. The thing I love about climbing is that the hill has no mercy. You got to the top or you didn't.

hhnngg1

You can gauge improvement on almost all routes that you repeat, provided you go all-out on them and you don't even need a powermeter. A stopwatch is fine. It's like a custom FTP test, just not done on the typical 2 x 20 or 60 minute protocol.

And yes, that makes it an 'average speed' situation, and it's legit for gauging improvement. Go all out on a repeatable course, and if you're getting faster times, you're improving.

Obviously without a powermeter it doesn't help you predict power ranges for training.

aaronmcd

VAM is highly variable depending on time and grade, especially at shorter times & higher speeds. Examples from some of my hardest Strava efforts:
40' climb with some flats 4% avg grade - 880 VAM (a lot of wind resistance from 4% grade)
20' climb steady 8% - 1200 VAM
<4' climb at 11% - 1590 VAM (power is much higher for short durations)

gsa103

True, you can sort of gauge improvement. The advantage of a climb like Diablo is that the speed is low, and there's a number of switchbacks so there's minimal impact from wind. You don't need to consider any aerodynamics, which is far from the case on most flat rides.

The other thing about Diablo is that since there's minimal aerodynamics you can get an good absolute measure of average power, not just relative improvement. The downside is that unless you're very strong, its going to take over an hour which is longer than a typical FTP test.

hhnngg1

It's not sort of. It's you can ABSOLUTELY gauge improvement, on any repeated course, so long as you go all out, use the same course (and reasonably similar conditions), and there aren't stops on the way.

RPK79

Someone should create some sort of software application that you could upload your GPS data into to show your ride statistics or even segments of your ride so you can compare them over time. It could even tell you if you have a personal best on a segment of the ride. Also, and this is a stretch, it could show you how you rate against other riders on the same segments. That would be so cool. I would call it strive or starve or something like that...