Zachanonymous

Obviously it builds sustained power, BUT, anaerobically only grades of like 20% truly build anaerobic strength.

My question, I have a state park, nearly in my back yard, how often should I make the 26 mile (round trip) 1500' route?

CliffordK

2 or 3 times a day?

I'm not sure there is any real answer. A mix of activities is good. If you can maintain 200W to 300W on the level, then there may not be a huge boost from the hills.

A lot will be your goals. Fun? Fitness? Racing?

Zachanonymous

20mph + pace on level ground? I'm lucky to keep a 15mph now, and I still have many gears to go at the cadence I'm running.

ThermionicScott 

This seems like a debatable point. I'd expect that gearing and effort would impact which systems get more stress, but I'll allow the experts to correct me.

Carbonfiberboy 

BS. Going hard builds anaerobic strength. Grade doesn't matter. However, anaerobic strength on the flat is a little different from the same on a climb and different gradients use the muscles slightly differently. Be that as it may, climbing builds climbing strength. I have a riding buddy who rode over 1,500,000' of climbing in a year. He was climbing really well.

CliffordK

I'm not sure that anaerobic strength should be the goal. But, I would think that would be maximal short-term effort, say for 1 or perhaps 2 minutes.

A number of people recommend intervals.

They could be done on the flat, or on a hill that would take a couple of minutes to get to the top. Just hit the hill repeatedly.

You can play around with the effort based on speed and gearing. For better or worse, there is nothing that beats a hill that knocks you just over the top of the gearing you have on your bike. For example, do your hill climbing with a 13-17 straight block freewheel.

gregf83 

Anaerobic strength is not a well defined term. Cycling is primarily an aerobic activity so high strength is not particularly helpful. You don't need much strength to output 600W, however, most riders will have trouble keeping that level of power for much longer than a minute.

What is useful is Anaerobic Work Capacity (AWC) which is the amount of work you can do above threshold. Sprinters have a high AWC but don't need hills to train. Riding above threshold on the flats works just as well as riding up a hill.

No one can tell you how many times you should ride your loop without some additional information about what your goals are and how much time you have to train.

Rowan

The distance and altitude gain don't seem particularly challenging to me unless the 1500 feet is all in one climb.

It seems a bit like a time trial course.

Maybe you should concentrate on interval training after establishing a good endurance base.

Machka 

Let me just convert that to metric ...

42 km with 457 metres of climbing. (457/42000) 100 = 1.1 ... a fairly mild route in terms of climbing.

Is it rolling hills? A long gradual climb?

NYMXer

I have issues with longer climbs, let's say more than a mile but under three.... I run out of gas but on the roller coaster shorter hills, usually 1/4 - 1/2 milers, I can crush them, so the question is why? I do the Starva monthly challenges every month and do a lot of climbing rides and never have issues at lower speeds but on the fast paced club rides, I'm sucking wind and out of power. At that time, I am reduced to my granny gear and just pedal up the climb at a more casual pace until I get my energy back.

I am a Clyde, but normally fast and strong except on the extended climbs.

gregf83 

Doesn't get much simpler.

deapee

How did you determine this figure? I would say that the grade doesn't matter, and it's pretty dependent on gear selection or gear availability.

Spinning at 90 RPM is going to stress the anaerobic system a lot less than spinning at 50.

I've grinded up 10% hills at that point where if you stopped pedaling, your bike would just stop, and that's a total muscular effort.

You can build strength on the flat...Heck, you can grind out a heavy gear going down a hill. The forces of what's holding you back differ for each situation (wind resistance vs gravitational pull), but realize that you can meet the same level of overall resistance on any incline or decline.

superdex

ride it at least 1x a week. the hills will be your intervals. you'll get faster.

Carbonfiberboy 

IME none of this is true, or maybe it's just a matter of definition. I can get my peak power, and therefore my anaerobic effort, up a lot higher at high cadence. At low cadence, it's hard to even get above LT. To do a reductio, reduce that 50 cadence to 1: do a 1 RM squat. Is that anaerobic power? Maybe by one definition: it's ATP burning up, which does produce peak power, but only for about 10 seconds. That's how one sprints at the end of a hard 200k ride, but it's not how one gets up hills. You got your aerobic pathway, anaerobic glycolytic pathway, and your phosphagen pathway:
Aerobic & Anaerobic Energy – Phosphagen, Glycolytic & Oxidative Phosphorylation Systems
The Anaerobic Glycolytic System (fast glycolysis) ? PT Direct

Hill climbing, one hopes to use mostly the aerobic pathway because the anaerobic glycolytic pathway burns glycogen 10 times faster and you won't have very many hills in you at that rate.

Drew Eckhardt 

No. With a 10% grade the force ******ing your total rider + bike weight is about 10% of it. 39/25 increases the force 1.7X netting 17%. With 622mm wheels, 25mm tires, and 170mm cranks you multiply that force by (311+25)/170 = 2.0 so you're lifting just 34% of total weight with each pedal stroke.

That does not take a lot of muscle.

Weight lifters do 1-10 reps to build strength. Grinding along you're probably doing at least 50 a minute and 3000 an hour.

Drew Eckhardt 

You aren't pacing yourself well, perhaps because your granny gear is not low enough for your power to weight ratio at the durations of interest. When your cadence drops too low your power drops because you can't recruit enough muscle fibers.

Flat ground speed comes from power to drag ratio. Weight almost doesn't matter.

For a few minutes you're limited by VO2max which can be substantially higher than your power at lactate threshold.

Beyond that you're limited to your lactate threshold plus how fast you're spending a fixed anaerobic capacity W' or awc. Going anaerobic for twice as long gives you half the boost.

20 minutes gets you about 5% more than you can manage for an hour, 10 minutes 10%, and 5 minutes might be 20%.

When Eddy Merckx, perhaps the greatest professional cyclist ever, did as much as he could for an hour on a track bike he said it was one of the hardest things he had ever done on a bike.

"It's very, very hard," he said. "I couldn't walk for a few days after I did it. That's how hard it is."

You won't be fast on climbs unless you lose enough weight to see abs, veins, perhaps muscle fibers, and maybe a few ribs poking out; but with the right gear you'll enjoy riding to the top of hills without stopping.

sprince

As in small frame with a lot of bulk, or big frame with low body fat? One "Clyde" to another, don't expect to be as fast on climbs as your fragile and slightly framed cycling companions. Not to say you can't improve the climbing. But to quote the great philosopher Harry Callahan, "a man's got to know his limitations".

NYMXer

I'm pretty fit at 220, and really can't see me ever losing more than 10 pounds, but then I have less energy. I did an A level ride today and got 9th OA (Strava) on a long climb, so I have the speed and power, but it sucks the life out of me.

I guess I just need to continue working on my fitness and climbing until they work for me.

Here is the Strava Bike Ride Profile | Evening Ride near | Times and Records | Strava

NYMXer

My abs show a little, ever so slightly..... maybe they are shy, lol. But in the rest of my body, esp arms and legs, the veins protrude and my muscle definition is good. You can't see my ribs, they are shy too.

I think you might be right about pacing myself. My fellow riders that know the course can pace themselves, but I moved up to the highest B group 5 weeks ago and don't know the routes yet. I have been doing a few A rides, and when I ride with those guys, I get my ass handed to me on the long climbs. Today, we did several long climbs and I got 9th O.A. on one of them and 5th O.A. on another.

Thanks for the advice, it makes me ponder some changes in my riding style.