Training for Hilly Ironman

tggagne

Hi everyone. I am new to EN actually starting my 12 weeks to Ironman Canada. In the past, I biked tue and thur and long sat.

Ironman Canada is what I would describe as hilly with two significant climbs and several intermediate climbs in a row.

I used to do 6-7 weeks of hill repeats (8-10min) on thur and flats on Tue, and worked in longer steady climbs sat.

Switching to the EN plan, I am wondering what you folks have found successful. I am considering:

1. focusing the wed threshold sessions on hills (kind of like repeats, then mix in hilly and flat on sat-sun.

2. do flats to rolling on wed, and doing the threshold sets sat on a 7 mile climb, very similar to primary climb at IMC.

3. Or do wed-sat thresholds on week on hills and the next flats.

Thoughts, comments?

Chris G

 Hill repeats are good if you have a nice hill to do them on.  Otherwise you really do not train for a hilly ironman any differently than a flat one.  Raise your FTP as much as possible.  Some find it easier to sit on higher wattage when going up hills, well, pretty much everyone does.  

HayesSanborn

I searched out hilly routes for weekend rides,  but the reasoning was I was new to training with Power and wanted to work on riding steady and not spiking my watts. I wanted to make sure I could ride the correct way up hills and not nuke my marathon.

I wasn't really using hills to crush myself (Early Spring I was) or get in big watts up a hill.

 

Nemo Brauch

I live in flatlands. The only "hill" I have is a bridge that connects the island to the mainland. So on a week in week out basis, I have no other training options besides just doing the intervals as prescribed- and for the most part, that's just fine.

OTOH, IMWI is very hilly- in a less obvious and somewhat more tricky way. I won't have the option to practice riding steady like Hayes mentions, and that does concern me a bit because I'm VERY out of practice with that skill. So I am hoping to get a long weekend or two this summer to travel inland about 4-5 hours to find rolling hills so I can practice before race day.

Coach Rich

As others have mentioned, there is nothing too special about training/racing in the hills. The key is to have enough gears on your bike for the race so that you are able to maintain close-to-normal cadence on the hills on race day. IOW, if your normal cadence is 85-95rpm, then you want to bring enough gears to the race so that on the worst hills you are close to 85rpm. However, if the combination of hills,  your w/kg and grade will put you at lower cadences no matter what you do (like <70rpm), then all you really need to do is informal low cadence work to accustom your legs to a wide range of cadences. </p>

Take Nemo, for example. Everything around her is flat and if she didn't seek out low cadence opportunities on her own (ie, riding in a low gear), when she gets on some of the hills at WI and drops under 65rpm, despite her best efforts on w/kg, gearing, etc, then it's going to feel very strange and unusual for her. However, she knows this and I'm sure she is playing with the cadence on her rides to get <65rpm so it's not such a shot on race day. </p>

In short:

• You want to practice the art of riding steady (no surges) on hilly courses.
• Hills are good for training because it's usually just easier to put out higher watts for longer on a hill vs a flat. However, as a triathlete approaching race prep, you should do these as much as possible in your race position (in the aerobars, not scooted back, at your race cadence, etc) so that you are applying those watts in the position that you'll use on race day.
• Beyond the two points above, ride with the goal of making yourself accustomed to riding in a wide range of cadences. Yesterday I found myself on a 14-18% hill and "relearned" that I'm not as comfortable as I'd like to be on hills that steep that, regardless of w/kg and a 34-26 climbing gear. I'm doing a very hard climbing race in September so the ride reminded me (punched me in the nose) that I need to seek out crazy low cadence opportunities as this is specific to my race in September.