How to Train for Long Hill Climb Finishes (#250)

OVERVIEW
How do you climb fast at the end of a race? Many road, gravel, and mountain bike events finish at the top of extended climbs. In Episode 250 of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist", a listener asks how to prepare for a 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) finishing climb at the end of a 2-3 hour race. Everything comes into play: aerobic fitness, power at lactate threshold (LT2), anaerobic capacity, VO2 max, durability, and tactical savvy. Coach Adam Pulford breaks it all down, tells you how and when to focus on specific aspects of fitness and conditioning, how to test durability, and finally, how to tactically take advantage of your fitness on race day.

TOPICS COVERED

• Physical demands of hill climb finishes
• "Edge-finding" or fatigue resistance workouts
• How to test your durability with a workout
• Train "performance first"
• Train specificity last
• Workouts: OverUnders, Front Loaded Power Intervals, Speed Intervals, 
• How to execute an effective taper
• Racing tactics on uphill finishes

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HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Question from Luca
• 3:34 Identifying Race Demands
• 4:35 Building Base and Durability Testing
• 9:13 Training Focus 8 Weeks Out
• 13:32 Intensifying Training 4 Weeks Out
• 18:22 Race Day Tactics and Tapering
• 25:28 Episode Wrap-Up and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance, even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now onto our show. How do you climb fast at the end of a race? Well, you train for it specifically, but should you have every single workout be focused on performing late in the game or sprinting on tired legs or, in today's case, a 5k hill climb to the finish? No, you shouldn't. Why, because you might leave some watts on the table and not go as fast as you could otherwise. Welcome back Time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and today we'll discuss all of those questions and more on this episode of the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast. So what I'll do is I'll read the original question coming from one of you, our audience members and listeners, and at the end of the podcast I'll describe how anyone can write in and ask a question, if you have a question for me, as it pertains to all things endurance training. So here is that original question.

Speaker 1: 1:47

My name is Luca and I'm a 56 year old Italian competitive amateur cyclist. I train six hours a week 90 minutes on Tuesday, 90 minutes on Thursday and three hours on Saturday. My target race will be August 3rd and it's a 70 K circuit race with a 5K hill climb to the finish. I'm asking you how I could organize the next 11 weeks that precede my targeted race. My current form is decent in the sense that I have participated in some races and managed to arrive to the first group in the sprint without getting any results, but my main difficulty is keeping up with the group's wheels on the climbs. Thanks for the reply, luca. Yeah, well, thanks for writing in, Luca, and thank you for listening to the show. It's always great to hear from our listeners. So, luca, because I read this and you wrote in a couple of weeks ago, but I kind of put this one to the top because it does have some timestamps to it and uh, and it fits well because many of us are in a race phase right now um, recording at the end of May and leading into June, july and August. So I think this is going to hit, you know, uh, timely for many people.

Speaker 1: 3:00

So the answer to your question is yeah, you definitely want to specifically train for that hill climb late in the race, but to get there you need to do a lot more and we'll go over that. But it's about base building, building aerobic capacity, maximizing FTP and things like that. To the answer, right? So I'm not going to give you an 11 week training program here, nor did you insinuate, you know or think that I would. But it's a great question and I think the answer to that question has a lot of applicability to everyone listening here.

Speaker 1: 3:34

So to get things started, let's identify the demands of the race. Okay, like you said, it's 70 K and it's a circuit, so it should take maybe around two hours or a little less, not knowing exactly the full course or the details, but let's just go with. That. 5k hill climb up to the finish will likely take a master's level rider around 15 or 20 minutes depending on the total elevation, gain, gradients and pitches and also Luca's ability. But since he said that he had difficulty keeping up with the group on climbs, we'll just assume that he doesn't have the kom for this one and he likely um will just likely err on the longer side of things on that. So maybe like a 20 minute effort. Finally, we can assume that, uh, fueling into in tactics will go into optimal performance on the day. We'll just touch briefly on that toward the end, but training and specific preparation will be the majority of the key ingredients to have a good day on race day.

Speaker 1: 4:33

So how do we get there? Let's start with the good old, boring stuff. Okay, you want to maximize your base period, your base training period, and so at this point in the season which, like I said, we're recording here in May, you've likely finished up your base training period and so at this point in the season which, like I said, we're recording here in May, you've likely finished up your base and some of your build phases and it's time to move on to more intensity and more specific training. But a few key reminders of what should have gone on in the months prior to and there still could be a little bit of time to do this. You want to maximize volume consistently for many weeks. And if you do that meaning you train to the maximum on the days and I know that you put in how much you train in there but anytime that you can sneak in another ride or a little extra volume, do that for sure. And when you do that, when you maximize volume for several weeks in a row, you're going to build a big amount of CTL and that CTL, or aerobic training, builds that aerobic capacity which will grow your FTP and your VO2 max and get you ready to race hard and intensify the training, so that base and build time periods should be majority of zone two and zone three intensity. Then you start in on your targeted threshold intervals.

Speaker 1: 5:49

Now a good workout to do maybe at the tail end of May or the tail end of this build time period, before you get into the intervals, is what I'm saying. That good workout is something that I call edge finding workouts or fatigue resistance workouts. So simply riding hard for two, maybe three hours. So one of those long rides, luca, your Saturday long ride, you do a fatigue resistance workout like this. So it's two to three hours nonstop, just riding hard and finding the edges of your high aerobic and low threshold ability and this helps you to prepare for the testing of durability later to come in the next phase of training, which I'll describe here shortly. Now I do this by identifying the peak rate of work in kilojoules per hour or a high normalized power for maybe around hour and a half or two hours historically, and then I try to match that or beat that in a solo training session. Now you can scale it up to three or four hours or longer races if you'd like, but this is a very demanding session, both physically and mentally, because you're just like you're always on. It's a great day for training the gut, with fueling as well, but overall you do this and you're going to be real tired the next day, take two or three days to fully recover before you go on to hit some intervals, but it's a great preparation for what is to come. Now, if you want more details on how to do that, listen to episode number 201, and that's entitled the science of durability and fatigue resistance training. So, beginning in June, which is about when this will launch, you're about eight weeks out from competition. Your training should be focused on a mixture of threshold and VO2 work for sure, and it'll get more specific leading into the event.

Speaker 1: 7:41

Now. My best advice here to start this phase of training is to test your durability. Do this by taking one of those Saturday rides, luca okay, because that is your longest ride of the week and do a durability test by riding essentially in, mostly aerobic, for around 1,500 kilojoules at least okay. If it's more than that, that's fine. 1,500 to 2,000 kilojoules. You want to make sure that you do that total amount of work and then do a 20-minute max effort on a hill climb. If you can. You can do this inside on Zwift or TP Virtual to simulate that and control for all the elements, or you do it outside, and that's even better because it's actual, real life climbing Okay. So it's a. It's a great workout to do, and what it's going to do is it's going to tell you more information about how durable you are.

Speaker 1: 8:35

So what I do then is you look at your 20 minute fresh max effort and then you look at this 20 minute fatigued effort, and the whole goal is to minimize the gap between the fatigued and the fresh, okay. So whatever that is, generally speaking, if the difference is 10% or less, you got a pretty decent durability score. If it's 10% or greater, you need to work on it. So try to get it within 10% of the fresh 20-minute peak power, and that's going to be a good thing. Either way, you want to minimize the gap. So even if it is 9%, you still want to aim to improve that over time and this will help you come race day on the final hill climb itself. Stay on the final hill climb itself. If you want more details about how to do that and how to set up a session around that, check out episode number 207. It's something entitled Improving your Durability or something like that.

Speaker 1: 9:37

With eight weeks out here, like I said, the training focus should be on threshold and VO2. Another good workout that I like for this is under overs. So under overs, something like three by 15 minutes with, and what we're going to do is we're going to break those 15 minutes up into little segments, and so you go four minutes under at zone four and one minute over at zone five. You repeat that three times. Then you take your recovery period, which should be right around six or seven minutes for a 15 minute hill climb like that, and repeat. So you're trying to get in. You know that, uh, right around 45 or up to 60 minutes of total time in zone. And the reason why I like the under overs is because typically you know a hill climb finish like that it's not just going to be steady three or 4% the whole way. Even if it is, the race will dictate some tactics or some hard anaerobic accelerations and you need to be ready for that. So even when you're eight weeks out, it's good to incorporate some dynamic intervals that go on with that. That that includes some anaerobic accelerations in it. Now you can do some of those under overs uh, both in a fresh state and in a in a fatigue state at the end of long rides and things like this.

Speaker 1: 10:56

But you don't want All of the focus to be on just durability. You want to increase your FTP, you want to increase your raw power outputs or your mean max power for pretty much all durations, from sprint to 20 minute hill climb during this phase, and if you can intensify your training, you're going to improve your performance. So I like to say train performance first or take that performance first approach. What I mean by that is when you're doing intervals. And if you want to intensify the training, like we're talking about, you want to do efforts that are eight, 10, 15, 20 minutes in durations, steady, hard, under overs, front loaded. We'll talk about that here more in a minute but you want to do those when you're most fresh. So what that means is after a good warmup I've talked about this on a couple other episodes before but you know, maybe it's 15, 20 minutes of riding with a couple of openers and then you do it. You don't wait until hour three to do this.

Speaker 1: 11:59

The reason for it is when you hit the intervals when you're fresh, you have more muscle glycogen, you have more energy, you have more mental energy, you have more focus. You're actually going to do more work. You're going to do more power, and when you do more power and you do more work, you're going to get more training effect. And when you get more training effect and assuming that you rest you get more adaptation, and this is what we want. More adaptation is going to make you stronger, faster and more resilient, more durable in the long run. So, contrary to what some think or say, always doing intervals late in the ride is not the best way, because you could be leaving some watts and therefore adaptation on the table, and really what most people are really wanting are watts and adaptation. That's the whole point of training as a cyclist.

Speaker 1: 12:53

So, just as a quick summary, when you're that eight weeks out, doing a little bit longer intervals like I said, the 12, 15, maybe 20 minute intervals, and having both under overs, as well as maybe some hill climb finishes with an acceleration those are good things to do when you're a little bit further out, but we're intensifying the training. Now let's focus on when you're about four weeks out so this would be the beginning of July you want to intensify the training even more and you're going to be doing shorter intervals with more power. So there's lots of ways to do this and um, and we can we can take it in many different directions, but I'll keep it focused on what Luca described in in, probably what's going to benefit him. So you want to focus on zone five training as well as higher at this point, training as well as higher at this point, and you want to do this solid two times per week. So having high intensity two times per week, then the longer ride on Saturday and there may be some durability training component on that Saturday, which will fit Okay, but the days between should be recovery or short, easy endurance rides. I think it sounds like you're constricted in total time anyway. So that should map out well with you just taking rest days completely off the bike, because we want to keep the hard days hard and easy days easy as we intensify the training a lot and that's to get the best results out of the training. Remember, stress plus rest equals adaptation. You can't form the adaptation unless you rest.

Speaker 1: 14:27

Now by intensifying the training like this, you may actually increase your 20-minute power. Like I said, we're interested in making the power bigger or increasing the mean max power across the board really, but especially 20 minutes and less across the board really, but especially 20 minutes and less. Now this in theory could decrease durability where it could widen the gap from your fresh to fatigue 20 minute power. But in my experience in working with athletes, raising your FTP like that kind of raises the ship of all things, including durability, so long as you don't neglect some of the late ride efforts. So keep some of those efforts in on the Saturday long ride toward the end of the ride and you won't have a problem with maintaining the durability. Okay, but having that hill climb late in the race will require some of those big power outputs after 70 K of riding. Okay. So durability is a big performance determinant of a race like this. Let's get nitty and gritty about the specifics about that.

Speaker 1: 15:29

In these last three to four weeks you want to do another session. You want to test your durability again, because before, when we were talking that eight, maybe 10 weeks out, you start that phase with a durability test. You start that phase with a durability test. Fast forward to the here and now. You should have some response to the training that you're doing. So go test again, do the same course of right, around 1500 kilojoules of mostly aerobic riding and then hit a 20 minute max effort at the very end. See if you've made any improvement. Okay, my guess is, if you're doing this training, you will, and ideally you'll do this four to six weeks out from the last time you did it, just weeks before. Okay, because that four to six weeks, that's enough from the last time you did it to see some performance improvement and it's also enough to keep on training properly leading into the race.

Speaker 1: 16:24

Now some specific intervals to do in the final three to four weeks. Look like this Front-loaded VO2 max intervals, which I'll get into here in a minute as far as a workout to do that. But anytime I say front-loaded when I'm working with an athlete, it's usually going to be 30 or 60 seconds of an anaerobic acceleration to start the interval and then you settle into, for a VO2 max effort, zone five, which is about 106 to 121% of FTP. So what you do is you spike up hard and I just generally say go hard and then settle into zone five. Other good workouts or intervals is speed intervals or 30 30s and you can start with six minute 30 on, 30 off and extend out to about 10 minutes and that 30 on is real hard perceived effort of nine or higher. And I individualize the percentage of FTP for that. A good place to start is probably 140 to 170% for most people. 30 on, 30 off and that off is endurance riding. So you're spinning with high cadence high cadence on on both components, by the way 90 to 110 for the on portion and maybe spinning around 90 for the off portion. Okay, now To structure this within a workout itself.

Speaker 1: 17:44

In the final three to four weeks, doing a combination of fresh and fatigued is the best way that I like to prepare somebody for performance late in the game. What I mean by that is you have your total intervals and you do a main set of intervals when you're fresh. So you warm up a couple openers and then hit let's use the front loaded VO2 max intervals. Here you do four by five minutes. Use the front loaded VO two max intervals. Here you do four by five minutes of the front loaded intervals, and Luca for you this could go on the the what Tuesday or Thursday session, and then you do four of them with maybe four or five minutes recovering between then. You ride endurance and then you do your fifth and final interval late in the ride, before your final cool down. Okay, so what you're doing is you're fatiguing yourself with both intensity and endurance riding and then you're you're having some performance component later on in the ride to train your body to deal with all the fatigue late in the game. So it's a really good way to kind of combine that. Now you can do that on Saturdays as well. If you want to move one of these sessions to Saturday, ride even longer, okay. So take four by five early on when you're fresh in the ride, get yourself nice and tired, then ride for an hour or more and then hit the fifth and final effort late in the game. It's going to specify that. Training of all the things that happen with fatigue, including increased muscle acidity, increase inorganic phosphate molecules right, you're depleted on glycogen, mentally you're kind of over it and you just want to get home right. All of those things it's really good to train for during this like three to four weeks coming into the key phase.

Speaker 1: 19:32

Now, finally, I like to give you this advice on actual race preparation Do a group ride that has a long climb in it, either halfway through or at the end of the ride. Just make sure you don't skip the hill climb itself, right. Or you could make your own hill climb like this If you're prepping for this and you have a group of people that you ride with on a regular basis, make your own uh, two and a half hour group ride, with the last 15 minute uh being on a, uh on a hill effort. Okay, a couple of things on tactics that you could do, uh, to go for the win on that race day. First of all, don't be first wheel leading into that hill climb right. Have someone else do the work and even on a hill climb, uh, kind of depending on it, letting someone else do the pace work. And if there's a headwind. Don't be the guy in front. Don't be the person in front. Do as little as it takes to win. That's my general uh advice to anyone listening here that races bikes.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Now, second approach, or kind of a second piece of advice, is there's some people like to use a waterfall climb tactic. Now, this works if you're not a great hill climber Personally I'm not the biggest fan of it, but it works for riders who maybe they're fit but they're not the best hill climber. What this means is you go in, not first wheel, but you go in maybe your fourth or fifth wheel or top third of the group, and the whole strategy is go in and carry that momentum, but then you trickle down the hill and you let other people pass you as you go. But you're identifying how many people are passing you and maybe just kind of catch on to a wheel. Let them do some work, get some advantage there, kind of get that energy that comes with some people riding next to you, right. But what you're doing is, as opposed to coming in the very last wheel, right, and have people accelerating up and then you have to do a hard search to go get them, what you're doing is you're starting up sooner, trickling down and ideally carry some momentum with other riders and then attack over the top or attack to the finish. Okay. So, again, not my personal favorite, but it is a tactic out there.

Speaker 1: 21:36

Finally, if you do all the training, luca, like we're talking about here, and you have good climbing legs, you have some anaerobic pop. What you need to do is analyze the hill climb, identify the key moments that are going to happen right, it was hard pitches or maybe some switchbacks where there's going to be a good place to attack or some others will attack at that point. You also want to identify the person or people that you need to beat. Stick to their wheel. Don't let them go do as little as it takes to win and then attack right around them and go for the glory at the top right, because that's what it takes and that's what it means. So those are some good tactics, just in real life bike racing scenarios on a final hill climb like that.

Speaker 1: 22:22

But my last and final piece of advice is a good taper will help. I don't have all the time right now to get into what a good taper is, because that's a whole podcast or maybe even two to go into the details of it, but a proper taper can increase your performance by two as much as 6% for most people, and that's more. That's more performance increase than jacking yourself with sodium bicarb or buying some ultra high-end climbing wheels to save you a hundred grams or something like that. So a couple of key points of what goes into a good taper is we're really looking for freshness here, okay. And when it comes down to a one day race, do this. You want to reduce your volume by up to 50% the week leading in. So it's a pretty drastic reduction of volume.

Speaker 1: 23:14

And so in your case, luca, it's kind of shooting from the hip here. You know, if you're doing around six hours of training, you can reduce all the way down to three hours of training, but you want to keep the frequency about the same. So keep on riding Tuesday, thursday, and then you race on Saturday. Keep some intensity in there. So maybe you got some openers, some sprints and some pops. Maybe you keep some short speed interval efforts in there. And then you also want to focus on maximizing sleep and recovery Okay. So add more sleep to the mix, more carbohydrates leading into the event, and that polarized training works really good here. So if you just kind of think polarized keep training or keep the hard days hard, easy days easy and probably one hard session the week leading into the race itself. That's going to keep you on track.

Speaker 1: 24:01

Finally, a lot of people like to do openers the day before and I see a lot of tapers go awry when they just go way too hard the day before the race. Reason being is you freshened up, you tapered, you feel great and so you do your openers or your efforts. Or maybe you go recon the hill and you just go way too hard and that causes too much fatigue going into it. All you need is a short ride and a couple 20 to 30 second openers and that's all you need for a good day. So to wrap this up, my best advice on how to train for race of the hill climb finish is definitely do some hard hill climb efforts at the end of your long ride to simulate that race effort. However, to do this best, you need to build your fitness and maximize your volume and your CTL as high as possible before it's time to start hitting the intensity Around.

Speaker 1: 24:52

Eight weeks out is a great time to intensify the training, like we discussed, and you can start things off by testing your durability, because that's going to give you good insight on where you're at from a fresh and a fatigue state to best prepare for this race itself. Now, three to four weeks out, intensify the training even more with VO2 work and speed intervals and increase overall power, but don't neglect the fatigue resistance training on the weekend. Finally, keep a proper taper in the mix and that'll give you a little boost to performance and have fresh legs come race day. So that's it. That's our show for today.

Speaker 1: 25:29

If you liked what you heard, please share it with a friend or a training partner, and if you have any questions of your own, ask me by heading over to trainrightcom backslash podcast and click on ask a training question. Those get sent directly to me and my team at CTS and we'll do our best to answer it on a future episode. Thanks again for listening and we'll meet back here next week for more actionable training advice. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast that'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.