Categories: Technique

Climbing Tips for the Non-Climber

Non-Climber Magnus Bäckstedt, 195cm, 90kg

I’m a non-climber who enjoys climbing. I’d enjoy it more if I was good at it. And “enjoy” might be too strong a word, “tolerate” might be better. But dragging 89 kilos up a volcano gives one time to contemplate the cycling life .

Let us define non-climber. It’s someone either too fat, too big (gravitationally challenged) or a fast- twitching sprinter. Not liking to suffer does not make you a non-climber. As the moto camera drifts down the peloton on the Ventoux, it’s still the guys at the back who are dying the worst. Finishing within the time limit for the non-climber requires a trip deep into the cave-o-pain.

For the cyclist, the power-to-weight ratio (watts generated/body weight in kg) is king, especially when the road goes up. A large improvement in the power side of the formula is tough, we have already chosen our damn parents and cursed inheriting their vestigial hearts and lungs. Yes, this number should be honed to its finest edge, it can be nudged up but not a lot.

The weight side of the equation is completely changeable and under our control.

Lose some weight, you fat bastards. Yes, I’m talking to you. The most important thing to improve climbing, by far, is to lose some weight. Do you need dramatic proof? Put a known weight (2 liter bottles of water) into a knapsack and do a regular route. The hills will be bad, very bad. Now imagine losing that same two or four kilos. The difference can be just as impressive. When I’m at a decent riding weight, climbing out of the saddle for extended periods is not a problem. I’m still slow but gravity is not demanding I put my ass on the saddle. Losing body weight is free; one looks better on and off the bike. Your friends will hate you. What is the down side? Oh right, it takes self-control and not drinking as much alcohol as life requires.

Don’t carry extra weight on the bike. If you really don’t need a second large bidon, don’t carry that 0.8kg. That’s more than the difference between super-light climbing wheels and regular road wheels. For reasons I’ll never understand, a bike that is one kilo lighter seems noticeably faster than the one kilo saved from a bidon. So yes, N+1 can be invoked but it’s much cheaper to just leave that second bottle at home.

LeMan said the key to climbing was to relax…easy for him to say when he had the heart and lungs of three Velominati. But Rule #10 is Rule #10 so meditate on relaxing while dancing uphill. Find a little rhythm. Click up into a longer gear, pop out of the saddle, shift back down, park it back in the saddle.

Find a gear you can turn over comfortably. As we all know, Dr Ferrari was the one to get Lance to spin up climbs. It’s tough to know where the EPO stopped and the spinning started but it did seem to work for him. While some may argue for climbing in the big chainring, for us non-climbers, climbing in the saddle and spinning a gear will get us up faster and with less collateral damage.

The best part of climbing as a non-climber is that we are out there, doing it. The Stelvio, hell yeah, it’s going to take a little longer to get up there but we will do it. We don’t stop, we don’t put a foot down. We suffer like you-know-who on you-know-what but we still do it with a stupid smiles on our faces.

 

Gianni

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  • @McTyke

    The most important attribute for climbing well up significant mountains like the Stelvio, assuming you're in reasonable physical shape, is MENTAL STRENGTH. You've got to accept that you'll be going up an 8% gradient (+/- a few percent) with no respite for two to three hours. That's a long time! So, you've got to settle in for the duration, enjoy the constantly changing views as you slowly progress up the mountain, and relax as much as possible. One of the most common problems people have is developing knee pain from pushing too high a gear. I used my lowest gear (34×30) for much of the Stelvio ascent during the Raid Dolomites last summer and I'm not a bad climber (173cm, 63 kg).

    Thanks for the heads up. I guess a better granny gear is in order for the Stelvio. I can handle the steady 5-6% here on Maui but 8%  for many hours will require something better. And losing some weight.

  • @andrew

    At 1.88m and 67-68kg, I know it's not really my weight holding me back, just as-yet insufficient heart-lung training. But I'm always a little surprised that despite feeling like I'm dying on hills and that butterflies must surely be able to rest happily on my spokes, I do ok compared to others who ride around here.

    Bastard! You pro skinny bastard! If you don't feel like dying on the hills you "probably aren't riding hard enough"

    and refined sugar is POISON, no minerals, no vitamins, no fibre, no fucking good.

  • VERY well written, thank you. This is the part of my love of cycling that I'm dreading, really. After over four months off the bike due to injuries, ilnesses, and accidents - okay, the accident was the catalyst, but the injuries and ilnesses came shortly after - I'm really looking forward to getting on my climbs again.

    And losing weight. I'm working on that one now. I've already lost almost 12kg since the ill-fated (for me, anyway) 2nd Annual Bay Area Cogal - for which I weighed in at 104kg. I'm hoping that by the time the next Bay Area Cogal comes around, I'll have lost another 12kg. Current goal is 84kg, but eventual goal is 80kg.

  • Am I the last to get to the top of this steep article?  No one had the power to wait?

    I love-tolerate climbing, perhaps precisely because I'm so crap at it. Purest form of challenge: wind, road conditions, none of it matters.  Just you, your front wheel, and keeping the legs turning at one rpm below blowing up. I don't mind being left behind while I have a heart-to-heart with the butterflies.  And little by little, I get better at it.

  • @andrew

    @piwakawaka

    @andrew

    Bastard! You pro skinny bastard!

    That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me on the internets!

    You know how people say 'lol' but don't really mean it?  I genuinely laughed at that!

  • @Gianni

    @xyxax

    Oh this will be so much better on the Alchemy. Can't wait for the first climbing reports.

    Ah, fratello, you'll be the first in your time zone to hear about it.  Need to get the drive train on .  And for the snow to stop for 5 fucking seconds.

  • @ChrisO

    @Fausto

    Should I be happy that I'm putting out 5W/kg+ for 5 mins as a 3rd Cat then? Roll on the hilly races this year! (I still think I'm going to get my arse handed to me, but that's just me being pessimistic until proven otherwise)

    I know it's meaningless, it was meant more as a dig at the original comments lack of qualification for power vs time. Faustina can put out 5W/kg , but it doesn't last long and she normally needs extensive cake therapy to recover.

    Yes I think you should be. Of course it also depends what you're doing - 5W/kg on the flat is less effective if you weigh 60kg, but devastating going uphill.

    In our race today we had a short sharp hill we went over three times - and I was doing about 5.3W/kg up it for 2 minutes. That's put me eighth overall on Strava for that segment (one second ahead of Oscar Pujol, a pro rider) and more importantly I was in the first two or three over the hill each time in the leading break.

    Don't forget values of 6W/kg are regarded as Tour de France level - admittedly that's at threshold but 5W/kg is pretty good even for 5 minutes (probably best to avoid the cake therapy afterwards though). It's not just my opinion - if you look at the power profiles of Andrew Coggan (Training Peaks) it's well up there.

    Whilst the Brotish Cycling category system works in my favour on this chart, and my status as Cat 3 is equivalent to US Cat 4 (our system is Elite/1/2/3/4 rather than Cats 1-5), it doesn't take into account the cycling anomaly that is racing in the South West.  I'm doing a hilly Cat 3/4 race next month and with 5W/kg for 5 mins+ in the tank  I'm still training  hard to make sure I don't get dropped on the main climb. They breed them tough down here; the upside is that  if you can keep up here then you get good results when you travel further afield. 

    To illustrate, I put 5.3W/kg up a local climb that's not even on a race route and I'm just about in the top 10% of Strava times up it, and nearly 30 seconds off the KOM. Hard riding.

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