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.
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British Cycling, not Brotish. Fucking iDevice autocorrect.
Well then there's the difference between riding and racing, but I'm sure you'll be fine, even with the hard men of Cornwall.
Interesting comparison... in that race I mentioned, it was about 105km (3x35km laps) with 1200m climbing and an average speed of about 36km/h. I stayed with the lead bunch of about a dozen riders all the way. One of my team mates got dropped early on and did two laps pretty much on his own, finishing about 15 minutes after us.
His normalised power for the ride was 290W, mine was 294W. Even allowing for some calibration differences it shows the difference between the race ability to do 7 or 8 W/kg for 20 seconds and then settle back to 4W/kg, as opposed to the training ability to steadily crank it out .
He's about the same weight too, so he's made an almost identical effort with a massive difference in results.
@ChrisO
Interesting, without thinking too much into it, it would not have surprised me had the figures been the other way round. Given that riding in a bunch conserves energy vs getting dropped and riding solo but still staying at max pace vs going into cruise mode could end up using more power? Though it may well be that the difference is hidden by calibration and measurement accuracy.
@Fausto
Of course the part you don't know is whether you do that after 100K of riding and the KOM chasers just go out there to max on that climb.
@Teocalli
I'd regard the figures as effectively the same, definitely within margin of error.
The difference is match-burning ability. We were in a bunch which was quite dynamic - at times we were steadily chasing down, and at times we were responding to sudden attacks or making them. They're all matches which flare up - until you have none left.
If you look at my power curve and zone distribution (sorry we're getting all geeky) I had:
I love data.
@ChrisO
For those of us with all the geekiness but half the power, it is much appreciated.
Biggest thing for me, riding with a bunch who are much faster up, is pacing. If I try too hard to keep a wheel, pushing a gear or two higher when near the base of a climb, I am bound to get too much of a burn going and pop in the bottom quarter, slogging the rest in granny.
If I pace myself from the base, keep good tempo, maybe even ride one gear too easy just at the start, by the time I am in the top quarter of the climb I'm able to redline, pant, puff and puke the rest of the way, and gain back on them. I can also consistently push bigger gears throughout the climb, than if I'd blown up earlier.
I find this strategy leads to faster results overall on known climbs.
The biggest thing that has helped my climbing, is trying to keep up with those guys! It is tough keeping a positive mindset when you get dropped every ride, so make sure you do with a good bunch, or solo.
@ChrisO
Top geekery. Like you, I find it interesting and I'm learning more about using power to reveal strengths and weaknesses and to play to one and work on the other. I only jumped on the power bandwagon after the end of last season and the PM I have is not compatible with bike #1 (used for 'proper' road races), so I've just got to look at training data until bike #2 gets dragged out to the crits next month. It'll be interesting to see how race data matches up with training. What I am already finding useful is the tracking of training load to figure out when my form is good. Today was forecast to be a day when the good legs came out, and dammit, it felt easy all day.
@Chris
I rode Hell of the Ashdown yesterday and it was pretty eventful. A lot of ice for the first hour and I came down hard after the descent of Toys Hill. Cut my knee pretty bad, sprained my wrist and bruised shoulder. Ripped the new rapha l/s jersey that I got for Christmas and destroyed a wool defeet knee warmer and glove.
To top it off I checked my helmet this morning and that is also broken.
Apart from that I had a good ride, not fast but solid enough considering.
@norm
Ouch on so many levels... ripping a Rapha jersey is probably the most painful of all.