Thanks a million for all the advice – all of it. I especially appreciate brutally honest advice, as there’s no better way to get better, and the physics of watts required.
Major takeaways:
Agree that my gearing is fine. And though I did just turn 50, I said “aging” not “old” or “decrepit”. I’m healthy, feel good, and can (will!) do the work.
Yes, I need to lose weight! Agreed, and happy to make the effort. Ideally, I need to shed ~25 kilos (~55 pounds).
I looked over my recent first efforts at hills, and I’m clearly trying to go way too fast: 80-85 rpm, 13-15 kph (8-9 mph). Hence the gobs of power required.
Increasing power is totally viable for me. I started riding in 2019, rode two years then got sidelined (zero sports) due to unrelated injury. So I’m just now restarting my riding, but I did have a 212W FTP in early 2021. Long term, I’m targeting at least 250W FTP.
For now, I’ll slow waaaaay down; I’ll do my strength training and my low-volume training (two structured rides and one long Z2); and I’ll focus on getting stronger and lighter.
By the end of this year, I should be – at least – down to 100 kg (220 lbs) and up to 220W FTP. That’s a solid 50% improvement in my W/kg; and if/when I can hit my 250W and 85kg targets, I’d be brushing up against 3 W/kg.
I don’t mind that I suck at the moment, but it bothered me that I didn’t know what to do to get better. I knew I needed to be stronger and lighter, but the fact that I need to SLOWER is a revelation. Again, a million thanks to all of you.
Seeing all the “lose weight, get stronger, add bigger gearing” posts can be overwhelming. They’re correct - and have thus been repeated countless times just in this thread.
The above quote is a bit of a gem (that may have been lost amongst the sea of advice) that you CAN do while you’re losing weight, buffing your FTP, and adding gears. Zig zag up those climbs, and it’s going to reduce the grade a bit, HELP you get better at climbing, and make it less likely that you’ll have to hike a bike. This is immeasurably more fun than walking and feeling defeated.
Also, 1300ft of elevation gain on a hill is not a tiny hill!
Give yourself grace, be patient with your growth, and most of all have fun.
As another larger rider (also 50 years old) whose weight can fluctuate dramatically, I think you’re on the right track. I’m currently 207 trying to get down to 190 this summer, was mid-220s last summer, and have been anywhere from 185 to 238 over the past decade. My FTP is currently 285.
The positive side is that you’ll be actively working both sides of the equation (weight and power), so you’ll be able to feel some real progress fairly quickly.
My rule when I’m starting back up after being on the heavier side is try to finish rides feeling like I want to do more. The slow, painful, uphill grinds can be demoralizing, so I always try to make sure I have a few flat, easy miles left before the ride is over to get the heart rate down, just spin a while, and enjoy the ride. I live on a mountain ridgeline in northern New England, so riding more than three miles in any direction means at least 1000’ of climbing to get back home. Sometimes, this just sucks. So I drive three miles into town to make sure I start and finish with about three or four miles of bike path before I do anything else.
One sneaky pro tip: if you’re doing structured workouts indoors, do them in the little ring. The lower flywheel speeds will simulate the low-inertia demands of climbing and will make a big difference in how prepared you feel for a climb.
I assume you’re talking about going up to Perkins Tower. It’s definitely doable at a relaxed ~1.2 W/kg pace, but expect to be grinding up at around 50-60 rpm. It’ll take over an hour at this pace, but again it’s definitely doable.
The biggest challenge will be to chill out and take it as slow as you can. Practice this on the shorter hills first, take it as easy as possible, make it a game to go as slow as you can and focus on your breathing.
For clarity on this suggestion, there are two ways to accomplish it, and both rely on a Smart Controlled trainer.
Use Resistance / Standard / Level mode and adjust the setting value to a number appropriate to allow use of lower gears on the bike. This setting can be fine tuned to hit the range of power desired for the rider along with the goal gearing combo.
Use ERG mode and lower gears on the bike. Some trainers have Wattage Floor issues where they may not be able to achieve some power levels in lower gears. But considering the relatively low power of the OP, that is not likely to be an issue initially. If that is ever the case, it may require slightly taller, low gears to hit power targets.
I am not a coach, but let me speak from my personal experience and observation/knowledge. I see some have posted advice to power up the climb at 50 rpm seated. I agree with the seated part, but 50 rpm! Yikes! I would advise a high cadence between 70-90 rpm. This may require some training. Try doing some intervals such as 3 x 10 min. at tempo or sweet spot 85% of FTP. Do this in high cadence near 100 rpm… You may need to work up to the duration and slowly increase your cadence over time. This will help develop your aerobic capacity with higher cadence. Spin up these climbs and take your time. It takes practice and training. Have fun and enjoy the process.
You can write this down for your 2022 Cycling Goals. However, don’t fret on FTP. Even if you maintain your present FTP, dropping weight will improve your w/kg - which improves your climbing ability. You will also be learning gearing and the ability to climb. Gradual improvement in weight will encourage you but don’t get to greedy on weight loss. Constant improvement is the pathway.
You can only ride at such high cadences when you have very low gears an/or low resistance. The advice to ride a slower cadence is so that power stays low. If you try and spin at 90 rpm, irrespective of the gradient/resistance, you’ll increase the power requiered enourmously, and as the OP has a lowish FTP, that is not sustainable.
You need to be able to vary cadence and use your gears to suit the terrain.
Indoors I’m on a StagesBike (SB20), so the little ring doesn’t apply to me… but is excellent advice for anyone on a smart trainer.
Over ~10 months off the bike, my FTP had dropped from 212W to 159W, but I’m happy to report that my first 7 weeks of re-training are already yielding progress: just today the AI FTP Detection feature assessed me at 176W!
It is, the gears are not low enough. Ellotheth posted a calculation further up in the thread, at 160W, the OP would ride up a 7% gradient at 6kph. If you look at bikecalc.com or similar, you can see that in their lowest gear (31-36), 6kph means 55rpm. Obviously, higher rpm can be used, but not with a 160 W power restriction.
I have not read every response so if this was said before sorry. The key is not FTP, but endurance. You can have all kinds of short duration FTP but if you can not sustain it then that will not help. However unless you are going to massively increase your FTP so that your climbing power is 60- 70% of FTP then it becomes easy.
Another thing to consider is practicing even on short hills to be able to stand for longer durations. Once you get the hang of it it can really be a great way to get over those tougher section in a climb. The height you are climbing and the % incline says you will be at it for a while so the next thing is mental just know it will be like this for a while and settle in. In other words embrace the pain… it is part of climbing a mountain. I am a fair bit older than you but also a bit on the lighter side. That does not change the fact you have to go to the pain threshold and stay there for 30- 45 minutes or more… in the end that is the thing that makes climbing a thing, you know it will hurt but you also know you can do it. Nothing beats the feeling of getting to the top and for me the time it took to get there just looses meaning. It is transcendental.
I started riding in DFW where we had “hills” but only ones that you could go completely anaerobic on. I used to love sprinting over the top of them - being kinda proactive rather than letting them dictate the pace to me.
Then I moved to Boulder. What I learned very quickly is that some hills require pacing and sometimes, pacing involves riding slower than I ever thought I’d have to.
The other thing I learned is that it’s a bad idea to ride hills that leave you destroyed more than a couple of times a week. Fortunately, Boulder is laid out so that you can ride any direction but west and get flat roads. Hopefully NJ is the same. Do the hills that are killing you 2-3 times/week and the rest of the time, just try to get in endurance or tempo miles. Go find some flat-ish roads that don’t kill you.
This will give you the aerobic conditioning you need without leaving you overtrained. Pretty soon, you will see your fitness improve and you’ll be able to ride those hills faster and with less time in the red. Basically, improve your ceiling so you can do more things without blowing up.
It won’t be long before you’re seeking out more and more hills for fun but never forget that sometimes you need to ride at a lower intensity so having some easy routes in your pocket is important.
BTW, don’t be ashamed to use that 31/36 and just spin at 4mph. Just don’t fall over.
Reading the OP, you could be me when I started, you’re 1kg lighter than I was, and my first FTP test was 170w after about 9 months of training, at this point you could BE me from the past…
You’ve had the brutally honest replies, I’m not gonna repeat in detail, other than now I’ve lost 35kg (BMI 33 - > 23) and my ftp is substantially higher (1.6 to 4.0 peak) , everything is a LOT easier. Even when I took a BIG crash and my ftp went down to ~200w (from 296 peak), things were still so much easier than when I started… It takes discipline and time, but it’s perfectly doable if you want it enough.
Inthe interim, big gears (I was running 11-34 and compact), sensible route choice and accept you’ll have to really grind (<60 rpm) at times. Only way to do this is practice indoors at those cadences, or just go flogging on hills (I did both), it’ll feel awful, and you may still occasionally walk, but trust me, it’ll get easier quickly.
Sorry, for low W/kg climbers like myself I don’t agree the little chainring is a pro tip.
The reality is that a low W/kg requires doing high force (torque) efforts up 6-8% climbs. If you don’t have hills to practice high force efforts, and you are targeting long climbs you will likely need to lower your cadence to generate more force.
Power meters measure torque and convert to Watts (power = 2 x Pi x Torque x Cadence / 60). For the same watts, if you lower cadence then torque will increase.
In my experience with a Kickr, lowering cadence to 60-70rpm is best done in Zwift or RGT Cycling or slope/standard mode. In erg mode it just feels like I’m fighting the spiral of death, no matter little or big chainring.
Most of my big climbs with 34x32 or 34x34 or 35x36 gearing have been completed at 50-70rpm with an FTP in the 2.5-3.0W/kg range. Generating that same amount of force on the trainer in Erg mode using TR? The only time I see similar force is the vo2 intervals in vo2max workouts like Mills or Dade.
Pro tip for low W/kg climbers - practice climbing on the trainer or in flatland by lowering your cadence.
It might have be said above, with cadence @AgingCannon too low is a grind and will a strain on your legs and too high can be a waste of energy. Although in the long term as you cardiovascular system develops a higher cadence may eventually be more efficient. However for now you want a cadence that’s in between that suits you (65-80rpm works best for me but it might not work for you, it also depends on the hill) and perhaps in the longer term gradually and naturally increase it.
I’m healthy, feel good, and can (will!) do the work.
