Strategy for handling short very steep hills?

1/2 a mile is around two minutes - personally, I'd stick it in my lowest gear and spin up it, taking the HR spike.  Walking half a mile could take around 7 minutes and that's not worth it. 

Not sure when Vineman is but if you've got time, include that hill in your training as much as possible - you'll be much more used to it when you face it on race day and know which gears and style is your favourite.

Different gearing on your bike? Different cassette? Drop your cadence down and spin slower might help.

Every time you spike hr/power it hurts your run in an IM.

My bike is already pretty low geared (for a racing bike).  I'd have to check, but it's either 39x25 or 39x27.

On the 7+% grade, I'm out of gears, so my cadence drops, and even so the HR still spikes.

I'm with a dilemma.  I _could_ do a bunch of hill training over the next 13 weeks to see if I can get strong enough to tackle the hill without a HR spike.

But, the idea of spending a bunch of time doing hill work runs counter to the idea of LSD that I need for my ironman training without overly risking injury or overtraining burnout.

I'm already planning on hitting some BIG hills once a week, or once every other week, but doing more than that seem very counterproductive towards my general training.

Will 5-10 BIG hill climbs, plus my other cycling training on rolling hills, be enough to make it over that little hill with relative easy?  I'm not optimistic about it.  



That's exactly my fear.  

To use Dan's numbers, I can grind to a stop without pushing myself overly hard and guess that I'll make it up 1/2 the hill.

So, to be conservative, I'd say that could take 5 minutes extra over cycling slowly up the steep hill.  Two laps, is 10 minutes total.

So,  the question, is will/could the two HR spikes in the middle of my ride cost me more than 10 minutes on the rest of the bike, and the run?

P.S. Thanks for your opinions.

In addition to the hill training, I would strongly suggest you consider switching to a compact crankset with 50/36 or 50/34.

Shane

Okay, there's probably a winner for the best idea.  :-)

But if I don't swap out my crankset, I've decided that I shouldn't be worried about walking a bit to avoid HR spikes.  When running, if I get to an extremely steep hill, I have no problem slowing to a walk to conserve energy.  Cycling shouldn't be any different, should it?

If you won't have a compact crank, what about just incorporating a regular hill a little longer and steeper than the hill at issue into your training?  That way, you won't stress about it and will have built the strength to get up it without a huge HR blowup.  I'm doing this for IM Lou training because my new bike has a standard crank and the hills on my regular route get easier every week.  Really, they do.

Are you talking about Chalk Hill? If so, it's not that bad and only gets that steep towards the very end.

Yeah, it's that last little steep bit that I was asking about.  But I'm not overly worried.

With my current fitness, my HR will jump up into zone 5 for that last 1/2 mile at 7.7% grade.

The solution seems to be to buy a compact crankset, to improve my fitness such that I can get over that steep bit without a HR spike, or to simply get off my bike when my HR reaches a max and walk a tiny bit. 

Off to cycle some big hills today.  :-)

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