Training
Training
It’s often on a climb that a professional race is won or lost, and in a sportive it’s likely that any significant lumps in the profile will produce the most pre-ride nerves.
It important, therefore, to make sure you have trained for the task in hand, and, even at the top level of professional cycling, it’s no different for Swift.
“Most of the work I do is on the climbs,” he says. “In professional cycling, that’s where any selection gets made, and for me, six-kilometre climbs are around my limit as to what I can get over [and stay in contention], so that’s where I do most of my work.”
Swift pays particular attention to his lactate threshold (a measure of how well the body can process lactate acid), working to improve his ability to ride at his Functional Threshold Power (the power you can theoretically maintain for an hour). For efforts of ten minutes or longer (and so particularly relevant for longer climbs), lactate threshold is the physiological factor that will determine how much power a rider can put out. The higher a rider’s lactate threshold, the more power they can sustain.
You can read our previous article to find out more about lactate threshold, and how to improve it, but Swift recommends using a local climb as a benchmark of your form.
“Have a familiar climb and use it as a test,” says Swift. “If you have a local climb which you ride regularly, and it normally takes you 20 minutes, and after a period of training you can ride it at 19 minutes, then you can see a clear improvement. Find a climb that you can go full gas on and use that as a benchmark to test your form.”
Now, with pacing, technique and training covered, how can you improve your descending skills to ensure your new-found speed uphill doesn’t go to waste? Read on.