Your favorite hill workout

Do some work, no more than 2x a week where you ride larger gears at lower RPM's on the trainer, maybe one day fairly short blocks of 1-2 mins at say 55 rpm's and one day longer bouts of 5-10 mins at 75 rpms, then do your normal tempo or whatever on the thrid day. You can continue this through the rest of the winter and should lay down some connective tissue and build some strength. Practice real strict form with a nice straight leg action through the whole pedal stroke, use your ankles a bit and keep your upper body quiet. 8 weeks of that will really help you once you get outside and start working the hills in earnest.<br><br>
I think the other thing about Placid is getting comfortable going fast, you need to ball the jack going down into Keene valley, it's a long fast hill that will make a difference

Beth, I'm on week 7 of these workouts, but I start racing in a few weeks, so you are in good shape--here's exactly what I'm doing, if that helps:<br><br>
one day:<br><br>
12 x 1 min on 1 min off, large gear at 50 rpm's--hr comes up but not too high<br><br>
rest a minute<br><br>
20-40 (increases every week) power tempo, hardish resistence at 80 rpm's--hr comes up but not too much, maybe 10 below AT tops<br><br>
Day 2 - 4 x 10 minutes, 5 mins recovery. This is hardest, should be challenging level of resistence, 90 rpm's should be able to hold for each interval with concentration, all below AT, try to increase rsistence week over week<br><br><br>
Day 3 - Tempo starts at 30 mins, goes up to 70 mins (plus warm up and cool down, I use 20 and 10) 90 rpms, challenging level of resistence, but one you can hold for the whole time where your HR doesn't drift up more that 5-10 beats--use a fan and drink a lot, this is a hard workout mentally, can sub in 2 x 20 mins if you prefer at somewhat harder resistence.<br><br>
If you wish to try these, email me and I'll send you some pages you can use to record your HR and such during the workouts to track change, it helps