Chris O

I've been trying to modify my riding to a more polarized training schedule, with my easy days easier and my hard days harder. The challenge is I live in hilly area. Combine that with the fact I'm a big guy (100 kg) and it is nearly impossible to ride and not put in at least a few significant efforts on all the hills. A truly easy recovery ride is not much of an option around my house.

This also makes it challenging to do structured intervals with no long flat stretches. I do get plenty of random "intervals" by climbing all those short to medium hills, but it lacks structure.

If anyone has dealt with a similar scenario and come up with good strategies, I'd be interested to read them

Chris

redlude97

50/34 11-36 is the gearing I use for hilly seattle commutes to keep my rides easy. Then you just have to learn to keep the power down. Usually that means 4mph at ~60rpm on 8-10% grades. Helps if you have a powermeter to watch your efforts along with HR

rubiksoval

Polarized training only means that 80% of your training sessions are easy and 20% are hard. It has nothing to do with the actual percentage of time spent at any particular intensity, though of course an easy day should be properly easy. But going up a hill isn't going to affect that concept.

With all that said, it's not really a training plan that anyone actually uses (in reality, there's a whole helluva lot of adaptations in the sub-threshold region of training), and it's certainly not one you should use if you're already questioning its practicality. I'd just ignore the entire concept and focus on getting more riding in. On a couple of days, hit the hills really hard. Other days, just get up them spinning as easily as possible. Fitness will come with consistent riding.

As far as structure, nearly all of my longer intervals are on hills (anything from 30 secs to 6 mins). Other sweetspot/threshold stuff I do through rolling hills. You just learn to push the downhills as hard as the uphills (as long as safety allows). It takes some getting used to, but it's definitely doable.

Carbonfiberboy 

It's an interesting concept, but requires a lot of discipline. I tried it, but it just wasn't fun enough. I like to go fast. I like kinetic sports.

Be that as it may, it's really quite easy. Well, easy depending on the size of your hills. Around here, it's very easy to put together 50'/mile routes. On a route like that, yup, about 20% of my time is climbing if I go hard on the climbs. YMMV. The challenge is holding the effort down on the little bumps and flats.

downtube42

Sure, no problem. When it get so steep you can't easily spin up, get off and walk. Be sure you walk slowly enough to keep the intensity low - even walking up a steep incline can be higher intensity than you're after on easy days.

srode1

I find intervals on the road are too difficult to stay in the zone so I do them on the trainer, and do my endurance / distance on the road where staying in the zone isn't as critical.

Road Fan

This is along the lines of what I would try, have wide-range gears on your bike, enabling you to keep cadence up reasonably well and your power down in (I think it's) Friel zones 1 and 2.