Originally Posted by
surak
A relentless effort of 90 min or longer is going to be tough on anyone. Climbs like AdZ or Ventoux don't really let up, unlike flatter or rolling routes where you get the opportunity to recover by freewheeling. For AdZ, becoming familiar with it helps, as mentally knowing what to expect makes it feel so much less daunting. Ride it enough (it's great that there's a prize wheel to further incentivize doing so) and it'll eventually become no big thing. Those climbs are great for improving your sustained power.
Spot on...I know a few people who use elevation in their training plan to do 1hr sweet spot or threshold sessions.
Originally Posted by
base2
Absolutely, more natural.
Set the trainer difficulty (realism) to 100% for the most real experience. The trainer will grind even the most capable cyclist to a halt if the wrong gear is selected on a steep incline.
If you are spinning a weirdly high cadence on a 15% grade, there is something wrong somewhere & that is why people (myself included) spend the big bucks on a smart trainer. The best ones simulate a 20% grade or more.
The trainer difficulty is effectively scaling the "game" grade down to some percentage to a "trainer" grade & then the game calculates your avatars progress in the game world accordingly. Which can be useful in cases where your real world bike has a 32 cassette, but the trainer has a 28 cassette, you can set the slider to 85-90% & have a reasonably close approximation to the gearing on your real world bike.
What this also means is: If you have it set to zero difficulty, (ie dumb trainer) you are effectively on flat land no matter what the game world shows & you can spin ridiculously fast on stupid steep grades. Realism=0 That's not necessarily a bad thing. It can be useful in it's own right if you'd like to do a climb, but don't have the strength or fitness, or a disability (hand cycle) or appropriate equipment (like a 14-23 cob) but have lots & lots of time to do it.
You have to find the right balance which considers the gearing of the bike you are using and your fitness level. Even the pro's have bikes geared for climbing when doing epic climbs. It makes no sense if your bike is geared a 53/39 - 11/23 to set it at 100% (which effectively replicates those gears) when you would really have a compact 50/34 and 11-32 or 11-34 in the rear if doing it for real.
That's the other thing people need to consider whenever someone says set it to 100%..... chances are they have a bike with compact (50/34) or semi compact (52/36) chainrings and at least 11-30 rear.....It's apples to oranges when someone else is running a standard setup...not nearly the same.
What someone needs to do is find the TD setting that allows them one extra gear to fall back on while they are spinning at sweetspot or threshold power. This ensures that you will stay working, and you will have that one gear to fall back on just in case.