Just read your last post “mashed up the hills a little better”. If that’s an accurate characterization of your pedaling technique or effort
then that’s one place you can change right now. No mashing. Spin, dance, prance but don’t mash. The hill will not change with mashing.
Wrt frequency of riding one ot two times a week won’t do it if you want to increase capacity for power output. Make it four but two of them are recovery days which means all you do is get on the bike and spin even if its just five miles of spinning. Two days of riding where one is five miles of spinning and another 20miles of brisk riding is much, much better than one hard and erratic 25 mile ride.
Also consider cutting the group rides short to meet your training needs. If the ride has five hills and you’re not having fun by the third then only go three at the same speed you’d go on your hard days then call it quits. Let folks who would normally hang back for you know your plans. Btw “hard” does not mean busting a gut 95% effort, Hard is any effort that requires recovery. If you have to recover and take it easy at the top of the hill then that’s hard.
Basically the idea is to reduce power spikes across the board and move them into specific lengths of time approximate to your time on the hill and the output on the hill is steady, steady, steady.
You get good at what you do a lot. Riding once or twice a week will get you good at riding once or twice a week. Riding for specific periods of time at elevated efforts WITH scheduled recovery gets you good a doing just that which is what is required for going up hills faster or the same speed with reserves for doing more on the next hill.
Don’t just go harder or “ride more”. Put the rest and effort in the right place.
Last edited by LeeG; 03-21-23 at 01:42 PM.