RetroDork

I just signed up for a 9-11 memorial tower climb event. It's 2 trips up the stairs for a total of 130 floors.
I'm not sure how long it will take- it's a memorial climb that includes firefighters in full gear.
I'm guestimating about 2 hours total.
I've been back on the bike for about 6 weeks or so- mostly for endurance/cardio training and general fitness.
I do a 5 minute warm up ride, then some calisthenics, then a few sets with light ( 40 pounds) weights. Then I ride 8ish miles of rolling hills - with an average speed of a blistering 12-13 miles per hours (witha couple stops for chin ups). I used to do 7-8 miles hikes on the weekends on rough, rocky terrain in addition to crossfit style workouts 3 times a week, so I think I have a decent change of making through this event.
I do my workouts and rides 3 times a week, but I wonder if I need to do less biking and maybe more hiking and stair climbing in the next 3-4 weeks to specifically prepare for this event. It's less training time than I'd really like, but it is what it is.

I'm late 40's, 6ft tall and about 190 pounds.
How screwed am I?

gregf83 

Are you doing it in full gear? Biking is perfect training and a more interesting than going up and down stairs. That said, do you have to go down the stairs as well? Biking won't help with the going down part.

Doctor Morbius

Personally, I doubt cycling will help much at all. I'm a firm believer in specificity of training. If one wants to improve at climbing stairs, one should center their training regimen around climbing stairs.

MRT2

Bingo. You want to get better at climbing stairs, work more stair climbing into your routine.

gregf83 

It's the same muscles used and it translates very well. Plus it's more fun than running up a set of staircases.

datlas 

I would find/borrow a stair master or equivalent. Or find a rarely used escalator and walk up the down one.

FWIW I am in pretty good cycling shape and do a lot of climbing. We were recently at Bunker Hill and I ran up the stairs (only 293 steps, much less than your event). It felt ok but the next few days my legs were SORE!

Homebrew01

True, but the cycling benefit will only happen if you ride hard, especially hills. Puttering along flat roads will not help.
Sustained climbs, especially out of the saddle will more closely replicate stairs.

gregf83 

Correct. You'd need to do some sustained intervals at a decent pace. They don't necessarily need to be on hills but you do need to ride hard for some periods preferably in a big gear. Personally, I don't have any easy access to stairs so I'd rather ride my bike.

We have a local ski hill that everyone climbs for exercise. It's not scenic but it's about 800m of elevation in 1.8km and contains many steps (natural and man-made). I usually do it once or twice a year and can ascend in under 40min without killing myself. Fastest climber and record holder was a local pro cyclist. Top stair climbers look just like top cycling climbers.

That said this event is a tribute, not a race, and I think most of the participants will be firefighters or members of public safety, not skinny, hill climbing cyclists.

f4rrest

I can ride up mountains all day at a pretty good pace, but a couple flights of stairs gets me breathing like I'm on a tempo ride, so I don't think cycling fitness translates to stair climbing all that well.

Training on a Stairmaster or actual stairs would be the thing to do.

Willbird

I think it will help a LOT :-).

Before I started cycling (or recycled myself as I call it because I rode a few years years ago) I was walking, I could raise my heart rate walking, I started cycling due to walking at 280lbs hurting my knees.

Well after a month of cycling walking no matter how swiftly I walked would not raise my HR above about 110 BPM.

That said some stair climbing might be good TOO, but cycling if you do intervals and such will raise your VO2 max maybe above what you could achieve by stair climbing, maybe :-).

One man I know entered a contest to run up and down the Washington Monument stairs as many times as possible in one hour. To Train he ran the bleacher seats at his college with a barbell on his shoulders, he started with just the bar, then added plates, his final training load of bar and plates was 350 lbs. I do not recall the exact number of trips he made in the contest but he was wayyyy in the lead when the promoter halted the contest due to fear that some contestants would die of heat prostration.

Bill

gregf83 

That's just because you're not familiar pacing yourself on stairs. I suspect you don't ride up 40% slopes at a good pace on a bike. If you can climb on your bike at 1000VAM you should be able to do the same or better going on stairs or up a mountain.

f4rrest

VAM is an interesting way to compare. Hadn't thought about applying it to stairs.

gregf83 

I think you can also probably figure out cadence as well. If you climb 1000m and each step is .2m that's 5000 steps in 60 min or 83 SPM. Not far off the 80RPM I used on a recent 1 hr climb although it was 900 not 1000m

redtires

I kind of think that the benefit would be the opposite. Climbing stairs may help you in your cycling, but not so much in the other direction. Absolutely no data....just my "seems to reason" opinion.

Machka 

Even when I was in my best cycling shape ... I still struggled climbing stairs. Climbing stairs is hard. Up to 3 flights of stairs ... no problem. After that it gets harder and harder.

I'd recommend climbing stairs as training ... if you can, find a building with 10 or more floors and do that climb 2 or 3 times a day, 5 days a week for the next week ... then more often the following week ... then more often the week after. Plus the hiking.


Right now, I work on the 5th floor of my building, and I try to climb those stairs at least once a day. In the beginning I looked like I needed medical attention when I got to the top ... now I'm just barely puffing.

And I think it may be helping my cycling.

Dave Cutter

+1 Climb stairs.

colnago62

I rode with a team that would do hill intervals in the winter. We would climb diagonally up this steep climb, bent over slightly to approximate the cycling position. Your legs would be burning at the end of the workout. Felt like riding up a steep hill in a low gear.

C9H13N 

Put some gallon jugs of water in a backpack and climb stairs with it.

EastCoastDHer

I practiced for the local FD with a 45lb weight vest a buddy gave me.
....then I started doing sprints wearing it (on the bike). Made a good warm up for working out. I passed the stair climber part easy (passed the test too!). Message me if you'd like a run down of that workout (it's tough!)

FLvector

Ideally, if you have stairs you can practice on and do repeats it would be better than cycling, especially if you're not pushing the pace. I have a stair climber at the gym I go to and occasionally spend some time on it. It is a very different workout than cycling, however, some of the same muscles are engaged. I'd guess that cycling could help some, but nowhere near the same as actually practicing by climbing stairs. If you don't have stairs at your disposal, is it worth locating a gym that has a stair climber?

RetroDork

The only problem is I don't have any tall buildings near me. I might call the local FD and see if they know fo the tallest ones in our area.

I do have access to a high school football stadium with a lot of steps, so that's probably what I'll be using for my stair work.

I figure I day of 60 or so minutes of stair climbing - probably Monday.
Then intervals on some small rolling hills on Wednesday.
And some intervals on foot on a short, steep hill - forwards and backwards, followed by some hiking for a few hours and maybe more intervals after the hike on Friday.

That's basically what I used to do. Either a sand bag or a 20 pound dumbbell wrapped in a towel in my backpack. I'll do that on the bleacher stairs and the hikes.

RetroDork

Whoops- I tried to PM you, but i have to have 50 posts in order to do that. Can you PM me?

Trevtassie

You'll definitely need to do both bike and steps. Recently climbed 1650m up a mountain while on tour. Seemed effortless at the time due to my high level of fitness. Next day I was practically crippled, all those muscles I hadn't used cycling came back to bite me. Even walking down a wheel chair ramp was painful.
I'd be doing the backpack or weightvest thing on stairs to get the right muscles in tune, especially for descending!

Machka 

If it were me, I'd do those 60 minutes stair climbing on more days than just Monday.

I'd probably go with something like 60 min stair climbing on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday ... then do the intervals and hiking on the weekend. Take Tuesday and Friday off to rest. You'd have to arrange the pattern to suit your schedule, but go with stair climbing 3 days a week, other stuff 2 days, and rest 2 days.

I know when I was climbing the stairs at work ... when I was doing it about once a week (plus lots of cycling and walking), I was really struggling to get up. But when I started doing it just about every day, it started to get easier.

And if you can get into a tall building on one stair climbing day, that would be good.


(So far today I've climbed 10 flights of stairs ... hoping for another 5 or 10 later. )

kbarch

It's not just pace. I don't just get out of breath climbing stairs, my legs get cranky. Even on relatively short flights sometimes. Funny thing is, I don't remember that being such a problem when I didn't ride a bike and lived in a 5th floor walk-up, or when was in the Navy and had to climb 10 flights to get to the bridge. Of course I was a lot younger then.