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| Start of the Passo Sella |
"Will I be able to do the climbs?"
Things are a bit different over there. The climbs go on and on. Many start at heights way above the tops of UK hills, and climb way up into sub-altitude training territory.
They can be long - 20km, and they can be constant - 8% gradient all the way, and you can gain more height in a single climb than you would in the whole of a UK sportive.
How are you going to prepare for these kind of climbs?
I've started trying to get my head around the climbs I'll be doing this summer in the Dolomites. Lets look at one climb - the Passo Sella in the Italian mountain range. Truly spectacular scenery and a relatively modest climb - 436m will get you up to the top but this is still much more than just about any road up a hill in the UK.
Clearly, if I could ride up a similar hill in the UK that would help me prepare for it.
Even in a hilly part of the UK you need to pick your hills carefully to find one with over 100m of height gain. Yes, many will be much steeper than the Passo Sella but finding one that is even a third of its height gain will take some looking for.
OK, lets say you can find a hill with 140m of gain. Brilliant, you now need to do training that involves "hill repeats" - that means going up it, turning around and coasting back down it and going up it again. Do that twice and you've got 280m of height gain, and 3 times will give you 420m and that is within spitting distance of the Passo Sella. In fact your UK hill will very likely be steeper so you may be doing a higher load, and this may make up for the short rests you'll get as you coast back down to do the next hill repeat.
Psychologically, it can also help when surrounded by high pinnacles and peaks to remember that the stupendous mountain you are scaling is actually just 3x your local hill that you climb every week.