Most riders who get dropped on climbs aren't losing to fitness. They're losing to pacing errors, mismatched training, and showing up underfueled. This episode of the Roadman Cycling podcast breaks down five specific mistakes and how to fix them.
Key Takeaways
The biggest gain for most riders is pacing, not power. The WBAL concept, which Anthony discussed in detail with Catalan development coach Alex Wellelburn, shows you have a fixed battery for any given effort duration. Go out too hard at the base of a 2-minute climb and you're dipping into reserves you need for the top. The fix is practicing a negative split on your regular climbs. Same climb, two days in a row. First day you ride it instinctively. Second day you deliberately ride the first half easier. Anthony says you'll go faster on day two.
For climbs over 15 minutes, the sessions matter. Sweet spot at 88-91% of threshold and threshold efforts like 2x20 minutes build the mitochondrial density and lactate clearance that long climbs actually demand. Most indoor training plans don't go near this. They build short-duration power and leave you with nothing past the 15-minute mark. On fueling: 60-90 grams of carbohydrate per hour, 400-800ml of fluid before the climb starts. Not during. Before. Power-to-weight matters, but a modest sustainable power increase beats crash dieting every time. Three to four kilograms lost gradually without negative energy availability is the target, not starving yourself into training blocks you can't adapt from.
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The WBAL pacing concept came up in a full technical episode with Alex Wellelburn. If you want to understand why your training isn't producing climbing fitness, the episode on five fixable mistakes self-coached cyclists make covers a lot of the same ground on session selection. For the fueling side, the new study episode on what cycling coaches have been saying for years gets into the carbohydrate numbers in more detail.