[nleatham]

Hello,
I’ve just started my first ME phase following along the 24-week mountaineering plan (awesome stuff!). The big “Z3 weighted climb” specifies climbing up a steep hill for an hour. I live near the mountains, but the only steep trail (>30% grade) within a 30 minute drive of me is only about 600ft vertical, .17miles. I prefer to stay on trails near me due to environmental and wildlife concerns.
Is it fine to just run repeats on this hill and count my time on the uphill until I hit an hour, or is it better to stick to a slightly lower grade trail (20-25%) that ascends a farther distance?

Thank you all!

Topic

[Shashi]

Shashi on February 10, 2022 at 7:19 pm #63219

A slightly lower grade trail that offers a long uphill hike would be preferred.

Check this forum topic –

STEEP Uphill Z3

[dcgm]

dcgm on February 11, 2022 at 7:31 am #63237

I may have gotten spam filtered for links, but I’m aware of at least one study finding quite a bit better improvement in loaded march performance from overweight under-distance intervals than from over-distance steady state. Visser et al 2005, can’t find a full text (it may have just been a presentation) but if you look for “mike prevost ruck training” you’ll find a popular article with some discussion and one of Visser’s figures.

This is not definitive in and of itself, of course, but I think it’s at least reasonable to go either way.

[MarkPostle]

MarkPostle on February 14, 2022 at 6:43 pm #63329

I have had much better results with athletes doing a few laps on terrain that is steep enough to get the desired response (but a bit shorter than ideal) than a single long effort on terrain that is too low angle for the desired effect. One is slightly sub optimal, the other totally ineffective.

[nleatham]

nleatham on February 16, 2022 at 7:20 am #63400

Thank you for the reply! This is what my thinking was but I was curious to here from you all. I can imagine a lot of people (especially those in the front range of CO) could run into a similar dilemma if they can’t drive an hour towards bigger mountains on a weekday!