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Jul 2020
10:16am, 30 Jul 2020
2,032 posts
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flyingfinn
Spot on WW. You need to get your legs used to working the downhills as well, which is why classic hill reps with jogged recoveries are only ever part of the story. I see so many people talk about how much climb you need to do training for the likes of the BG and how they can achieve it in the gym but that completely negates that you nearly always have to descend as much as you climb and your descending legs will always go before your climbing legs. There's also a skill in descending in a way that minimises the impact. Really good descenders skip downhill without jarring impacts and whilst we can't all do that we can all improve with practice and that lengthens the time it takes for your quads to get trashed.
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Jul 2020
10:29am, 30 Jul 2020
10,977 posts
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rf_fozzy
The only thing I've found for improving descending on the fells is (a) actually doing it and (b) doing it in races.
The latter being as important as the former.
If doing it in training, I think it's quite hard to get the intensity that you get in a race in training. You also can't always get the "perfect" line in a race (unless you're at the front), so you have to adapt and think on your feet.
I have yet to find a way to replicate this in training. You tend to back off too much on training runs I find.
However to start with on conditioning, find a non-rocky grassy hill that's relatively steep (doesn't have to be super-steep) - there's several in the parks around here that work for me - and do reverse hill reps - warm up, run *down* the hills as fast as you can/are able (aiming for smoothness, rather than out and out speed), then walk back up the hill and repeat, say 10 times.
If you get bored of doing the same hill, mix it up.
Once you've got it on grass, find a steep road hill and do it down that (for the extra hardness). Then you've got to find either a steep trail or fell hill.
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Jul 2020
10:38am, 30 Jul 2020
10,978 posts
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rf_fozzy
As for ups, it's one of those general -> specific training questions.
It depends exactly what you're training for.
For BGs, my naive plan would be a mix of long days out throwing in as big a climbs as possible, but also with hill reps.
The open question for me is whether doing, say 10-12 reps up the chevin (~180m climb per rep) than doing, say Skiddaw twice as hill reps.
Obviously the Skiddaw climb is *longer* but is the physiological adaption any lesser for doing the Chevin climbs.
Certainly when I was *fit* I wasn't doing any fell climbs (beyond races and perhaps a 3xChevin fell race hill climb - from the barrier to the corner of the flagged path) - most of my hill work was road hills (occasionally a 1km rep, but more often the longest was 4mins). That kind of fitness was fine for most fell races, including Skiddaw and Coledale, but I do remember flagging going up Wetherlam on Conistone. But it was a hot day and I struggle in the heat.
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Jul 2020
10:43am, 30 Jul 2020
10,980 posts
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rf_fozzy
Sorry, lost my train of thought in this sentence, I've corrected below:
The open question for me is whether doing, say 10-12 reps up the chevin (~180m climb per rep) *is "better"* than doing, say Skiddaw twice as hill reps.
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Jul 2020
10:47am, 30 Jul 2020
10,981 posts
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rf_fozzy
(I make Skiddaw from the car park to the summit ~630m climb in 5.3km and the Chevin is about ~180m in 900m - using the Rombalds stride climb for those who know it, to just past the Yorkgate turnoff)
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Jul 2020
10:48am, 30 Jul 2020
2,798 posts
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Mountain Cat
There are only a handful of really 'big' climbs in the route, aren't there (Skiddaw, Clough Head, Blencathra, Yewbarrow...), the rest is about the (massive!) cumulative total rather than the length of the specific individual climbs.
I am expecting it to be harder to train for the descent than ascent - it's probably true that I don't push hard enough downhill in training.
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Jul 2020
10:51am, 30 Jul 2020
44,646 posts
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Derby Tup
fozzy ne’er mind all those metres. How’s your tea mashing coming on? I like Yorkshire tea. No sugar 
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Jul 2020
11:19am, 30 Jul 2020
10,984 posts
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rf_fozzy
Here you go, DT
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Jul 2020
11:21am, 30 Jul 2020
44,647 posts
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Derby Tup
Keep calm and leave the bag in for a few minutes more
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Jul 2020
11:23am, 30 Jul 2020
10,985 posts
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rf_fozzy
It's actually darker than it looks! The light catching it at the wrong angle.
And my crappy phone camera
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