[alig]

Hello,

I am doing the 24-week mountaineering program and am struggling to stay below my AeT (118-120, 42F) when doing the ‘steep’ and ‘hilly’ sessions, which I’m doing using fire stairs. I am climbing excruciatingly slowly, like one step every 3 – 5 secs, pausing at the top of the flight to bring AeT down, and even so I am averaging a little over my AeT (123) and significantly higher at times (143 max). I could easily go faster and at higher intensity for the required length of the sessions, but HR would be high.

I can keep it in check more easily doing incline treadmill, which I’m doing for the ‘long’ sessions, but I feel doing stairs is important to my training.

I have a near-term climbing goal with stair-like sections and I won’t have the luxury of going that slow, but do want to follow the program as best I can to train my aerobic endurance properly for longer-term goals.

Do I need to choose between re-training my aerobic capacity, and stairs, until my aerobic capacity improves?

Thanks,

Ali

[Scott Johnston]

Ali:

With a near term goal you do need to include the stair and even weighted carries on the stairs 1-2x/week max (one of each).  Do any unweighed Z2 sessions on the incline treadmill and reserve the stairs for higher intensity where you allow your HR to get up into Z3. In your case maybe hold HR to 145. For the weighted sessions disregard HR completely.  Improving AeT is super important. However you need the higher intensity and specificity of the stairs or you will struggle on your climb. In cases like yours you will be going on this climb with an underdeveloped aerobic capacity but that will just take more time to improve but you need to specificity of the stairs.

I hope this helps

Scott

[alig]

This is incredibly helpful, Scott, thanks.

[Author]

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