In the Tour, climbs are categorised according to a combination of distance and elevation gain. Cat 4 is the easiest, then there’s Cat 3, Cat 2, Cat 1 and finally HC (hors catégorie/outside category) as the hardest. An HC climb will take the pros up to an hour and they’ll ride it just under their threshold power.

Not having many mountains nearby I’ll have to mimic the effort, so I’m going to translate an HC effort to a 20min SST interval (SST = 90% of threshold). Working back from there, I’ll do 15min SST for a Cat 1 climb, 10min SST for a Cat 2 and 5min SST for a Cat 3. I’m not going to bother with Cat 4s.

I’m also not going to bother trying to space the climbs according to how they appear in a stage. I’ll do them in the right order, but will take a standard 5min Z1 between each climb, and, if I haven’t completed the required distance for a stage, I’ll finish the remainder at Z2.