Fitness, Stamina

Being a mountaineer/climber i believe strongly that the most positive way of quickly building up your fitness after being out of form or your personal game is by cycling. Its an easy/fast way to improve yourself. Its easy to do. Its certainly more enviromentally friendly and you can easily fit it into your daily rountines. For example instead of going to the gym on a night you could get up earlier on the morning and cycle to work; if your pushing yourself it would be a smart idea to cycle to the gym as a warm up then cycle home for you warm down.

I agree with A.J. Cardiovascular training is the way forward for short term fitness gains. And as AJ correctly suggetsts non weight bearing and low impact sports are best. Perhaps try swimming as this is a challenging activity without the stress of impact and strain. This whoile body workout will achieve more than just cycling. I would recommend cross country skiing on this basis as it uses more muscle bulk but the X trainers in the gym are pretty useless as they reduce the ROM and are pretty easy on most levels.

Good luck.

HILLS, hill intervals, you can't beat them. Depending on your pace, you easily train aerobic (if not too fast) and anaerobic (go a bit faster) capacities. Superb for strengthening as well. If injured during training and time to your planned event is drawing near, hill training is the way to go.