Originally Posted by JayhawKen
The dark side is that what goes down must come up, that is if you intend to finish your ride where you started. I had no idea that climbing takes that much power! Almost 30 years of running did absolutely nothing for developing the muscles necessary for climbing hills on a bike. For all the former runners out there - do you develop that strength fairly quickly in the quads? On almost every little upslope I was dropping gears faster than W is dropping in the polls.
Do a lot of running up steep hills...you'll get faster up hills on your bike. When I used to live in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, I would almost run up Coit Tower every night, run down (or rather slowly jog zig-zag down) toward Pier 39, and then I run toward what's now AT&T Park (along the Embarcadero), and then I loop back up Coit Tower and then walk back down toward home. I don't know if I run funny or what, but I found running to cycling a smooth one-->I'm mostly a masher, so maybe that's why. I'm spinning more now that I have to fight the wind often coming home from work. I don't run much anymore, though I do "intervals" on the StairMaster at work (on days that I don't commute to work); usually alternate between 5 minutes at half speed and 5 minutes at full speed (for a total of 30~45 minutes). That helps with climbing also. Of course you can do the regular hill intervals.