Ohio Trekker

I tend to do the same thing in rolling areas, but going down a hill in a tougher gear you can still maintain the same cadence while not exerting near as much effort. I am constantly telling my kids, to take advantage of the downhills and that getting up the hill is well worth the effort since there is usally a corresponding down hill waiting for your pleasure on the other side. We have one road we ride where we can loop around so the uphill is gradual but the downhill side is much steeper, they just LOVE climbing the one side now to fly down the other. Last year they couldn't make it up either side, and would have been reluctant to fly down the other, this year they have some miles behind them and love it. Bad thing here is that too many of our good hills climb out of the valley to flat and there is no downhill reward waiting on the other side!

Going up though, it's like DieselDan said, I look at the road in front of me, and once to the crest of the hill, I LOVE to look back and see what I accomplished! :-)

Foehn's suggestion of using side roads for recovery helps a lot too, if it is safe, you can also work your way back and forth across the hill which reduces the grade minimally but can really help you up the last portion of the tough climb.

I used to be a masher, but found that mashing up a hill will burn up your energy and cause your legs to get sore really quick as compared to a steady cadence even if it is a little slower, I'd rather my legs burn as a result of a long over-all effort as opposed to multiple short efforts plus I don't have to worry about recovery on the ride. On short hills mashing may be fine, but on longer hills, persitence will pay off much faster. On occassion though I will mash at the top of the hill just to get it over with.

Listen to what everyone says, try everything, incorporate parts of this with parts of that and before you know it you will figure out what works best for you while you are building your base.