nitewing117

Riding 10 miles a day isn't going to build the fitness you need to fly up hills.Like Matchka was saying, you need to do a combination of easy rides and structured hard effort rides to build up the strength. For my first few months of riding, I thought the same thing until I did my first event.

CharlyAlfaRomeo

At 185 lbs your chances of being fast on any kind of extended incline are slim to none, no matter how fit you are. Gravity just doesn't like us bigger guys.

Fifteen years ago I was one of the top 3 climbers in my province at 6'2" and 162 lbs. Now I'm 200 give or take on any given day, still in excellent shape, and make quite a bit more power but I'm a slug going uphill unless it's very, very short.

FWIW your desire to do Tour of Utah stages is completely doable with the right gearing, and a lot more riding time but you don't seem inclined to put in the time required.

fietsbob

dropped by 2 girlfriends too?

DBrown9383

LOL.. More than two but now my wife is my riding partner and that makes it all the more fun. I don't think I would do well with any woman that didn't enjoy being outdoors and doing something/anything. FWIW, my wife was also discouraged after being passed so swiftly

caloso

A couple things that the OP may want to consider:

1) normal people skinny is bike racer fat.
2) 10 hours a week of structured training is the minimum to stay competitive in the masters 45+ category, at least it is for me. If these guys who flew by you are young P12 racers, it's probably a lot more.
3) Even crit and track racers climb better than most rec riders.

puddinlegs

Nothing to be discouraged about at all. They ride more, weigh less, generate more power, etc... because they've worked harder at it. We can all improve pretty easily with time in the saddle and watching our diet. At one time in life, I raced and climbed well even for a 'heavy rider' at 75-77kg. Over the winter off season, there'd be about 3kg of weight gain even while still riding probably 200km per week. Used to buy bags of granola that weighed 1/2 a kilo, put them in the messenger back and ride home. 4 bags was a load, and the effect of the extra weight was immediately palpable. When it came time to drop the winter weight, it wasn't to hard finding the motivation knowing exactly what even + 2kg meant. Back on the bike after a decade off and working to drop from 92 to 84-85kg... that's enough. I'll be able to climb what I want to relatively fast, just not race fast, without killing myself. For now it's just a matter of patiently working the weight away and the legs and lower back into form again. Race fitness is a serious commitment of time and effort. If you have the time and desire, it's a great feeling to experience once in life, but it's very tough to sustain with any semblance of a balanced adult life.

Midlife1960

It's not completely about being over weight versus thin, or being generally in great shape. It also involves experienced riders (which I certainly cannot claim to be, yet) having developed specific muscle groups for cycling, and conditioning those muscles for endurance too. There are two guys I know that have a good 15 years on me, and appear to be in worse shape than I look like, but they both leave me in the dust uphill, downhill and on the flats, too. I've come to the conclusion that for the foreseeable future the only person I should seriously compete with is myself.

jon c. 

I've got the body of a rider, but as a lifetime smoker I don't have the lung capacity. I have to work to get a 16 mile loop in an hour. I can hold off the fast roadies for 4 or 5 miles if I see them in time, but you have to start with a good gap and hills make it immeasurably more difficult.

My riding is more pleasure oriented, so I don't really "train" and I'm only now starting to climb a bit better after three years of riding. And that's on fairly modest hills. If you're not working hard at it, even modest improvement takes a long time.

fastk9dad

Ain't that the truth! On club rides (B level) I've been accused before of not even sweating on a ride :lol, but then when you look at where I rank in some Strava segments I'm usually about mid pack with the leaders sometimes halving my times!

Lord_Stark

I think it's not about "train" vs "ride". You have to vary your rides, thats a very important thing. A lot of riders tend to do just the same thing every ride and try to do it faster all the time, which makes you fitter actually. But you can't get the maximum out of it. You have to put your heart rate in higher areas to develop your fitness. For example with a little interval training involved. Just do an easy ride for 15 min, then 1 min off / 1 min on (off means very easy ride) 10-15 times and after that 15 min easy ride. Try to push yourself in the "on sessions" It's just 10 min suffering which isn't that much.
You can vary that as well with longer On/Off periods or 2 Blocks. It's important that the "easy part" is about 75% of the training session. And the hard "on part" about 25%.

Just do things like this once or twice a week and increase the miles of your easy daily rides and you will improve. Couldn't explain it really well and exact because my english is not the best

GovernorSilver

When I ride, I get passed all the time - especially on MUPs - flats, uphill, downhill...

It happens so often I've never worried about it.

When I come up upon somebody struggling on a climb, and I decide to pass him/her, I actually feel more awkward about it than proud.

I wonder if "feeling discouraged" when being passed is an American thing. I think about all those riders in the Netherlands, France, etc. who simply go about their business on cruiser bikes, not looking like they're in a mad rush to get somewhere or training for some event.

FBinNY 

The most important lesson any cyclist can learn is that there will ALWAYS be someone faster or stronger. Your only competition should be yourself, or maybe a closely matched riding buddy which the two of you can use to egg each other to be faster.

I learned this decades ago, when a bunch of strong, experienced riders were bogged down on one of eastern Pennsylvania's roller coaster hills, when 3 kids on 20" bikes came flying around the corner and passed us like we were standing still. I'm sure we could have passed and dropped them if we were fresh or the ride was extended far enough, but it was a refreshing reminder that we weren't gods.

Jim from Boston

I have three comments, as a decades-long cycle commuter, road cyclist and former tourist.

1. An adage I once read on BF is “My 15 mph (40 mile ride) is to me, as your 23 mph (double century) is to you."
   
   
2. There have been two recent threads on BF about the “distinction” between “real cyclists” and “just riding a bike”/”wheeled pedestrians”: ”Wheeled pedestrian...slow riding...trans-sport...utility riding...transport cycling..”[/i] on Living Car-Free, and ”Bike Riding vs Cycling” on Fifty-Plus. Not to suggest one style is better, purer or whatever, but one may gravitate towards one style or the other.
   
   
3. From my own personal experieince, just this year I have changes my decade-long training style, de-emphasizing mileage for intensity.
   
   
   Quote:

   Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

   About two weeks ago I described a new training routine for myself combining a well-established Ten Week Century Training Schedule of daily mileage goals with a personalized intensity scale based on ”Relative Perceived Exertion (RPE).”. My basic premise was that I wanted to get significantly fit, within a busy work/family time-crunched life, but not suffer so much that I would abandon the program.
   
   I do have the advantages of a very nice minimum 14 mile one way commute that is easily extended; and a high end, very comfortable carbon fiber road bike that encourages riding…
   Basically, for me this is a minimum of 100 miles per week, mostly at 60% of my RPE, with intervals of 70%. This is comfortable for me, with the benefits worth the time and effort. Just a few weeks ago I felt comfortable taking a visiting bona fide roadie on a ride at a pace I hope was suitable for his need. FWIW.

BTW, I'm a native Michigander, and I had to look up the location of Empire, MI. As I anticipated it's in the Traverse City area (tip of the little finger ).

DBrown9383

fixed it for you

Zuzus pedals

Just ride more and gradually work to improve on the hills. Try to do a climb faster than you've done it before, not worrying about how fast the elite guys do it. And don't be too hard on yourself about being passed by guys who were doing 12 mph up a 12% grade - that's fast enough to break away from a pro peloton if they did that for even two minutes on that grade.

ltxi

Well, fwiw you're ahead of me. Back on a road bike after mebbe 20 years this Spring and I'm at seven to 10 miles a day/six days a week with a high of about 20. Blew by a 10 year old on a fixie who tried to out run me about a month ago and then, just the other day, a guy on a comfort bike...tho about 300 pounds and not even trying. Pretty pleased with myself, I am.

Machka 

Then you've got a lot of work to do.

one4smoke

puddinlegs

In the end, the only way to get faster climbing is to climb. Weight loss is easier with a clear performance goal.

DBrown9383

At least one person realized I was trying to be funny .

Scummer

Just to back this up with some data:
I have a little incline of roughly 1km length at 11% and it takes me an avg 306W over a 6 min. duration to get up that incline at a measly 6.3mph.
And I weigh in at 181lbs. which is obviously way to fat to hang with the mountain goats.
The pro's around here ride that little incline in 4 min. flat.

jfowler85

Goodness gracious. Why do you compare yourself to other people? For all you know those were pro riders, maybe fresh on their ride, probably trying to maintain composure while they passed you. They probably let their guts out and about died of oxygen starvation at the top.

If you're going to measure yourself using others as a metric, then why not use those who can't even ride a cruiser without having a tobacco-induced COPD exacerbation? Come on man, pull yourself together.

DBrown9383

LOL.. It's inevitable that people compare themselves to others. I thought I was "in shape" after riding almost every day for 5mo. When those guys dropped me like I was standing still I almost made a doctors appointment to see if I had some deadly disease that was making me so slow. It's all good though, I just needed (and received) a reality check

cmark84

MTB helped me gain the leg muscle to climb hills on my road bike. I got tired of being embarrassed carrying my bike over some hills. So every other day I would take the less steep until I could finally carve out some bigger ones. Then I moved the KC, and well, I haven't had the chance to use my MTB in a while so my legs aren't as strong anymore. If you have the funds for a second bike and the mountains to do it, something you should consider. I liked doing both because I got tired of looking at pavement between driving and riding.

DBrown9383

Ideally I would have THREE bikes. One MTB, one road bike and one hybrid. My wife isn't quite on board with my passion for riding though. It's funny because she was the one that suggested we buy bikes. She likes to ride but typically it's easy rides around the neighborhood or MUPS at a relaxed pace. I love that kind of riding too but I ride 2x as much as her now and push hard (for me) when I ride alone. She's created a monster but it's all good. I have a sport bike that I used to be passionate about. Now? I'd rather ride the bicycle