Palomar01

I live in a very hilly area. There are no shortage of hills here and you can pick and choose short ones or long ones, depending how much pain you can tolerate.

For the past year I've been trying to avoid hills. I just struggled up them most of the time. I was always getting past going up hills. My speed was around 7-8 mph on the long hills, dropping to 6 mph! I would climb two long hills and that was all I could do. If I had to climb another it would be a slow grind at 5-6 mph!

This year I decided I was going to change all that. I'm tired of getting dropped in the hills! I started climbing more and doing a "hill day" once a week. On that day I would climb multiple hills one after the other. I also started leaving some reserve so that I could increase the effort towards the end of the climb.

Well guess what? My speed has increased to 9-10 mph on the same hills consistently with enough reserve left to increase my speed towards the crest of the hill. I can now also climb hill after hill (maybe five in a row with a recovery in between) without running out of gas. Another fringe benefit is that I can now cruise easily at 18-20 mph in the flats by myself. Before I felt like I was stuck at 15-16 mph! Finally the short hills that I needed to shift into my 34 chainring in the past, I can now attack them in the big ring and sprint up and over them with authority!

I'm not the fastest out there by a large margin. Stronger riders still drop me in the hills. But now I do my fair share of dropping people in the hills.

Hills! They're good for your overall speed and fitness!

Velo Vol 

So do you love them or hate them?

Kind of Blued

I love the non-categorized ones. They're cute.

Stratman351

Lotsa hills around here (though I'm not talking small mountains or anything like that). I guess the best description would be that I love to hate them. Seriously, I wouldn't want to ride on strictly flat terrain: I like the challenge of getting up a hill, and the challenge of getting up it faster and/or less exhausted over time. The downhill reward after the ascent is pretty sweet too.

and1homer

I live in Colorado, in the foothills of the Rockies. When I started cycling 2 years ago, I never thought I would even be able to climb, let alone enjoy it. Now I love to climb - though I am not great at it, and still pretty slow. I am even going over to France next week and will ride over the Telegraph, Galibier, and Alpe D'Huez.

Live to climb!

MikeyBoyAz

hills around here are sparse, so you gotta hunt for em' but when you find them they are good and humbling. (love hills)

Joe360

Does anyone have any tips for climbing more efficiently?

Terror_in_pink

I LOVE hills. Actually, more like mountains, sustained, long, punishing climbs. Flat rides are B-O-R-I-N-G

Squirrelli

Climb more.

rolliepollie

Since high speeds over 25 mph scare the bijeezus out of me I look at hills as the means to more intense workouts.

I also started doing a "hill day" where I go up roughly a mile in periodic sprints. Go until I'm about to hurl, spin for a minute or 2, and go again. Sometimes I go around the soccer field if I don't feel like going in traffic though.

Jay-W

hate 'em...do them begrudgingly.

Eclectus

Hil climbing is good. It builds your strength. And you get to zoom downhill.

Terror_in_pink

i actually hate descents

VA_Esquire

^ same. Id rather go up a hill/mountain then go down.

willb1046

Here in Southeast Pennsylvania (Philadelphia area), we have our share of hills. No mountains mind you. I climbed back in a bike after taking a 30 year break and smoked cigarettes most of my adult life. So hills hurt me right now. I do search them out now and again, but have a really hard time climbing without loosing my breath. I am slow on straights (12 to 14 mph)and it is not unusual for me to drop down to 3 or 4 mph while trying to climb up a hill. For me it is simply perseverance. (I hate hills - looking forward to loving them). I do LOVE flying down them though!

Grasschopper

Ok so my answer is both. I'm fat and climbing sucks...but I love it or rather I love what's on the other side. I climb to get into shape and so that I can go down....really freaking fast. I remember a ride last year when I passed a Suburban on one particular local decent. None of my riding partners could believe I did it but WTF it was a windy decent and that gas guzzler was doing like 30 mph. Nothing was coming up the other lane so I blew by him at 45 mph. LOL

carpediemracing 

Hills are a good way to do automatic threshold work, and long hills put you at that level for long periods of time. Threshold work helps your overall base and allows you to improve your overall fitness. Hills make it easy to do threshold work because if you go much easier you'll fall over. You can't go too hard because then you'll blow up. So a perfect uneasy truce between working too hard and hardly working.

This is one of the main reasons I go out and climb Palomar when I'm out west. It takes me almost 2 hours to climb the mountain from the turn near Harrahs. I'm slow enough that I've been asked if something was wrong with the bike.

The other main reasons I climb Palomar is the insanely fun descent when I turn around. And it's about 40 miles away from home base so it makes for a good long ride.

In my normal training I don't necessarily avoid hills but I only do them if I'm on a group ride. My regular hour-long training loop doesn't have hills, only some of the longer loops have hills.

Looigi

Love em. Climbs, descents, undulating...all good. Flat is BORRRINNNG.

North of You

.....passing cars on the descent...... PRICELESS!!

SBRDude

I live in a hilly part of Austin, so all of my riding is hilly. I like the hills, but I wish I had a flat couple of miles to start and end rides. Instead, I have to ride a bunch of small rollers in and out of my neighborhood. I've gotten used to it, but it would be nice to warm up and warm down once in awhile.

bonz50

Truth!!!!!!

mdrew9

I never knew how much I loved hills until I did a really flat ride.

Walter

Seldom get to ride them here but I'll be in E Texas next week for the annual in-law trip and wife and I keep bikes there and it's reasonably hilly.

Can't say I like them but the feeling of accomplishment after finishing a hilly loop is more felt than what I get from our group rides here; regardless of speed, sprints and whatever.

pgjackson

I like flats. I don't like the slow pace of hills.

ortcutt

Love hills. LOVE 'em. Flats get tedious. Paceline riding -- meh. Sprints? Forget it. Climbing is, for me, the beating heart of road cycling. (Beating heart, indeed.)

@SBRDude: You ride in NW Austin? I get down there occasionally -- do Jester and a few others. My brother-in-law, a civil engineer, tells me that the grades on some of those residential roads are so steep they wouldn't pass code these days.