This 90 + RPM thing happened during the Lance era and post that and if I am counting correctly, the majority of tour riders still mash it up the hill rather than go 90 RPM plus. Sometimes the hills are too steep and too long for mere mortals it is impossible to go over 70 even in 27 tooth cog. Also a majority always save the lowest gear for the last and in practice hardly ever use them and would be pushing a lower cadence instead. You have to have a very high V02 max to do high cadences going up hill like Lance or Contador etc.
How long are these mountains that you speak of.
Pantani climbed uphill while on the drops but that is rare. One of the greatest climbers
Originally Posted by
AngrySaki
It seems a lot of people like to sit back on their seat, hold onto the top of their handlebars and lower their cadence for climbing. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, it just seems slightly counterintuitive. From an angles point of view, if you wanted to keep the same position that you ride flats in, you would want to move forward on the seat, and lower on your handlebars.
I can see a difference with climbing mountains or hills, in that if you're just climbing a hill, a position change is always nice, and you wouldn't really get an aerodynamic penalty for sitting up. It seems most people up their effort to get to the top of the hill as fast as possible, which could have an effect. If you're climbing a mountain though, the position change benefit sort of goes away, as does the temporary increase in power output. Possible reasons I can think of would be that people can produce more power in that position, but it's not worth it on flats because of the aerodynamic penalty so they only ride like that on mountains. Or maybe they just got used to riding hills like that, and treat mountains the same way.
I've also heard people say they like climbing mountains at a lower cadence, and it seems a little strange to me that they wouldn't pedal at the same cadence they would on a regular ride.
Maybe my observations are way off, I haven't ridden with that many people. Thoughts?