[QUOTE=NOS88;10970818]When my maternal grandmother (a world class chef) was alive if I lost weight she'd say "What you don't like my food anymore?" I guess I'm more of the old Seven Eleven school. Ride hard and long, then find a Dairy Queen and scarf up the most ridiculous Blizzard you can get them to make.

Several decades ago, I was riding an annual event that had some serious climbing. It was not unusual to have 1/3 or more of the participants walk the steepest part of the hardest climb. I was one such person the first year. Before the next event I lost 25 pounds and climbed the hardest part with relative ease. It was almost like the first year I was carrying a Schwinn Varsity on my back as I tried to make my way up the mountain. Not much fun it was. These days I'm still carrying a bit more weight than I want, but better off than I used to be. I know I could be at an "ideal" weight and still not be a really good climber. I've got a pretty explosive sprint, but climbing just isn't going to ever be my strong suit. If anything, my strong suit is that I'm still riding a bike thousands of miles each year, and that's good enough for me.[/QUOTE]

A couple of subtle comments...25 pound corresponds to about 30 watts of sustainable threshold power. If your threshold is 200 watts that is approximately a 15% improvement +/- in climbing speed. Some cyclists excel at higher sustained efforts with a lot of torque such as climbing or time trialing while others excel at shorter duration efforts with higher cadence and less torque such as sprinting or matching accelerations in a criterium. The interesting point is that there are muscle fibers that can support either sprinting or climbing and can morph either way depending on the training. That is why track sprinters do not do any sustained efforts and very little climbing. So for those who will never be great climbers, they can always be better climbers by losing weight and doing more climbing.