Originally Posted by
billallbritten
I've read about a move that involves upshifting a couple of cogs in back (to smaller cogs) as one stands and thrusts to help maintain speed when standing.
What dropped me once was a guy in front of me, near the very top of the incline, standing and slowing down as he did so. Literally looked like, in the short time before he was in my wheel, as if he was in reverse. Did some searching on climbing technique and ran across the above.
Quite honestly, in recent riding (~25,000 miles on the Veloce), I've never stood other than to see if I could - felt off balance and never tried it again. One of the advantages of being overweight and then loosing the excess (235->165 in 13mos) is that one is likely to be left with a fairly strong set of leg muscles from lugging all that lard around for too many years.
I dropped the weight riding a Trek 7500FX. I eventually replaced the stock cassette (11-32) with a 12-27 but before I did, I got in the habit of trying to spin when climbing by using the triple crank's 26 tooth inner chainring and a large cog in back. I didn't climb fast but as strength improved and weight dropped, was able to increase speed up most hills while still maintaining a fairly quick cadence.
Generally speaking when a rider stands they lose part of the pedal stroke, i.e. at the bottom of the pedal stroke that leg stops, the rider uses that leg to stand, then they keep pedaling. In addition when you stand you move forward, and since the bike/rider unit is a unit, if a lot of weight (165 in our cases) moves forward, the 20-ish pound bike moves back a proportionate amount.
In order to keep the bike from moving back, yes, shifting up helps.
You can also focus on not pausing the pedal stroke at the bottom, i.e. forcing your feet to keep moving as you stand.
What I do is kind of stand just above the seat (not forward of it) and over the course of 2-3 downstrokes (1-1.5 revolutions of the pedals) move my body up and forward.
My body moves back a bit, yes, but unless you're an inch off my wheel you won't need to do much to avoid me.
The move tired me when I first tried it but as I kept practicing it my legs adapted.
I feel comfortable standing in even a tightly packed field without causing problems for those around me. As far as I know no one has ever had a problem with me standing in this fashion. And some of the racers I've raced with would have had no problem expressing any issues they have with me - I've gotten criticized for other things sure but not that.
cdr