Originally Posted by
mike12
Just for a little background, I'm new to road cycling (riding about 2 months) and have been using this forum as a resource.
We live where there are small hills but no real mountains - we are about 2 hours away from the NC mountains. There's a century ride in the mountains in June that has roughly 9,000 ft of cumulative climbing elevation. There's also a half century that has about 4,000 ft climbing elevation. I want to participate in one of these rides this summer. Is there any general rule of thumb where "x" number of flat miles equate to "x" number of mountainous miles???
No. An hour uphill is about the same as an hour on flat ground until you run out of gears although obviously the same distance takes longer.
Civil engineers usually route roads up valleys and use switch backs when necessary so most paved roads have grades under 6%. You can choose gearing for such a grade that will keep you pedaling at a comfortable cadence and all-day endurance pace; although the specifics will vary (a 140 pound climber can do it with 39x26; although the same guy with 50 pounds of middle aged spread would need 39x34/34x29/30x26).
150W (an all-day pace) can have a 145 pound rider atop 20 pound bike traveling at 19.5 MPH on flat ground or 6.9 MPH up a 6% grade so a given distance up the mountain would be like 2.8X the distance on flat ground.
Things are rather different once you run out of gears and start standing at a low cadence. You recruit muscles differently, can fatigue much faster, and it's decidedly different.