There's always questions that arise about climbing, some of them mine from earlier this spring. Now I'm curious, do you folks that ride out on the roads pedal or coast downhill? After all, us in this forum are pretty much looking for exercise, at least the majority of us, and if we're not pedaling, we're not exercising.

I wonder this because as I've mentioned in the August thread, I've recently hit some roads with a coworker near work that are much nicer with shallower and longer hills than around home. At home, I go for about an hour or so, which would be 10-15 miles. As I've stated, the downhill is over in a matter of seconds while the uphill is minutes long. I am on a lot of gravel, so I'm coasting because of that. When it's pavement, I'm pedaling but I only get up to about 28-30 mph and then I'm heading back up the next hill. Like I said, if I'm not pedaling, I'm not exercising.

Now with riding on more gentle terrain and with others, they coast down the hills. 30 mph is all the more I care to be going and with the long drawn out shallower hills, we are reaching 30 mph coasting. The guy I'm riding with is a long distance rider and not in it for exercise. He is tucking down on his road bike while my clyde weight is pulling me down on my hybrid matching his speed. I want to be pedaling and working for the exercise.

Wondering what you folks do who ride much further on a frequent basis than I do. I guess, coasting on the downhills would help in increasing the distance and time riding because of the rest, which would allow more climbing to be done. My thoughts are on something like 3% hills in which if I pedaled, I would very quickly exceed the speed that I care to go, as I said, around 30 mph. I've done 36 mph easy enough on such a longer shallower hill and that was faster than I want to go, especially when the 2 rabbits jumped out and ran right in front of me before darting to the other side.