Originally Posted by
greenlight149
I have no scientific evidence, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that on a steep hill, your speed drops off faster due to gravity, compared to on the flats, so when you are climbing, torque is applied earlier during the pedal stroke, and maintained for a longer period of time to keep the speed up. On the flats, the wheels don't slow down as quickly, so you can apply all the torque over a smaller period of time to top off the speed you are trying to maintain.
Does the application of torque over the pedal stroke remain identical no matter what the terrain is?
Again I'm just thinking out loud, could be completely wrong. Feel free to school me.
Eseentially what you're saying is that you can take little rests on the flats without your speed dropping dramatically. That's true. However you can't do that and maintain the same power. If you want to produce the same power,at the same cadence, there's no way getting around the fact that you have to put in the same amount of torque for the same amount of time.
Which all gets back to my point that climbing seems harder because you have no choice (other than falling over) to produce a decent amount of power, whereas, you have to push yourself to go hard on the flats, and most people don't push themselves that hard.