Originally Posted by
79pmooney
No. I climb on bikes with long, low stems so I have the full ability to pull up (actually up and forward) on the pedals as hard as I want. And I am not a hack climbing hills. (Ask the folks I passed or couldn't catch me climbing the 2 mile hill on Cycle Oregon 4 years ago with its 14% grades. I should have been an easy target. I was riding fix gear with a flip-flop wheel and didn't stop and flip so I did the whole thing on a 42-17. My back was close to horizontal.
If you stand vertically, pulling up is both far harder and loads the knee pushing down. For most out there, that isn't an issue. For some of us with knee issues, that would really limit what I could do uphill. (That 14% hill I would have had to walk. Just standing on the pedal with all my weight and the bike would have rolled backwards.)
Ben
In one of the local centuries a couple of years ago they had this 20% climb that was a half mile long. Sitting I could turn circles and ended up passing a lot of the fast guys up that. Then later I was riding on what I thought was a roller and then I remembered that in this area was a series of three really hard climbs. As I caught up to someone that was probably getting tired since we were 70 miles into the century, I asked where those hills were and he said "You're on the last one". It couldn't be more than 8% and everyone used to be afraid of it. Or maybe because so much of my riding now concentrates on climbing and not mileage.