Originally Posted by mom
When I was a kid, I loved to ride my bike. Now I'm 31 and relatively fit, but I can't seem to ride anymore! I can swim for miles, and I can ride for miles on perfectly flat roads, but as soon as I hit even a tiny incline, I can't seem to make the bike go. It's not that I get really tired or anything. I just slow down exponentially.
mom, I'm only asking this because I've learned the hard way. You're familiar with how to use gears?
I ask because:
1) I bought a bike for my wife a few years ago (she was about 28 or 29 at the time) and discovered no one had ever shown her how to use the gears correctly. Hills killed her on the first part of our first ride until I showed her how to select the right gear. She still doesn't love hills, but at least she can deal with them.
2) A guy in the Commuting forum just posted an email from his friend who'd been commuting for a few months and just barely making it up a hill, with his legs burning at the end. Turns out--yes, you guessed it--he didn't know how to change gears on his bike. Now that he does, he's making it up the hill with no problems (probably because his legs are now like iron after all that).