Originally Posted by genec
And the classic that my wife usually missed... can you anticipate the grade of a hill and shift before loading down. Of course that probably fits into Brian's "smooth shifting" catagory. And these days with index shifting, I believe it is probably easier. (I still friction shift, so I don't know how "index" really is... heck one of my bikes is a downtube shifter... try shifting that and keeping your fingers out of the spokes... GRIN. I bet John E. can do it.)
One great way to get up a sharp grade without breaking stride is to pick a cadence you like (90 rpm for example) and blast up it spinning at that rpm. As soon as you feel your cadence drop a bit, down shift one gear. Keep the effort up, and your cadence should stay at 90 or so. As soon as it drops again, down shift again and so on. The fast cadence is a good idea since it does not load the chain up as much as a slow cadence does making shifting safer and easier on equipment.
Again, this is a technique that works great on trail riding, but I have used it road riding on climbs and while your speed drops, your effort remains fairly static.