Originally Posted by freemti

Welcome fellow "hill issues" commuter. When I started just over a month ago, I was just like you. I had to stop once or twice on this long hill to a)catch my breath and b)let the thigh "burn" ease off.

I'll point out a couple of things. Depending on your overall health health/fitness it may not take too long before things get a bit more do-able (2-3 weeks). The rest time before setting off up the hill again can be quite short - the lactate burn fades really quickly. On some of the steeper hills around me, I take them in a series of 200-300 ft. efforts with rest of 30-60 secs. in between. You're allowed to slow it down and "spin" rather than "mash", I found that I was trying to hard to go up the hill at ~7-8 mph or faster - if I backed off a smidge and kept it around 5-6 mph the going was longer but I could do the less steep hills without "resting"

I'd also ask about your gearing situation, triple or double? I have a double which did/does cause me trouble. I have changed the rear cog to a 11-32 and found this gave a lot more help at the low end