Red Rider

+1.

You describe how I prefer to climb, as well as my strategy.

I get in a nice, easy spin on hills with which I'm not familiar. Better to overestimate the hill than my ability to hammer it.

Hill climbing makes me come alive...that rush at the top makes all the effort worthwhile.

Leigh_caines

I never have trouble with hill...
I was told "It's all down hill after 60"
and I believe them...

SaiKaiTai

You rang?
A subject near and dear to my heart.

Dan Hicks said it best: You got to to believe.

I firmly believe -for every hill I approach- that I will make it up, non-stop.
And if I don't, I firmly, absolutely believe that I will next time. And I try, try again.

That's probably the single biggest thing.

I've said it elsewhere. Others have said it here. You just have to keep climbing over and over and over again. For the longest time, it'll never be any easier and then, without warning, it will be. Hills that I used to mash up at 55-66RPM, I can now do at 65-75RPM and at a lower HR. In some cases, I now have to tell myself to slow down the pace a little. That's new.

Beyond that, my approach is to sit upright, and keep my breathing steady. I might be breathing fast and hard at some point and that's OK as long as I keep in rhythmical.
I try to imagine that I'm walking up the hill.

I tend to start off at the bottom at a pace I think I can maintain all the way up. Slow and steady.

I would say that replacing my 24 and 26T gears with a 27 and a 30 helped but I'm finding I don't use my 30 all that much. The 27T is my friend though.

And I, too, tend to listen to my HRM. If it goes off, I stop and take a break for a minute or two. Then I start off fresh.

europa

You'll do better if you wait even longer. Let your hr drop right out of the bottom of the working zones. You'll find you'll go a lot further on the 'second surge'.

Richard

Albert '55

I sit a little further back in the saddle & drop my heals. I find this gets my leg a little straighter with a more powerful stroke.

tpelle

+1

I'm a "Heavier" rider - 260 lbs down from 345 lbs. All of those years of 300+ have left me with massively-strong legs!

I'm retired from the fire department, and one of the things we did a lot of was automobile extrications. One of the first tasks to perform was to stabilize the vehicle - usually chock the wheels so it wouldn't roll away, and put "step blocks" under the frame so the car wouldn't be bouncing on it's springs while you were doing your cutting and spreading. The "step blocks" are made of oak, and are simply planks of wood of increasingly-shorter lengths fastened one on top of the other with the longest plank on the bottom and the shortest on top - the "back" side of the planks line up in a vertical line, leaving the "front" side of all the planks to form "steps". The procedure is for one firefighter to brace his butt against the fender of the car with his knees bent, grab on to the lip of the wheel opening with both hands, then straighten the legs so as to lift the chassis as far off of it's springs as one could while his partner slipped the step blocks under the frame.

I was usually - except for the very largest cars - able to get daylight to show under the tire! On smaller cars - Toyotas and Nissans and Hondas - I could usually get both tires on one side in the air at once.

I used to tell people that every time I tied my shoes I was doing squats with 300 pounds!

Now I have to be careful when standing to pedal as I either torque the front wheel off of the ground, or cause the rear tire to loose traction.

I usually - unless it's a very long hill - try to shift up a gear or two at the bottom, then stand and pedal through the first part until my cadence starts to drop. Then I sit and shift down to spin, and repeat as necessary until I get over the top.

For long hills, I just shift down to a gear that I can spin at 80 rpm or so, then keep shifting down until I top out either the hill or my HRM.

I'm 55 years old - or at least will be on Friday - so my max heart rate should be 220 - 55 = 165. I keep checking my HRM during climbs, and when I see it hit the upper 160's or even into the 170's I park the bike for a minute or so until it drops into the low 130's or so.

I live in Kentucky - we have LOTS of hills.

stapfam

[QUOTE=tpelle;5683930


I'm 55 years old - or at least will be on Friday - so my max heart rate should be 220 - 55 = 165. I keep checking my HRM during climbs, and when I see it hit the upper 160's or even into the 170's I park the bike for a minute or so until it drops into the low 130's or so.

I live in Kentucky - we have LOTS of hills.[/QUOTE]

One of the things I learnt many years ago is that once you have reached the top of a climb- The adrenalyn goes and you suddenly feel a bit tired. Worst thing about stopping at the top is that Lactic Acid spreads through the legs and that can hurt. What I do at the top of a hill is climb over the top. Just keep pedalling until the HR slows down, no matter slow you are going. Then when the HR slows and if the legs still feel tired or hurt, then "Silly" spin till the legs come back. Silly spin is spin far faster than you normally would. Little or no pressure on the legs but high cadence.

We got it down to an art on the Tandem as we both felt the same at the top of the hills- Dead!!!! No stopping and slow for about 20 yards. Hr would drop and then it would be stay in the same gear and get the cadence up to 120. Only problem would be that sometimes the next hill would be on us before the legs came back.

Trekke

There are many good suggestions and techniques discussed in this thread. However to improve your climbing you have to commit to spending time putting these techniques to use. My philosophy is the more time you spend on the hill the better climber you will become. The techniques will help you on the way.

late

It's just a technique. The day I came up with it I had already ridden well over thirty miles and had hours of climbing still to go. I also had to get up the next day
and do it all over again. So if I fried myself, manana it would have been even worse.

I used to be a backpacker. As such, I had to come up with ideas to go into oxygen debt. My standard one was to swim but breath on every other stroke. At first
I'd only br able to go a single pool length without stopping. The cool thing
about doing it that way is that having your body scream at you is distracting.
In the pool there are no cliffs to walk off, pickup trucks, etc.

BluesDawg

+1
Easy pedaling after topping the hill helps clear the legs of lactic acid. Plus, by resting while pedaling the bike, you are getting further down the road instead of standing still.

BluesDawg

That's the ticket!
I decided long ago that despite not being a natural climber, I was going to climb every hill I came upon on the road without walking. Since making that decision 15 years ago I have walked one hill, Brasstown Bald in April 2006. I came back the next year with lower gears and rode up that sucker. I had to stop twice during one incredibly steep section, but I pedaled all the way. Next year I'm going back and make that section without stopping.

Equipment helps. Gearing helps. Natural ability helps. Technique helps. Attitude is essential!

Road Fan

IMO this is wisdom anyone can use, not just 50 Plussers!

My fitness is improving finally, to where I can go up my local hills without maxing my HR. I just got my LT tested and found I am rarely hitting my LT (162 BPM!) on my hills, too (yay!)

I recommend strategizing to keep you HR below LT for anything longer than a short attackable hill. By strategizing I mean gearing and positioning. I'm with Richard, in gearing down, and providing yourself with gearing that will allow you to ascend. If you want to eliminate the granny when you gain enough fitness, so be it! But until then, granny can be your friend.

I try to spin up hills, with my hands on the hoods. I tend to slide back on the saddle a bit, because it reduces weight on my hands. If I feel like I'm floating on the 'bars, I feel like I'm floating on the pedals, and then my pedal stroke gets smoother. I don't feel like I'm mashing and I have a more balanced circular pedal stroke. I also breathe smoother. I think all this helps, at least it seems to take less time for my HR to come back down after the peak. It's said that moving back helps activate the glutes, but all I can say is that its easier.

I like to see my cadence stay in the mid-70s, but I can't always breathe enough to support that. I find it dropping down to the low 60s, even 50s if I'm really wasted.

Don't spend too much time staring at teh peak looking for it to get closer. It will.

Some bikes, which seem to have a lot of rake and not much trail, seem less stable while ascending slowly. Examples in my stable include my Trek 610 and my Woodrup Giro. I prefer bikes that have more trail even if the wheelbase is short, real road racers like my Mondonico and the Masi Gran Criterium. They seem to go in a straight line better when slogging up a hill. This is better for my sanity, because I do not feel like I'm going to swerve into traffic! Mrs. Road Fan likes that, too, less worrying.

Only problem with the Masi is I don't want to tear up the gear train, so she stays with her road racing configration (13/24 and 52/42).

So I'm sharing some personal psychology of climbing, also an important element.

Road Fan

John E

From experience, I know which gear ratios I need for which grades, although this is also a function of headwind and fatigue. I always try to carry at least one granny gear for emergency use -- either a steep climb or almost any climb at the end of a long ride, after I "bonk." For the past 40 years, for me that has meant a low gear in the low-to-mid 40s, such as a 42/26 or a 38/23, to bail me out when my high-40s or 50-inch second gear (42/23 or 38/21, for example) is a bit too tall. If I approach a steep grade (anything in the teens of percents), I drop to the granny early, as others here have suggested. For moderate grades, I default to second gear. For gradual climbs, I can maintain a higher cadence in third or fourth gear, with the confidence that I still have time to drop back a gear or two as needed.

I tend to maintain a high cadence on flat ground, but I accept a considerable drop in cadence on the steeper climbs, and I find that periods of standing up help use different muscles and give the knees a break.

ad6mj

I do a lot better keeping my cadence around 100 and dropping gears as necessary to maintain cadence.

MTBLover

Lots of good advice here, but I'd just underscore one and add a new one:
1. Practice, practice, practice. Hill climbing requires conditioning, and there's no better conditioning for hills than <gasp> climbing.
2. Through the bottom of your downstroke, rather than using the usual "mud-scraping" movement, reverse it so that you're "scraping the mud" off your heel rather than the ball of your foot. This transfers power through the body of your ankle (instead of your metatarsal arch) and this is a much more stable, bony structure. I read this in a Bicycling Mag article last year, and after practicing it, it made all the difference!

velotel

A subject I love, going up on a bike. Also a subject I've spent a good bit of time contemplating and even more time doing. Then again, living in the Alps pretty much forces one into the climbing scene. At any rate here are two links on climbing that I have on my site. The first is more about attitude, the second on technique. Perhaps they can shed some additional light on the subject. Their focus is big climbs, and here that invariably means steep too, but regardless, hills are hills irrespective of their length.
Just bear in mind that all advice is only that, advice, and that there are no hard and fast rules. What works for one rider isn't necessarily going to work for another. Some people sit, some people stand, which is preferred usually depends on body type. As a rule I stand but for a years now, maybe a result of having a 6 click into position for the first digit of my age, I've been sitting far more than I ever did before. That said, I still prefer climbing out of the saddle.

Gearing selection is also purely a personal choice and nothing more than a reflection of one's physical fitness and body type. After running a 39/26 for my climbing gear for years and years and years, I've finally switched to a compact with a 34/25 for the steep stuff with in the back of my mind the possibility of using a 34/27 for the really steep stuff, as in high double digit grades. But so far have to say I really like the 34/25. Next summer I'll run up and do Alpe d'Huez to see how the new gearing works and if I can come anywhere close to my best time. Actually I've kind of forgotten my best time other than it was somewhere between 47 and 48 but that's close enough for me. Nevertheless I still think the best gearing choice is a triple with 28/38/50 rings and a tight cluster in back, like a 12-21 straight block or for steeper terrain a 12-23, 10-speed of course.

The links are:
https://velotel-touring.com/climbing.htm
and
https://velotel-touring.com/climbing2.htm