I don't climb very well but my male member is truly mas.....aw, never mind.

I don't really know what the grades are around here. I just know that everyone thinks of my town as "hilly" and on rides from my house I'm always climbing to get home. My speed varies from 5 mph to 10 mph on the "rises" in the area. I have a 17.4 mi. TT with 1200 ft of climbing that I am doing at 16.5 mph. But basically, like so many others, I suck at climbing. I think it has something to do with the 187 lbs on my 5'9" frame.

Best test was last year on Death Ride...764...We'll see what this year brings.

When I climbed a hill yesterday , a female runner ran pass me half way up . I just shook my head and said to myself I am really bad when it comes to hill climbing .

Last June (2011) when I was in shape my VAM for a 3500' 8 mile climb was 715. This year I could not manage that and with my current schedule doubt I will be able to next year either - after that I can start working on climbing again. It takes a lot of time and effort to be good on the hills, particularly the long ones.

You must have a triple chainring.

Looking at my recent Strava results, the best I see is 951.

https://app.strava.com/rides/10051210#177619613

does that have to do with how fast you can climb???

My triple is geared really low: 30x34, which means in my smallest gear I spin out at 4-5 MPH. A runner would easily be able to drop me. That's what I think he was talking about.

Today I hit a 10% climb and I was VERY slow.

You spin out at 4-5 mph? How small are your wheels?

I an with VNA. My segments on Strava only shows one VAM out of umpteen segments. Whats with that? Some of those segments were long hard climbs, at least for me they are.

To get VAM on all the climbs, one has to purchase a subscription to Strava. Otherwise, they offer select VAM calculations on some popular segments.

Interesting. I never heard of VAM until recently when Emma Pooley set an unofficial record for ascent speed in a GCN video challenge. I had to look it up to see what they were talking about, and this old thread on bike forums came up on the Google hits.

I don't use a power meter, Strava guesstimates are iffy and not particularly useful or accurate when trying to account for head/tail wind effects. And I knew I was a weak climber so I wasn't sure I even wanted to know anything about my VAM.

But the Elevate browser extension adds some interesting info from our Strava logs, so what the heck.

Turns out my VAM has improved from around 540 this time last year to 690 now. Still not a strong climber, but I'm pleased to see some progress. I don't feel like I'm any faster on climbs, but apparently over distance I am. I'm just paying too much attention to micro-data, how I do on those short, steep climbs of a couple hundred yards or half a mile around here. We don't have any long sustained climbs. But since resuming cycling in 2015 I've improved from dead last on every climb to middle of the pack on most and managed a few top tens that were heavily tailwind assisted.

Now I'd like to see Strava adopt some way to reliably factor in head/tail wind effects. There is a site that can analyze our Strava logs to estimate wind handicaps, but it doesn't seem to be maintained or updated now.

Depends on the day. The local MUP has a pretty good hill, sometimes I can keep a decent pace (I don't have fancy gizmos to measure pace, whatever), sometimes not. The good thing is: I never met a hill I couldn't walk up!

Hmmm... I haven't paid much attention to it.

No VAMS on one 1/2 mile segment that I had pushed pretty hard on.

But, it looks like for a couple of longer hills, I'm hitting 500 to 700 VAMS Just riding along (JRA).

There are a few anomalous readings, but I don't think I'm riding up 152% grades.

https://www.strava.com/segments/732548?filter=overall

Ok, going back to one PR that I pounded on a bit.

130 feet climbing, 2:01, 13.2 MPH, 0.44 miles. 6% average.

VAM = vertical meters per hour.

So, calculating that out comes to about 1180 VAM.

But, definitely not done in a steady state.

Hmmm, second half of that climb, I was going about 11 MPH, with a VAM of about 1125

It looks like I need to knock off about 10 seconds to take back the KOM (not a lot of riders). I haven't tried a hard climb on the hill for about a year.

Last month I did a climb up a mtn road. 1 mile segment, 9% grade at 821 VAM according to Strava. Not sure if that is good for a 260 Clydesdale.

I haven't climbed much in the last couple of years.

3 years ago the same climb was 999 VAM.

One foot at a time..

At this point in my life I don't really care about all these different measurements (VAM, power output, etc). I focus on my cadence (higher is better for me) and pedal stroke. I still climb considerably faster than anyone else I ride with so typically ride by myself because I hate having to slow down on hills. Shoot, I don't even ride with computers, gps anymore. I'm not out to race anyone but just stay in shape and have fun.

Clingmans Dome 2.5 hours 590. A local 1.3 mile hill my best was 960, both according to Strava. I'm 62 now, both those were just before turning 60.

Old injuries to legs, so very little climbing ability anymore, these days.

Sadly: 275 VAM, according to the suggested calculation. Which doesn't surprise me.

Roughly, back in the day I recall doing a ~300ft climb typically in 10mins or less ... or, 548 VAM. And longer climbs faster still, when pushing. Not great, even then, but these climbs were still post-injury.

Oh, to be young again, but with today's knowledge eh?

For grins, I went back and did a VAM calculation off a PR on a 13 mile, 3200 ft climb. The timing of the PR was a few months after a professionally done test at a cycling clinic. 930 VAM, based on a real world, hour long climb came out at almost exactly the same place as the earlier test (20 mins) in terms of FTP (280) and watts/kg (3.8). My sense is in the four hard years that have passed, I would have trouble hitting 75% of that mark. Oh well.

Interesting thread, worth resurrecting.

Climbing has always been my weakness, so anything that helps, helps. VAM is a more useful metric -- within the context of wind assist or hindrance, road conditions, etc. -- than Strava power estimates, and less susceptible to vagaries -- other than the wind.

Back in my prime as a competitive runner and avid cyclist, I used to train on the Lewiston grade and Bogus Basin. Guessing data using the wayback machine, I can safely say over 1000.