BlazingPedals

You want advice, and the advice is, QUIT DOING IT THE HARD WAY. Put the bike in a middle gear and spin up the hill at 80-90 rpm.

I don't hit high gear until I'm doing 28-30 mph.

NomarsGirl

Is it at the top of the hill? That would motivate me to get up the hill. Chocolate or vanilla? Why choose? They are great together. If I can only have one, I'll take vanilla 9 times out of 10. Sometimes you just crave chocolate.

cyclintom

With me it has the magical ability to trigger massive and malodorous assaults on everyone with range since I have lactose intolerance.

wphamilton

"The maximal workload ... for competitive cyclists" at their higher rpm is going to involve more force than for the rest of us when we're mashing. For more elite cyclists, their easy recovery pace will involve as much or more force on the joints as our mashing does. If it were purely a case of that amount of force causing joint problems, then competitive and elite cyclists would all be crippled, so of course there is more to it. Plausibly their bodies have adapted to greater forces at any cadence, which means that it's reasonable for your body - or anyone else's - to adapt to those same forces at lower cadences (mashing).

As I said on the roadie thread (cycling myths), I think the idea rises to the level of myth.

JanMM

Where'd the OP go?

livedarklions

Serious cyclists eat rocky road. Tends to clog up the soft serve machine, though.

Or, we could argue because my ratio of chocolate craving to vanilla is exactly opposite of your's.

Dammit, coming up with an ice cream argument is hard! Tim's right. Even thinking about ice cream makes me happy.

Maelochs

Seeing where this thread went ... would You stick around?

livedarklions

You mean when a couple of people suggested his bike was going to kneecap him?

u235

No need to embellish. Just a side discussion about benefits of using different cadences.

livedarklions

You were polite about our disagreement. The fellow I was responding to went over-the-top dramatic, then is chastising everyone else for it.

wphamilton

Out riding, probably. Likely after he tried "get the speed up and get over", figured it's no problem any more, and has no more use for this thread.

livedarklions

He left before I could suggest JATO, dammit.

kenshireen

I am the original OP and I appreciate all your responses.
A little more info on my part woud have helped clarify some of the replies..
So here it goes.
I am 72 YO in very good condition except that I have bad OA in both knees.
I can mash but then I pay the price... so I really try to avoid doing this.

I normally take the Silver Comet(SC) in one gear... 48/12.. I stay in that all day long with a cadence of approx 60.
Very relaxed... I could do more... but I am out for 50 miles so I don't want to get back to my car and collapse

The little hill is located at about the 40 mile marker... It takes you from the flat trail up to the open highway.
I usually ride from Rambo Nursery to Garbage mountain at the 46 MM. I do not climb the mountain otherwise I would probably not make it home.

I alway make the hill but I know my shifting is incorrect... I shift to my granny gear at the very beginning and start to spin like crazy because there is no elevation...as a result when I get to the crest there is zero momentum..
As soon as I am at the top I shift back to my 48/12 and cruise along.

MY goal is to spend a few hours on a calm, non-rainy day, give my heart and legs a workout and come home exhausted... Believe it or not I have my own personal intervals where I will see a slight incline....kick my cadence up to 80 and run for a mile or two.....it sure feels good having the breeze flow past my ears.

Once again..thank you all for your responses... I hope I have clarified matters.
BTW.. I have a MOOT which I have yet to ride... Stuck on my look with the DT shilfters

HTupolev

Riding a 48-12 at 60rpm all day sounds like mashing.

Why don't you just shift gears one or two at a time as your speed drops, rather than bailing to your lowest gear immediately? Downtube shifters make this less trivial than brifters, but if your bike fits, it shouldn't be hard.

CliffordK

It depends on the hill. I have one RR overpass, pretty tall, maybe 100ft long overall.

If I can push it up from my cruising speed up to say 21/22 MPH... then I can power over it without hardly dropping a gear.

On the other hand, my driveway hits about 16%, I think. There is just no powering up it.

I tend to run out of power once I hit a hill 2x or 3x that length, especially if I'm quite a few miles into my ride.

Certainly, with brifters it is easier to shift under high power, but even with the DT shifters, one can shift while moving.

Assuming the cassette has shift gates, one should be able to shift under moderate power.

If you really want to get over the hill in style, I'd approach it like this:

1. Sprint to the bottom of the hill. Try to push the speed up to just over 20 MPH.
2. About 1/4 the way up the hill, drop from the big ring to the small ring. Keep pounding.
3. Shift on the fly as needed on the rear to get over the hill.

As long as you keep your cadence up reasonably high (no standing), you should be able to reach down to the shifters and shift while moving, and even uder moderate force, especially in the rear (with a "modern" cassette).

JanMM

Good advice.

jon c. 

I have some short hills where I maintain a good speed on approach and drop the front ring at about the middle of the hill, right before I start to mash. FWIW, I also use DT shifters, although I don't know that it matters.

kenshireen

This is what I will try next time... Remember you have to take one hand off the bars to do this and if it doesn't work you might have to do a pull down...

HTupolev

What's a "pull down"?

I know that a hand needs to be removed from the bars in order to shift, but this shouldn't be that disruptive. Go to 1:15 in this video:


See how I shift both the front and rear shifter, while still pedaling mostly smoothly-ish? If the bike fits, it really shouldn't be difficult to do this.
If you're certain that the bike fits, and you're still having trouble with shifting technique, I'd recommend switching to a shifter type on the handlebars.

ksryder

Vanilla with toppings duh. I seem to recall having some decent ice cream in Rockmart.

I rode the Silver Comet Trail once from Cedartown into Atlanta. There's a minor climb and descent somewhere not too far from Cedartown that I didn't give much thought to. But when we stopped to chat with other cyclists, a lot of them asked us whether we did the gigantic climb out by Cedartown -- they were speaking of it like it was the Col du Tourmalet or something.

My takeaway is that it's all about perspective -- if your cycling is confined to an MUP with little-to-no elevation, than any minor terrain is going to seem like a significant feature.

Also I won't fault someone for not intuitively grasping certain aspects of bicycle shifting -- I was riding with a friend who had just purchased a bike who hadn't really ridden since he was kid -- when we got to hills he kept shifting into the smaller cassette cogs until I told him to do the opposite, and it was a revelation to him. This man is a doctor. He's smart in other ways.

BlazingPedals

I tend to carry all the speed I can into the hill (without blowing up) and as I lose speed on the hill I downshift one gear at a time to keep my cadence reasonable. That way power is applied smoothly and continuously as my speed gradually drops to whatever climbing speed that's dependent on the slope.

fietsbob

Shoulder the bike and Run up the hill with it carried..

(Cyclocross racing does that, every lap)

CliffordK

Oh, heck, I regularly pick up my bike (have a nice light one). But, one can at least roll it on 2 wheels if there isn't anything to carry it over.

tdh10

00 feet is about 3 pedal strokes in you biggest gear.

caloso

What he said.