kenshireen

Background;
I have a Look KG96 with downtube shifters.
39/48 chainring and 12/29 7 speed cassette.

I ride the silver comet trail in Atlanta.
It is basically flat where I ride so I am usually in my highest gear if not close to it.
Big chainring and small sprocket.
I cruise along at about 15MPH.

Now here is my dilemma...
There is a short steep hill about 100 feet long...
I'll be cruising in my high gear and when I approach the bottom of the hill I shift quickly to my lowwest gear and peddle up the hill.
The problem is I have no momentum since I shift at the beginning of the hill... By the time I get to the crest the bike is hardly moving (due to the low gear) and I have to stand to get over the hump.

What is the best way to take this hill. Keep in mind my gears are on my DT.

Thank you

REDMASTA

Pedal harder

woodcraft

15 mph with 48/12 is about 47 rpm cadence.

I would work on getting your cruising rpm much higher- 70 or more.

Then when you get to the hill it will be a different experience.

Jon T

I too, ride dt friction shift. For the past 50 years all I've ridden is friction. Here's how I do it--as long as you have good forward momentum, hit the hill balls-to-the-wall, so to speak. As you feel yourself slowing, ease up on the pedal pressure and shift to a lower gear and resume pedaling. Repeat as necessary. I have a 12-28 rear and a 26-40-50 in the front. Very seldom do I need the 26 in front. I'm usually in the next to, or third from the largest cog in the rear. There aren't many hills on my rides but there are some short, steep over-passes. Keep in mind I'm 63 yo and my ride is 34 yo (bought it new).
Jon

caloso

Clyde1820

Myself, I have old injuries that preclude a lot of force applied to those muscles (with hard-cranking hills, for example). So my technique is to do these two things: keep the cadence high, and to ensure I'm in a suitable gear prior to actually needing it. Of course, that guarantees I'll fall down to the slowest speed up that hill fairly rapidly, but it also ensures I make it up the hill. Anything else, and I'll peter out (from the injuries) long before the hill's crest is reached. The trick is to not mind that the ground speed is so slow, but rather to appreciate the brilliance of the proper gear selection for the hill in question.

livedarklions

Shift to the middle sprocket about 100 feet before the hill and spin as fast as you can, then shift to the small chain ring right before you start climbing, never slowing the pedaling. You shouldn't lose momentum from shifting with that sequence.

Maelochs

it's true ... there were no hills until brifters were developed.

Good advice here----with DTs and hills, shift early and often so you keep the cadence high. Because you will need to ease up for a shift, you have to shift Before you are losing crank speed due to the incline. If your legs are slowing down and you pause to shift you had best shift to your Lowest low gear because you will have lost all momentum.

A 100 foot hill, though .... unless it is wickedly steep, you should be fine.

I haven't done the miserable DT-friction thing in years but i did it for decades. i think i would----be ready because I know the hill is waiting (I assume it is about the same location every day?) and assuming you are on the big ring/small cog (which is downright silly at 15 mph) drop to the small chain ring before I hit the hill. I would start spinning like an idiot, and just before i felt i had to slow my cadence, i would drop a gear.

I wrestled an 18-sped (3x6) DT-friction touring bike and 80 pounds of gear over the lower slopes of the Smokey Mountains that way. When the hills get really long, you need to grind away in the lowest gear you have--and it just sucks .... but for a lot of hills, super-high (over 100) cadence is the key. And with DT-friction, shift early and often because you lose so much with each shift.

canklecat

That's what interval training is for. Made as much difference as equipment tweaks for my nemesis -- the many short, steep hills on my favorite roller coaster routes.

Interval training hurts. It isn't fun. But it helps. Got me from dead last on every hill segment to middle of the pack on most Strava segments. On good days I've cracked the top ten on a couple of popular segments with longish climbs (a couple of miles of fairly continuous climbing) and fast rollers with lots of short, steep climbs.

You can also find out whether you're better suited to mashing or spinning. Mashing gets the legs burning. Spinning burns the lungs. Some folks prefer spinning because recovery is faster. But I have a constricted airway that limits my aerobic capacity somewhat, so I practice both spinning and mashing, seated and standing.

Brocephus

Seriously ?? A 100 foot-long hill ? That's about 30 yards. You can probably throw a brick that far. Worse case, it's still just a few seconds. Just ride the thing a couple times and figure it out. The options are obvious, and very limited.
If you're having difficulty, then go at it in an easier gear. That's it.

fietsbob

Shopping answer, maybe a new crank , 34t capable, instead of 39t ?

wphamilton

Keep it in your high gear, get out of the saddle and sprint at the bottom and attack it. Keep it up until you're over the crest, no backing off at the top. Catch your breath on the downhill side, or flat as it may be.

Maelochs

Buy a small, vicious dog. Before a ride, stuff it in your knapsack. Let it loose at the bottom of the hill and let adrenaline carry you over the crest.

tyrion

Attack the hill in high gear, then after a couple pedal strokes ease up and drop into the small chainring, couple more hard strokes then ease up and shift up to the big cog.

Practice and timing. The key is shifting when you have enough momentum to ease up to shift. If you can use the full width of the road you can angle across in order to ease up and shift.

Cute Boy Horse

If you're really only doing 15mph in your highest gear you are, and I mean this as gently as possible, dramatically out of shape. You've gotten used to the idea that "riding a bike" means pushing slowly against a high resistance. This is wrong, it doesn't make you any power. 48-12 gear is something you should only ever be using going downhill at 25+ miles an hour.

What you need to do is keep your bike in a middle gear, and learn to pedal less hard, but faster. You will soon be going much faster than 15mph in a much lower gear, and you will have the stamina to go up this tiny hill.

If you don't make this change you're likely to severely damage your knees.

livedarklions

Advice like this drives me crazy because it assumes everyone is the same. I am 57 years old, and started biking seriously again last year after about 14 years of not doing it. I immediately went back to my life-long habit of riding in the highest gear on the bike in the flats. It simply is what feels most natural to me, and I am consistently slower in every other gear combination. I have never experienced knee problems, and I don't see the logic behind thinking it would cause knee problems. It's not jolting the knee, twisting it, or imposing high impact to it.
At first, last year, I was maxing out at about 18 mph doing this, but my legs have gotten rapidly stronger riding this way, and today for the first time ever, I clocked myself doing 30 mph for about a minute, riding a 53 x 12 on the flat. I was able to sustain it at 28 for about 5 minutes after that. This was about 40 miles into a solo century.
I realize I am an outlier, and my gear usage is not typical, but I am quite sure that my preferences reflect the geometry and muscle consistency of my legs. The "average rider" is a statistical construct that doesn't exist in the real world, so if you don't actually know anything about the OP, you should not assume he's average. The "one true way" approach really works poorly for outliers, and almost everyone is an outlier in some respect or another.

BTW, high gear in the flats has really made hill climbing a lot easier, both by stomping and grinding. It's basically high-resistance training. What a surprise it develops muscle strength!

Reynolds 

Not everybody would experience knee problems by riding that way, but the probability is higher IMO. It's simply that low speed, high force pedalling stress the knees more than the opposite. You could say: "But leg presses are low speed, very high force". True, but you don't do thousands of them in a row like when cycling.

livedarklions

I want to be in the infomercial for the Popeil Pocket Hellhound.

Cute Boy Horse

I have bolded these parts to address them one by one.

1) You are a *****apiens, and we know how those work because science is real and exists.

2) This lifelong incorrect habit feels "natural" because it is a lifelong habit. I have a friend who finds it "unnatural" to chew with his mouth closed, because he was raised badly and never got into the correct habit. Likewise, your lifetime of this bad cycling habit doesn't mean you are correct either, it merely means you learned to pedal wrong.

3) You are repeatedly causing unnaturally high loads on your knees. Repeated high loads are much, much worse than repeated low loads. You are, in effect, pressing the knee joint together like a mortar and pestle.

4) Muscles become what your body believes are appropriate to the given workload. This is the point of physical exercise. That you are relatively slow in a correct gear compared to an incorrect gear merely means you have mistrained your body.

You will be faster if you train yourself to spin. Torque is not power.

livedarklions

Running puts way more stress on the knee. Walking probably does as well.
Do you have some sort of qualifications that make "IMO" something we should consider?

Because I actually pedal as you describe, and I'll be damned if I can see any reason to believe that what I am doing is stressing my knee any more than repetitive low resistance pedaling. Knees blow out from high impact activities, lateral impacts like getting tackled, and maybe from kneeling. You got any evidence that low impact/high resistance poses any such risk? And please don't embarrass yourself by saying something silly like "common sense" .

If you're going to mess up your knees by biking, it will be by wiping out or getting hit by a car, not by riding in too high of a gear. I'm pretty sure any fast mountain biking probably poses more risk to the knees in an hour than what I do does in a year.

livedarklions

I have spun. I am much slower doing so, and frankly get quite bored. The knee joint doesn't compress in the manner you describe. *****apiens vary widely in the proportions of their legs, the percentage of fast twitch muscles, and any number of factors that I don't believe there's any extensive scientific literature on the variability of optimum gear ratios for 57 year old riders.

And please tell Eddy Merckx you know how he could have been faster. I'm sure he'd totally respect your obviously incredibly well-informed opinion.

Reynolds 

I'm sure there are many activities that put more stress on the knees than cycling. But here we're talking about different cycling styles, not cycling vs. other sports.
No special qualifications, hence IMO. Consider it or not, no big deal.
I'm not trying to tell you how to pedal your own bike - why so angry?

livedarklions

I'm not angry, I just don't like people pushing made up nonsense. I am very annoyed at the other fellow, who is actually telling me how I should pedal, so if I conveyed some of that irritation at you, I apologize.

u235

​​​​​​ I grew up riding in Western PA where there almost no real flatland. Did 50-60 rpm for decades. Had to stop doing it and relearn because of my knees on the hills. I'm now fine at 90-95 and with a shorter crank and can go further and longer than I ever could before. Your legs can be extremely strong and powerful but that does not prevent something else from becoming the weak link specially when hills are involved. Ride any way you want based on your experience and desire and terrain. The logic and theory is sound, it just has not applied to you yet or may not ever for you and your riding conditions. I wish I could say the same. Search Google for +knees +cadence. It's real.

livedarklions

I googled as you suggested, and found a literature review of the scientific studies, and what it amounts to is that there's one overuse injury associated with high gears and a different one that's associated with high cadences. So basically, the big difference is which side of the knee do I want to risk developing pain.

BTW, it's very normal for people to have completely different cadences on the hills than on the flats. Also, bike can affect it as well. I recently started riding a road bike for the first time in decades, and I definitely gear down much more on hills than I do with the hybrid.