The counting you need to be doing is of calories.

Five pages and only 1-2 people suggested your power:weight ratio is the problem. Climbing and gravity are really simple things. All the technique, time in the hills, and mental tricks won't get you anywhere. Those are all quick, easy fixes favored by today's society. What you really need is to hunker down and do hard training rather than putzing around do cyclotourist low-intensity riding and develop the discipline to go on a diet. But that's hard to do and people resist the reality that to be good at climbing requires effort on their part so they go into denial and pursue the easy, quick fix, gimmicky solutions.

No, plenty of people did say it gets easier if you stronger and don't try to go faster ;)

or sit on your balls halfway up and you'll forget about the leg and lung pump.. bazinga

I usually count in time with my breathing ... for some reason it helps me keep my breathing regular so that I don't start hyperventilating.

The bicycle weight includes racks and cages, but not waterbottles, handlebar bag, and bag on the back of the bicycle.

for non touring use you should find a way to eliminate some of that extra weight. for rides under 100miles /160k you should not really need a handlebar bag and rear rack bag.. or even the racks. I know you're all randoneer girl but when you're not doing the long distance stuff you should ride accordingly. having a small seatbag with a spare tube and your bento bag for food is sufficient. Also riding with your really wide tires adds a whole other pile of resistance.. even knocking them down to 25mm would be super helpful.

When I was new 2 yrs ago and fatter/out of shape, I used to dread big hills also. These days I feel lucky I have decent hills near my home unlike many in Phoenix area where it is all flat. Hills are great strength training, build confidence etc. I now believe Riding would get pretty boring if I lived in say Florida where there are no hills. your forgetting the rewards going downhill after a long hard climb....woooohoooo!!

My tires are 700x25 ... they aren't that wide!

And I know I could ride a lot lighter on shorter rides, but I do most of my rides with my randonneuring setup so I am comfortable with that setup when I do the longer rides.

I do exactly the same thing. I presume your breathing is also in sync with your pedaling.

Your rig is heavier than most peoples' bikes, so you might want to run a cog lower than most people on lighter bikes. But you should still be able to climb anything. The weight will slow you down a little, but that's not a problem.

Since you use rhythm and counting, one technique you might try when climbing is to alternate standing for a short time (about 20 seconds) with sitting (roughly 40 seconds). Count and keep your breathing in sync with your pedaling. As you get stronger, you can try standing for longer periods of time. This exercise is useful even on flat ground or modest raises that don't call for standing. This will help you work more muscle sets and make climbing much easier. It will also give you something to focus on as you ascend.

hmm tires looked wider in the picture i was looking at. maybe it wasnt a current setup or just looked funny. 25mm is fine. Do you have any rando's coming up? i would have thought that with your experience it wouldnt take more than a ride or 2 to get back used to a loaded bike.. but you could definitely benefit from lightening things up and riding a different way with a more aggressive style than you can all loaded down.

Baner, she's got 26-34 for her low gear and going 4-5km/hr i'm not sure you could spin a smaller gear and still stay upright since she's already getting wobbly. i definitely agree she has to mix in standing to break things up.

When she stands, she'll have to upshift quite a bit. Since she actually uses her low gears, I'd think that moving to a bigger ring might be the ticket for the standing parts. If not, I'd guess it would take about 3 clicks on that 11-34 to get to a standable gear.

Machka, when standing you want your gearing such that your cadence is just like walking -- it should feel comfortable. When you sit, you'll want to drop to a lower gear so you can spin faster.

Good point. In my opinion a lot about climbing really is mental. Of course it doesn't hurt to be physically good at it, but a huge amount of it is about how you see the hill, as a dreaded obstacle, or as a positive training opportunity. Of course where I live you really cant get a decent distance ride in without a significant amount of climbing, even if its mostly smallish hills (300-1000 ft) so being forced to do it helps with the "cant avoid it so might as well learn to like it" attitude.

Ohh.. i read that wrong. i thought you meant she needed a smaller gear to spin even faster.. I agree, with my 34 or 36 ring i tend to go 2 shifts to stand up then adjust from there depending on how steep it is. depends on what gears you start playing with i suppose. brifters definitely make that game alot easier to adjust without messing up your rhythm too much

I love climbing as well. It becomes all about you and the hill/mountain.

Im so happy i did marching band in high school. Honestly i rarely lose my breath at any given time. I definitely feel the burn in my legs and the rest of my body, but playing a trumpet at 7500 feet for 7 years in blistering cold, and 4 years of breathing exercises have turned my lungs to steel. As for my legs.............well that a different story :lol:

Thanks banerjek.

I need to work on clipping in if I'm going to stand. At the moment, I'm using platforms and can't stand with them. And yes, I do know about shifting when I stand. Back in Winnipeg, when I used clipless pedals I practiced standing going over overpasses a lot. Overpasses were all I had for hills back then. :lol: But I felt very comfortable standing in those days ... however those days were a long time ago, and on completely flat or almost completely flat terrain.


I've got an audax event coming up in a couple days ... and I hope it goes better than my last two audax events. I'm having quite a time getting back into cycling long distances ... very frustrating. But I've been trying to practice on hills every time, or just about every time I go out.

While I could lighten up a bit, at most it would likely only be 2 or 3 lbs. I suppose I could remove my rear rack, but it's not that heavy. And the bag I'm carrying on my rack is really small and light ... especially compared with my Canadian randonneuring setup. My handlebar bag is probably the heaviest thing on my bicycle but isn't all that heavy either compared with my Canadian setup.

Stand up Girl. Lat fall I hit 116, on a hill, out of the saddle, on an MTB. Learn how to yo-yo, then tighten your buns. I am 57 y/o. If I can do it, so can you.

You really should go up to the Great Barrier Reef. You don't have to be scuba-certified. You can snorkle/free dive it.

throw bungie cords.
Imagine that there is a bungie cord around your waist and mentally "throw" it around an object 10-50 yards up the hill. In your head, you need to then feel the cord pulling you towards the target. as you get close to the anchor, throw your cord to the next object.

Old mental trick that seems to work for me if for no other reason than it breaks long climbs into bite-sized chunks.

You'd be amazed what a little flatland work can do. As you get stronger, you'll get so you feel comfortable standing for miles and miles even if 50m is a pain now. I live in the flats myself and haven't taken my bike on a mountain for months. But I wouldn't be worried at all if I had to climb 10K feet tomorrow.

Adding or subtracting a few pounds has a surprising impact on the way the bike feels and handles. So be sure to practice with something that's similar to what you intend to ride with on your events.

For most of my adult life I rode flat roads mostly, and specifically avoided challenging climbs. Then in my 40's I moved to an area where there was nothing but challenging climbs, and if I rode anywhere it was along the beach after driving to the coast. I basically rode less and less.

That all changed as I approached 50. I told myself it was now or never if I was ever going to see what I was capable of physically. Bought that triple crank road bike and off I went. The torture and pain fascinated me. Because I'd gone through military boot camp, plus various basketball and football team training camps, I knew that if I pushed through the initial pain, improvement was just around the corner. It's been over 2 years since and I haven't looked back. The improvement was mostly gradual, but sometimes surprisingly sudden (as in, "How did I just do that?"). No way do I want to lose in muscle and conditioning what took me this long to achieve!

Hail hills!

Hills are good. Sometimes you have to get your a** off the saddle, and thrash your bike. 37 pounds, 27 pounds, 17 pounds, it doesn't matter. (Obviously a 17 pounder is easier to beat into submission than a 37 pounder.)

Machka,
I still have to contend to not think about it. I was just down on the trainer and found Lynyrd Skynyrd on PBS. Yeah Imagine that. Sorta like a Alice Cooper on Musac. Anyway , the hour was over before I knew it. Try not to focus on the hill but having a good time. This is also the reason good company is important.

Since much of my riding is in the evening, and in that with rush hour traffic beseeching it, my impetus when climbing is to piss off the cagers by making it to the signal at the hilltop before they do. This creates an uphill sprint that I ready myself for near the bottom of the hill.

So it's mental, planning and readiness.

When climbing in the nearby park, it's the hungry coyotes that come out of the bush which makes me ride faster/harder.

So it's survival. :D

On my 100K this weekend, I practiced riding all clipped in. For the past 2-3 years now I've been riding with my left foot clipped in and my right foot on the platform. But I cannot stand that way.

My 100K this weekend was on beautiful terrain ... long gradual climbs, long gradual descents, and flat ground. So since the terrain wasn't intimidating to me, I thought I'd give riding all clipped in a go, and it went all right although I almost forgot to unclip at a couple stop signs. :lol: Since I was clipped in, I also decided to give climbing standing up a go as well. I startled Rowan on my first attempt by suddenly passing him on a little climb ... standing up!! :D

I'm going to have to practice more. Way back when I just knew which gear to be in to be able to remain standing for extended periods of time, but I've lost the touch.


Last weekend, I climbed Lake Mountain ... these are some photos of that climb (the last 12 photos):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/1430288...7622345234456/

I started down in that valley. :)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2693/...6cab7d61ac.jpg

Great photos - to go off topic - an emotional space given the fires were almost a year ago to the day. Nice to see the green shoots.

davida

Lot's of good climbing advice in here, and without reading all the posts let me throw one more in. Standing is well covered above and congrats on trying (and liking it). I find the real trick on long hills is to be able to come up of of the saddle and maintain the same heart rate. You need to practice a smooth transition and being relaxed when you stand.

I see a lot of people climbing that come at of the saddle, accelerate for a hundred yards and then die. This is best to avoid!