53-11 alltheway

I'm giving advice I normally don't give because I'm recommnending lower gears as your priority.

Strength training helps definitely, but spinning in the hardest gear you can do should be your primary goal.

ggg300

Man…. asking this question is going to get you the following responses:

Go light
Get lower gears
Focus on our upper body on the hill….make sure it is lose…don’t want to burn extra muscle
Train, Train, Train
Control your breathing
Alternate standing and sitting….to taste
Keep drinking water

I would listen and go to your local book store and just pursue the topic…this forum will hit most of the high lights….

Under stressed IMHO is how to climb given what you got…

1) Try what you have first then make adjustments….That bike of yours has gearing enough for most and eventually it will be true for you if you train right…
2) Try to Set up the low gear before you really need it and spin, spin, spin
3) Save your knees and walk if you need to…you will climb the hill if you keep trying.
4) Once you can get up the hill then consider messing with a new bike, going with a new cassette, and other stuff…

hills never get easy, you just kinda go faster up them...

Adgooroo

Doug, bet this was mentioned already, but I didn't bother to read ALL the responses. The first key to climbing is RPM's - cranking at a rate you can sustain. Just to get started somewhere, go for 90/min. and pick the gear that lets you STAY at that pedalling rate. If you start to bog down at ALL, shift down. If you run out of gears, get lower gears - or train on easier hills until you get the "preservation of cadence" thing down. You're fighting a battle of momentum vs. drag and resistance and momentum lost is VERY hard to regain. Second key is to make use of any contribution to momentum that physics allows - that means building up speed - and cadence BEFORE you get to the hill, when it's easy to add momentum.

pseudobrit

You're 225? How tall?

SDS

"My ride is a 2004 Giant OCR2 and I do nearly all of my recreational riding in East TN. This area has a lot of hills (I moved from FL about 4 years ago and I still haven't gotten used to them). Anyway, my bike is a triple, but I'm wondering what makes the biggest difference when you're riding in an area with lots of hills. Some guys in this area say that you can't tell the difference between a double with a light frame and a triple with a heavier frame. True? Is there a road bike that is manufactured specifically for hill climbing?"

What makes the biggest difference:

Being in shape. A couple of pounds on the bike is nothing compared to the tens of pounds off of you, and a doubling or tripling of the available power.

Gearing will get you in the cadence where you are efficient and make power, and out of the range where low cadence will injure you. Gear for 90 rpm or above on the steepest grade you will encounter. If you don't use it, good, you had a spare gear.

I recommend a triple, especially for your age group. Gear it the way you need it now, and change it if you need to later. I always gear so I have the ends of the range I need, and the most gears possible in between.

When you have thin skin and strings/cords/cables for muscles, and you can see your hip bones / ribs / collarbones, you are getting in shape. Heart rate in the middle forties or lower?

Had one of those treadmill stress tests down at the cardiologist's?

Quickie back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that to be in shape at 225 lbs, you'd have to be about 6'8".

Steelrider

Unless you are physically compromised in some way, this is 100% a conditioning problem.


This is pretty easy to do and is more technique than conditioning, although along the same lines you are showing improvement in pushing the same/bigger gear more consistently and faster.


This is one of your central issues. I think it's the heart of Galen's training comment. You need to work at it consistently enough - both by frequency and same routes that are challenging for you - so that you can measure and see your own progress without the variability of different routes clouding the picture. As others have suggested, you could read some cycling training books, but you're at enough of a beginning level (climbing-wise) that it doesn't even need to be that scientific. Just start using your cyclecomputer to time your climbs on consistent and challenging hills for you - you'll be encouraged by your progress and challenged to do better on the same hills the more you do it. A lot of climbing is sheer will and learning to embrace/enjoy the inevitable pain (not knee) that comes along with it. When you think about it, there are very few other places in your life where your will is tested to overcome a physical obstacle and the payoff, in terms of success and euphoria, is so immediate. It's a little like the four-minute mile - thought to be an unbreakable barrier, then once it was done, it was done over and over. Your mental approach to hill climbing will likely follow a similar path. Good luck

dougm

I think the solution, after reading all the posts is:
Lower gears so you can spend more time riding and less time walking.
More time riding (training).
The more you train, the faster you'll get. Everyone who has stated this knows first hand, I would guess.
You can always switch back to your smaller cassette later.
I use an 11-23 or a 12-27, depending on the route. There is a HUGE difference between the two. The poster who said there was not is either an extremely strong rider or does not have any real hills to train on.

dougm

Good points, steelrider!

oldspark

What am I missing here-he is running a 30-26 for a low gear on a triple-just needs more time in the saddle.

pseudobrit

With a 30-26 I can crawl up anything 8-12% while bonked. I think you're right; it's conditioning. At 225, you ought to be very tall or very muscular up top or you'll need to lose weight. Perhaps avoid the steeper hills until you can climb them

53-11 alltheway

I agree there is a huge difference, but I didn't realize he had a triple. I was thinking he had a double...and sometimes even a cassette change won't help if you need that 30T granny also.

feltdude

Is it psychosematic? Maybe. But I can spin up hills with my double chaingring F15 easier then with my triple chainring Trek 1000. So obviously, when you're talking about a significant weight difference - it matters. But if you're talking about a 17 lb double vs. an 18 lb triple - the triple will make it easier on you on long climbs.

pseudobrit

And when you're talking about dragging 200+ up those climbs?

jslopez

Not wanting to start another thread on hill climbing, I'd like to ask what a decent climber should do to improve on hills.

Brief background, been riding a road bike for about 4 months, using a double (53-39, 11 23 I believe) and so far I've been able to finish the hills I've tried in the area at a decent rate (meaning faster than the rec riders but way behind serious riders). Obviously there are some people that just smoke by me and that goes to show how much more room for improvement I have and so now I'm wondering if I should :
1) Continiously do longer hills at hard yet doable pace. Question being over time will I get stronger or just plateau?
2) Really push myself up a hill downside being I may/will burn out and not finish said hill
3) A different sort of hill training/riding which I'm obviously not aware of

Just curious if tehre's any more I can do to improve or if I'm at the pace I need to be in and it's just a matter of putting th saddle time in.

Thanks in advance for the input.

2manybikes

Training will help a lot, so will a better power to weight ratio, so will changing your gearing, they all are important. There is more than one good way to help yourself here.

You have choices.

Training will take time, you need to know how much you can do in the time allowed before your ride. If you lose weight while training that helps too. Tell us how long you have.

To really get a much lighter bike it will be costly. There are plenty of hill climbing bikes. If money is no object that's a quick boost.

If you need to do better right now, and not spend a lot of money, then buy a mtb rear cassette with a 34 tooth large cog and a long cage mtb derailleur. You can get a small cog that is equal to what you have now and not lose any top end. This is easy and cost effective, more than anything else. I just helped a friend do this to his OCR 2 this summer. It helped him a lot. I have helped a couple of other people do this too. It's the best bang for the buck. I do this all the time, I have done it to three or four of my own bikes. I have analyzed the cost very carefully.

They all work, of course all three is the best. I would try the new cassette first. It's cheap and fast. Keep training and start looking at lighter bikes as you train and see what's available for later. Then you can get an idea of what you need to spend if you decide to buy a climbing bike. Mine was $6,000. You can get very close to mine for half that much.

All of the ideas posted here are good ideas, but you have a choice. I would consider every one of then important.

jarhead#42

Never had a problem with any hill.. when one muscle group gets tired I use a completly diffrent group.. either through the way I sit or stand... never saw a hill that gave me any fear
Jar

ggg300

"If you need to do better right now, and not spend a lot of money, then buy a mtb rear cassette with a 34 tooth large cog and a long cage mtb derailleur. "

oh no not the long/short cage issue.........

Try to increase your spin...What is your hill rpm at now?

brent_dube

But to ride at a proper cadence, you would have to be going at least 8mph. This isn't always easy on an 8-12% grade.

pseudobrit

Not always possible on the steeper bits, but you can always crawl up at 5mph if you totally crap your pants before the top. Beats walking.

brent_dube

You can, but how fun is it to go 50rpm up a hill?

2manybikes

What does not kill you, only makes you stronger !

Gonzo Bob

This may sound "sacrilegious", but bike weight really doesn't make much difference in climbing. I'm assuming a pretty narrow window for bike weight because bikes in the same class and price range typically don't vary widely in weight. So for a 150lb rider, dropping from a bike weight of 21lbs down to 19lbs is only a total (bike+rider) weight decrease of about 1%! So you would go ~1% faster (since on climbs, speed is almost directly proportional to power/weight). Now that 1% faster may be important if you're racing but even then it works out to only 6 seconds faster for a 10 minute climb or 36 seconds faster for a 1 hour climb.

The real key to riding hills and mountains effectively is to know what gearing you need. This depends on so many things - your weight, your fitness, your strength, how hard you want to actually work, the grade of the hills, the length of the hills, the road surface, etc. - that it's really hard for someone else to determine this for you.

As a general recommendation, though, you should try to select a low gear that will allow you to keep your cadence above 70rpm. It may go below 70rpm on short steep sections, but if you're pedaling below 70rpm for more than just a couple of minutes, you should look at getting lower gears. BTW- that 70rpm is somewhat arbitrary, too. Some people (like me) are "more aerobic/less strength" and need to keep the cadence up above 80rpm, and some are "less aerobic/more strength" and can handle lower cadences down around 60rpm or lower just fine.

One way to figure out what low gear you need is to ride on the steepest, longest, toughest climb you've got and measure your cadence. If you pedal 60rpm on the climb but want to pedal 70rpm, you will have to reduce your low gear. To compute the new low gear, take the current gear times the rpm and divide by the rpm you want. For example, if you use 39/25 (gear ratio 1.56) and pedal 60rpm but want to pedal 70rpm, you will need a low gear of 1.56*60/70 = 1.34. If you keep the 39 front ring, you will need to get a cassette with a big cog of 39/1.34 = 29.

LordOpie

AMEN!

I'm getting a bit tired of people pushing light weight bikes and wheels. Almost as tired as me pushing bibs on 53-11.

Steelrider

Do this. There are several hills that I do continuously - all year every year - just to measure my fitness. They're usually incorporated into standard routes, so it isn't hard to work in or anything. But I know what a good time is for me and I know how I should feel both on the way and at the top.


If you're continually looking for new challenges, this is bound to happen to you sometime. If it doesn't (and you are actually looking to improve), maybe you're not pushing yourself enough. I can only think of a couple times ever that I've not been able to finish a hill that I challenged myself to get over. Have I stopped and rested on my way up said hill? Definitely. There's no shame in this, just don't try to be doing it in a group ride of guys/gals who aren't close friends where someone is going to have to sweep/wait for you you until you do.


You can do some interval training. There are, I'm sure, sites and other forums where you can read up on this in excruciating detail. But suffice it to say that they are repeated periods of intense activity (in this case, hillclimbing) alternated by periods of less intensity/recovery. Find a hill of limited, but challenging duration that you can sprint up repeatedly, alternated with rest/cool down. The general idea is that when you train to your maximum (pushing the muscle pain limit), changes occur to your muscle's capacity to process oxygen which will allow you to increase your aerobic capacity and even allow you to push even farther into your anaerobic zone the next time out. This can be kind of brutal and depends entirely on how much you really want to flog yourself in the effort to improve.