This is my first year of serious road cycling. I've been clocking about 400 miles a month for the past 5 months and ride with a group that is a racing team and really fast. Of course, I get dropped on 80% of the rides.

I ride a Cervelo S1 Ultegra Compact (50/34, 12-25).

For the life of me, I simply cannot climb. I can hold my own on A rides on flats at 25mph. But on the hills, everyone passes me.
I've gotten stronger over the past 4 months, but the inability to climb is bothering me.

Yesterday on a B* ride where I was mostly at the front of the peloton on flats, minor uphills etc, on any hill with a decent grade, all the little old ladies passed me effortlessly. On very short steep hills, I can easily power through fast even on the big crank. It's the long mid-grade or long steep hills that totally kill me.

At 5 9" and 150lbs, I feel I'm light enough to be able to climb well and certainly don't have any excess weight to lose.

Apart from just working harder and doing hill repeats to get better at it, is there anything else I'm missing? Can I blame any of it on the bike and make a case to buy a new one ;-)

Thanks, V

Uh oh...


You can by a new bike that weighs less. By the laws of physics, you will climb better if nothing else changes. You could also just lose a few pounds.

Climbs can also be mental and you not even know it! Have you always been weaker on climbs that you can think back???? May be climbing is not your forte so to speak. Yeah, your body weight is not an issue on the face value of that. It may be your leg muscles just don't produce climbing for what ever reason. But not sure what to suggest other than climb more and more and maybe something will trigger for you.

I would tend to speak with strong climbers and ask what they do to climb and maybe get some tips and you may find out your not doing something right. Then again you may have to suck it up and realize strengths and weaknesses. Even on the pro circuit those riders all have strengths and weaknesses. Sprinters don't climb like climbers and climbers don't sprint like sprinters. Then you have the Jack of all trades cyclist that does nothing exceptionally well but does all decent.

Just my 2 cents..................and I too in the past had very difficult times climbing. I would be passed literally by 70 year old men who have ridden their entire life effortlessly and what a demoralizing thing that is to say "Hey gramps.....can you slow down!"

I have gotten better but climbs are still not my best thing. I am more an endurance person.

I've always been weak on climbs.
When I first started riding with the group I ride with, the advise on climbs was to get into the lowest gear and spin hard.
Now, as I've gotten a little better, as I'm getting dropped going uphill, they yell out to get into higher gear and use strength instead of spinning. That doesn't last more than a few seconds

LOL! The popcorn alwasys kills me.

Ok, seriously - if your lower gear spins fast, then one gear higher, get out of the saddle, and control your breathing. Don't hold it and no panting. If you are actually skinny, put on some muscle weight. It's about oxygen, muscle, gears, and pride. It's ok to let your pride kill you. The little old ladies respect that.

You have to push through the pain. I've always fought with this. Lucky Nebraska is pretty flat or I'd never be able to hang on. Look at the pros, some people just don't climb well.

I've never been a climber either. In fact you have plenty of company around here.

The difference is that you really care to climb better, whereas I don't . . . I just choose less hillier routes and avoid 'em if I can.

Your weight is not a problem. Sure you could be 130, but it sounds like you still would not climb like a typical 130 pounder, no matter how hard you work at it.

It could be just your nature and you may be better off in the long run to be less upset about it. Just accept it for what it is. I wish I could play basketball like Magic Johnson, but I've had to accept the fact many years ago that that just won't happen. It is what it is!

You've only been riding hard for 5 months? It takes over a year to get in good shape road riding.

sounds like you are good at sitting in a draft but when you actually have to do work your legs aren't up to it yet.

do more hills.. get better at hills.

You have to be willing to suffer more, knowing that you can recover on the descent.

Yes, if I understand what 99Klein is saying here, I agree it's just conditioning.

Maybe the OP is gearing down too low on the hills in order to maintain the same feeling of effort they experience on the flats. Especially if most of the OP's riding is group riding, it would probably pay to go out on solo rides and attack some hills to build up both strength and effort threshold.

Also, a lot of cycling well is having the experience and confidence to know when and how much power to put down to get the job done. For example, as you approach a climb, it may make sense to power hard for a few seconds to carry your momentum up the hill a bit further, rather than dropping gears right at the foot in anticipation of the cadence you'll use on the middle and over the top of the hill.

Clearly, if the OP is hanging with the A group of a racing club after 5 months, they've got some power and fitness, so my assumption is that it's mostly a technique and conditioning issue.

not an easy one, this. i exprience anxiety approaching a climb, which immediately puts me on the back foot. halfway up, my heart rate settles and i can ride a decent tempo to the top. apart from hiring a sports psychologist, i have tried to address this by doing hill repeats, which have been helpful (and really painful!). experimenting with gearing, hand position, cadence, even head position has proven insightful, and i feel i at least have a foundation for improvement and a few nuggets of insight which i lacked previously.

start slowly, settle in, accelerate up the climb: before i was doing the opposite--accelerating early and slowing down the further i went. that method is slower and adds unnecessary suffering.

cadence is huge: it dictates HR and breathing. i have a target of 80, minimum of 70. what's interesting to note however is how you can revover your sense of control mid-climb by choosing a higher gear, slowing your cadence and focusing on your breathing.

hand position is critical: the death grip is awful--it triggers a flight or fight response, elevates the HR and slows you down. consciously folding my hands, resting my palms on the tops keeps me from resorting to the death grip.

eyes down or sideways, never up (not for very long, at least): when i look up, i have a tendency to push to get to the top or either get anxious that i'm so far away from the top. the monitor has the cadence, which is all i need to know. for a different view, i look out over the valley,check out the trees, the view over the valley, almost anything else.

that's all i got, and i'm not a great climber in the least, so take it all with a grain of salt.

This. And I wouldn't even apply a time line to it. Rather than say a year...I say it is mostly training and how much you do or do not put into it.

To the OP, is weight a factor? Sure. Is it a 100% guarantee of climbing success. 100% no. There are so many factors to quality climbing. Hell, look at pro riders...there are few of them that can do everything well. Some a re known sprinters, climbers, etc.

Train, train, train and then train some more if you want to get really good at climbing. I'd list off all of the things you need to get good at it but honestly, it would take too long. Look up info on it.

Im im beginning my "off season" training this winter and I'm going to focus on climbing...I'm a glutton for punishment I guess...

This confirms the fact that is not the bike but the rider, anyhow...

Who knows what bad habits and lack of techniques the kid has, maybe he can't spin using light gearing, that's the base of riding, but w/o seeing him is hard to tell what he is doing wrong, sure the guys in his bike ride won't tell him, kind'a normal anyways because or you have people too competitive that don't care about the others or because the whole group have the same defects.

Good luck on this one, hard to tell w/o seeing you riding.

Go out and ride a hill so hard that you vomit, ideally before you crest. Remember how you felt right before you blew. This is your JAV (just about vomit) threshold.

The next time you are on a group ride, on a climb, find a gear that let's you push 70 rpm, and ride til you hit your JAV.

True, but the OP does say he can push through short climbs in the big ring, but that long/steep kill him. That sounds like a lack of physical conditioning to me.

Vasuvius, when I first got my road bike, I couldn't climb handicap ramps. Dinky hills in the neighborhood just killed me. I thought there must be something wrong with my bike.

I went to the bike shop and while waiting to discuss my problem I listened to a man who wondered if a compact crank might be better for him as climbing Keel Mt. (1.5 miles, avg. grade 10.6% with a 20% "right turn of death" section) was a bit tougher for him these days. The man was in his 70's.

I knew it was time to HTFU.

I kept at it and now I can climb anything around here. Not the fastest but not the slowest on the climbs and I've come to embrace the suffering.

Just keep at it, you will get better.

I live in North St. Louis MO County and ride quite a bit to South County and man it's amazing (IMO) the number hills I get faced with. Though over time I have gotten stronger there are times especially after about 25 miles I do walk my bike up some.

I do believe that it's mental as there have been times when I was at the end of my ride and there is a particular hill that is STEEP and I have rode up it. When I get to the top I literally feel hurt. My chest and legs feel it but cruising slow for a few minutes my body recovers enough to get rid of that uneasy feeling.

Manny

If you're working hard on the other parts of the ride you're going to tire yourself significantly before any long hill. The first thing I'd try if I were you is to sit in and never see a wisp of wind until you hit the first long grade where you normally have problems. You should be bored out of your skull until then but the trade off is that you may actually be able to stay with the group.

Overall you're describing me, except I'm a couple inches shorter and I haven't seen 150 lbs since 1998 or so. Even when I weighed 112 lbs (at 21 years old) I couldn't climb but I could sprint (ditto 103 lbs @ 18, 133 lbs @ 28, etc). For me it's a limitation of my aerobic system, not anything else. For anaerobic efforts I'm fine, for sustained aerobic efforts not so much.

One thing I learned early on was to think outside the box. I pestered a racing friend of mine about a hill in our town, a short steep one that peaks at about 16-18%. This is the story of that.

Sounds like you're good at anaerobic efforts and you have some decent power in your legs, based on the fact that you can deal with speed on the flats, short power climbs, etc. If you can deal with the flats then you're also drafting reasonably well (if not then you should be able to climb pretty well, based on your weight, height, and the fact that you can go 25 mph on the flats without drafting).

And finally unfortunately a new bike won't help much. If your current bike fits well then you can get lighter stuff but that won't help significantly when you've blown up on a climb. You could get the lightest bike you can find and it'll still feel like a 30 lbs bike when you blow up.

You may be able to justify a new set of wheels. But really, focus on fit, focus on speed work, and go from there. Fit is absolutely critical - your body position gives you massive amounts of power and reduces expenditures in a similar way, if you're willing to give an aggressive position a try. I summarize what I've seen in new riders/racers here. It's brutal but I have not heard anyone who disagrees with this.

So to summarize:
- no a new bike won't help but feel free to get one.
- don't pull at all on a group ride and see how that affects your climbing.
- do a realistic, brutal, no BS assessment of your position and see if changes help (you don't list a location but if you're in the northern hemisphere you're getting into the off season, and the off season is the best time to experiment with position and other changes).
- racing may give you a truly brutal introduction to "fast riding".
- don't be afraid to think outside the box.

Yeah I agree but is not the same go in the flats in a group at 25mph with 50x12 than do it w/o shifting using 50x15, 25 mph is like 40 km/h and that's doable in a fix gear bike using 50x16 or 15 (this is the ex track racer in me talking ok? and that doesnt mean I can still do it ok? retired like 20 years ago from competitive cycling). This is mainly why I said that is hard to tell what's wrong w/o seeing him. Probably the guy is just moving between 50x12 and 50x15 all the time, shifting like if it he had an 18 wheeler truck. Since he is not mentioning anything about the gearing he uses in those rides I will assume the worse case scenario, he use 50x12 to do 25 mph riding in the back of the pack and not pulling ever.

Since there is a big chance he lacks cadence, he masks the problem using all the gear he has, the group change the pace in this case for sure the group try to keep the speed in the uphills and since his legs are just slow he wont be able to keep up, some people can't handle changes in the pace because their legs are as slow as a turtle. The un-ability of moving legs fast is a big problem in a cycling rider, I'm sure he has a few spinners in that group, those are the guys he should be trying to replicate, or asks the right questions, there is a reason for everything. Mention this about asking because at least here in group rides the people is too competitive and they won't teach others even if you ask them to teach you, so you have to see and replicate behaviors of more experience riders. At the same time be able to tell when a rider have just habits and do not learn from those ones, hard to do when you are hanging with the wrong people.

Like a month ago I met this old guy, 230 pounds 65 y/o guy telling me the same thing... " I cant climb, im too old and too heavy"... he had exactly the same problem I'm describing, all his life he rode with the whole gear in, at the time of climbing he did not know what to do and climbed like crap. Basically had to teach him how to use the gears, when to shift, when to rest, how to gain momentum, the importance of picking the right gearing, pace making, how important for a non climber to keep the pace... etc etc... that day we rode together, he got less tired than ever and did like 15 mins less than usual in the same ride that usually leave him dead for the whole weekend, and he climbed the same 2 or 3 miles of climb faster than ever before, he was surprised.

Some people figured it out, other ones are natural riders and others need somebody to tell them what, when and why's. And w/o seeing this kid is hard to know what he is doing wrong. I was him I would start looking at the other riders, specially the ones that spin in the flats, those have better technique than the slowpo's.

Another detail, who knows about the bike fit, that has a big influence at he time of going up too.

Hope this helps the OP and other ones wondering similar stuff.

i've given up becoming a better climber. i just take my time and plod my way up slowly.

never been a climber either... working on short rides around my area with max 5-6% grades.... just trying to work though those first before I move on to harder longer stuff. I can grind forever, just not fast as I want to be.

In a nutshell: Most cyclists avoid really working hard by drafting on group rides and kidding themselves that they are in shape. The hills tell you otherwise.
If you are on a group ride, you'd better be pulling the train a large percentage of the time if you want to get better.

I like to do a lot of climbing on my own, just time trial that hill. Get to know how hard I can push. You have been seeing improvements for 4 months. That's good, and I don't see any reason to worry about it. Improvements keep coming longer than 4 months. I'm not the best climber yet, but one of the fastest in B rides. I'm 5-10 165 lbs. The guy that won p12 hill climb around here recently was even bigger. It isn't a weight issue at 5-9 150. Just neex to improve threshold by riding threshold more. If the A ride 25 mph you are doing is in the draft, you should be practically coasting. If you are riding 25mph in the wind for good distances you should be strong enough to climb with the best of the B ride around where I live. A ride is another story.

This is worth a try. It's certainly made a difference for me on Saturday group rides.

Also agree with the posters that said if you've only been riding with these guys a few months, of course you won't be flying up the hills yet. Keep working at it. If you're getting dropped at the 3rd corner now, hang on until the 4th next weekend, then the 5th, 6th etc. until you're with the leaders at the top.


2 quotes about how to get better at climbing;
Robert Millar; "Ride up hills."
Eddy Merckx; "Don't buy upgrades, ride up grades."