Skiingcrazed

I signed up and am training for my first sprint tri in August. My father's friend gave me his 1991 Bridgestone RB2. I am totally new to riding (aside from gallivanting on my beach cruiser).

I am having a lot of trouble on big hills. I think most of the trouble is that I am unsure of how exactly I should be shifting. I am unsure what gear is what on this bike and what gears I should be in when.

Any advice or tips? The majority of the race course is long steep hills that I find myself walking up (so embarrassing to admit this).

Thanks in advance!!

CbadRider

You want to be in an easier gear on hills so your legs can spin as opposed to mashing down on the pedals. The easier gears are the ones closest to the bike frame: the smaller chainring in the front and the biggest cog in the back.

Skiingcrazed

Thank you very much for putting it in simple terms Phew! A lot of the information I've read gets me so confused!

Tundra_Man 

As CBadRider correctly advised, your best bet during a tri is to spin your feet faster in a lower gear versus standing and cranking a harder gear up the hill. Standing and cranking may actually get you over the hill faster, but it will tire you much quicker. You've got a run waiting for you after T2 so you don't want to leave it all on the bike course.

A good way to learn how to spin is to spend some time on a quiet side-street or parking lot and put your bike in a really low gear. Use a watch/stopwatch to figure out about what 90 RPM feels like. Then practice spinning that fast (or even a bit faster without getting ridiculous.) Don't worry about how fast/slow the bike is going, just focus on spinning the pedals. After a while (probably more than one session) you'll learn how to spin smoothly and with less effort. At that point you can begin doing some training rides up hills and learn how to find the gears that allow you to spin a fast cadence to power you over the hills.

As an alternative to the stopwatch, you could buy a fancy bike computer that includes a cadence sensor and use that to figure out what 90+ rpm feels like. A bonus to having a computer is that you can also use it during a race on hills to make sure you're spinning rather than mashing. I have one of these computers on my tri bike, but once I learned how to spin correctly I rarely use this feature so I'm torn on whether or not it's worth the cost over a standard computer. Once you learn to spin I really haven't found the cadence sensor to be of much benefit for anything else.

CbadRider

You also want to shift into the easier gear before you start climbing, don't wait until the pedals are difficult to push. Shifting while not being able to move the pedals very fast can cause your chain to drop off (don't ask me how I found this out ).

Tundra_Man 

Ahhh... good point! I too know this, but not because I'm smart.