Booker C. Bense writes:

I am looking for strategies of breathing when it comes to climbing
hills. While I admit that I usually beat my ride partners up the
hills, I feel as though I am breathing harder than is necessary.
I have tried to slow my conserve my breathing because once I get
halfway up the hill, and the steepness hasn't really changed, my
heart feels like it's going to beat out of my chest. Then, once I
get over the hill, my speed slows down and then the other riders
either catch up to me, or pass me by as I recover.

I know I'm doing something wrong, but I am not sure what it is.
I'm wondering if maybe I am using brute strength to get up the
hill, but I am not controlling or regulating my breathing to the
point that I might actually get up the hill faster and with less
stress so that I can maintain the pace even after I get over the
hill.

I doubt that you are "doing something wrong" but you may not have
enough training to perform as you would like. Do you put in at
least 200 miles per week and do these miles include 6% or better
hills more than a mile long?

_ Sheesh, he's not talking about racing Cat 1, but trashing his
buddies on a group ride. I think you can do that on less than 8-10
hrs a week.

Not if the competition gets a workout like that. If you ride to work
daily over hilly terrain such as the foothills behind where you seem
to work, that puts in 20 miles per day and a long ride on weekends to
Santa Cruz and back over the many great mountain roads in the area,
you'll get more than 200 miles in with no loss in the daily routine.

What are some are some home-grown strategies that some of you have
when it comes to tackling the hills?

There are no strategies and no techniques. There are only well
trained athletes with big lungs. Hill climbing is something that
can last hours at times, and there is no way of fooling your body
using "strategies".

_ What a load of crap!

I recall the proponents of secrets to greater speed on the flat and
climbing for many years were from believers in Jacques Anquetil's
ankling. A style that assures greater speed. What was overlooked was
that JA was a supreme druggist who was so out of it he could never
give an interview after finishing a race, he was so zonked, and you
could see it in his face.

Of course there are strategies, pacing yourself is a big part of
climbing effectively. Learning to pace yourself correctly for a
long climb is something that takes experience regardless of how in
shape you are. I think the question that is really being asked is
how to pace himself better on long climbs. It sounds like he's
going out too hard and blowing up, a pretty common mistake.

I think you'll have to give more details on how to do this rather than
roll out the old jargon on how to "relax when climbing" and the like.

_ Breathing is a sign of how hard you are working, if you breathe
slower you're working less. Monitoring your breathing can be a
good way to guage your effort, but you can't breathe less without
going slower.

Now you see it, now you don't. The amount of oxygen you can supply to
the legs is dependent on lung volume and breathing rate and you can't
do anything more if those two don't add up to the climbing rate. They
are intimately linked and the efficiency of these is dependent on
conditioning the muscles to receive that supply.

What I would suggest is deliberately throttling back on the
beginning part of the climb and saving your effort until you get
near the top. You might not climb faster, but you will be less
blown out at the top. If it's a long climb, put your bike in a
lower gear much sooner than you normally would, on a short climb try
and spin rather than stand. On your next ride when you come to the
hill, drop to the back of the group and stay there as long as you
can stand.

You are making this up as you write it seems. It reminds me of the
rider who suggested holding your breath helps increase speed. If you
witness the best riders in hill climbs, you'll see they are breathing
hard enough to hear them from the sidelines. It takes hard training
to achieve this sort of ability for longer hills. No tricks can get
you there.

Jobst Brandt