The hills on one ride weren't as steep as I expected. As I climbed, I
wondered: Is this a particularly easy route that I can recommend to
others, or are my quads building up faster than I had hoped?

I concluded that the main factor was that my two previous rides had
been a little longer than I thought I was ready for, so I'd recently
had a lot of intense practice in taking it easy on myself.

----------

Just going slow won't do it. You can ride so fast that you fall over
in exhaustion before the end of the first mile -- and you can ride so
slowly that you fall over in exhaustion before the end of the first
mile. (Well, a track cyclist could ride that slow; most of us would
fall over for other reasons.) Somewhere in between there is a sweet
spot, and only experience can tell you what speed is least tiring.

The optimum speed varies with time of day, terrain, current condition,
what you've eaten lately, and everything else. Fortunately, once you
have had experience, you can tell cruising speed from too fast and too
slow continuously.

----------

One rule of taking it easy is don't strain, don't strain, don't
strain. Shift down a little sooner than you absolutely have to,
switchback when you could still keep climbing straight, rest when you
come to a comfortable place.

But sometimes a tiny bit of peak exertion can save a lot of low-level
exertion. You have to learn to recognize those times, save the
overdrive for when you need it, and space out the efforts so that
you'll be recovered when you need to do it again.

----------

Since this essay is already too long, I'll make my comments on hills
into a separate post.

--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.