Attacking hills

Claire Petersky wrote:
"Hunrobe" wrote in message
...

Chris Neary

wrote:


remember when a member of peloton (Kevin Livingston?) was asked, "Do you
push a big gear or spin a small gear on the climbs?"

His response: "I spin a big gear..."

Not to deride Livingston's climbing technique but since when does an
approximate 70 gear inches ratio (42 x 17) qualify as a "big gear"? It is

a

snappy comeback and great line though.


Bicycling Magazine has the advice this month of shifting into a smaller gear
if it's your legs getting tired, and using a bigger gear if it's your lungs
that are getting tired. As I was going up "The Wall", a short but steep hill
yesterday, I was thinking, what are you supposed to do when your legs have
given out, your lungs are screaming, and you don't have any gears left on
your chainring?

Dunno. I still haven't figured out why my legs aren't screaming when my
heart rate soars to 192 bpm on hills. But then, near as I can figure,
I'm a freaking hummingbird.

-km

--
the black rose
proud to be owned by a yorkie
http://community.webshots.com/user/blackrosequilts

On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 03:52:13 GMT, "Claire Petersky"
wrote:
Bicycling Magazine has the advice this month of shifting into a smaller gear
if it's your legs getting tired, and using a bigger gear if it's your lungs
that are getting tired. As I was going up "The Wall", a short but steep hill
yesterday, I was thinking, what are you supposed to do when your legs have
given out, your lungs are screaming, and you don't have any gears left on
your chainring?

This describes me in my local terrain, so do what I do: slow down.
Go slower _before_ the hill, too, so you have a little more oomph
left when you need it.
--
Rick Onanian

On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 16:33:34 -0400, Rick Onanian wrote:

On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 03:52:13 GMT, "Claire Petersky"
wrote:
Bicycling Magazine has the advice this month of shifting into a smaller
gear
if it's your legs getting tired, and using a bigger gear if it's your
lungs
that are getting tired. As I was going up "The Wall", a short but steep
hill
yesterday, I was thinking, what are you supposed to do when your legs
have
given out, your lungs are screaming, and you don't have any gears left
on
your chainring?

This describes me in my local terrain, so do what I do: slow down.
Go slower _before_ the hill, too, so you have a little more oomph
left when you need it.
--
Rick Onanian

I call my steep hill "Col de Hogsback." I rode with my GPS this weekend,
and the darn hill is only about 5% average grade. 5%! You could've
fooled me, as I look up at the road from the base. I still use it as the
finishing point of my long rides, though.

--
Bob in CT
Remove ".x" to reply

Rick Onanian wrote:
This describes me in my local terrain, so do what I do: slow down.
Go slower _before_ the hill, too, so you have a little more oomph
left when you need it.

yea, but what if the hill is 4 to 17 miles long and 6+%? anyway, you're on
to the right answer .. you need to make friends with the climb if you're
gonna be there for a while. it needn't be an adversarial relationship.
--
david reuteler

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 18:21:04 GMT, the black rose
wrote:

So it is with great trepidation that timidly report that I was able to
get up hills at least 50% faster by attacking them, some of them 100%
faster, and increased my average speed for the entire ride by 1.3 mi/hr
(around 16 miles). This is a HUGE improvement for me. These were all
rolling hills, not too big, all preceded by a nice downhill to gather
speed -- what I did was stay in the big gear I'd been in on the downhill
and stand up to dance on the pedals as long as I could take it without
downshifting. This got me at least halfway up most of them before I'd
have to back off a little, sit back in the saddle and downshift. This
got me up all but one hill on the large chainring; the one I couldn't
manage, I only dropped to the middle chainring. I was blowing pretty
hard at the tops of the hills, but I made them in what was for me record
time. I was psyched.

snip shifting disclaimers to save space

I am quite pleased with these results. I'm definitely going to continue
attacking hills and see what kind of progress I can make.

Just wanted to do a repost of this exciting and inspiring message, and
to thank you for the help it gave my climbing.

I'm still trying to stay in the saddle, but when I get back home I'm
going to apply more of this, more attacking, more pedal dancing, more
'stringing together' of the efforts, and controlling my breathing. I
like the way you describe it as 'blowing', b/c I do focuse of
breathing out, forcefully (which fills the lungs). ;-)

It's a matter of concentration and mental toughness and you have a lot
of this - great job! Without those, it's difficult to even contemplate
pushing it like this at times, but good base training will help get
you there. This is, imo, what 'courage' is that the commentators
describe.

Got my speedy legs back yesterday, and did a very nice 20 mile spin in
the flats and false flats at the beach. It's amazing how you can have
a couple 'blah' days, but still keep going fairly hard, then the next
day go out and just blast! Don't know what the physical basis is, but
I kept thinking 'go legs, go' yesterday and fought the 'unresponsive'
feeling. Guess that got the circulation going.

This morning the legs and everything else feels fine.

One thing I still need to work on g is relaxing. Still too much
tension on the H/Bs, gripping when it's not really needed. That's my
mantra for the rest of the week, while keeping up the cadence.

Got a nice boost watching the OLN Bike racing - Tour de Naz, yesterday
(rebroadcast from this summer).

http://www.tourdenez.com/events/

-B
PS - you rule!

In article ,
Badger_South wrote:

Got a nice boost watching the OLN Bike racing - Tour de Naz, yesterday
(rebroadcast from this summer).

http://www.tourdenez.com/events/

Yes, wasn't it great to watch local Webcor rider Justin England ride
so comfortably up the hills? What a smooth, high cadence and a
relaxed upper body. He also won this year's Mt. Washington hill
climb.

Did you notice Chris Walker, sporting the stars and stripes of his
elite national champion jersey? Not bad for a 42-year old. He caught
and passed us on Sunday's Everest Challenge stage, about 4 hours
into the ride, breathing hard but looking comfortable. He was the
first one to go by, but he ultimately finished third, 7 minutes
behind the winner.
--
terry morse Palo Alto, CA http://bike.terrymorse.com/

Lots of good ideas here in this thread. Hope this adds something.
the OP talks about attacking hills and doing so in bigger gears and
her success.
Later on a poster(Mort I think) talks about gearing down at the
beginning of hills so that you can upshift and do the real work near
the top. That was the way I learned as a racer as well. I also was
taught to really concentrate on staying seated (mostly) and staying as
relaxed as possible. I even had a coach who rode along side and if he
saw you tightening your grip he'd smash your hands with a pump!

But I did most of my learning before the use of inexpensive HR
monitors. I think that they are a most valuable tool for climbing. I
have a pretty good idea of what HR I can maintain and I am very
careful on long climbs to stay at or just below that level. Speed be
damned, if I blow up the speed is going to get worse. So, I really pay
attention to this and find that when I can do so effectively I wind up
with my best performance.

This applies to longish, sustained climbs. On short rollers or
"sprinters hills" I will always stay the pack or if by myself "sprint"
through them- but on these we are talking about less than a minute of
real hard effort, nothing like a 10 mile grind.

"Terry Morse" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Badger_South wrote:

Got a nice boost watching the OLN Bike racing - Tour de Naz, yesterday
(rebroadcast from this summer).

http://www.tourdenez.com/events/

Yes, wasn't it great to watch local Webcor rider Justin England ride
so comfortably up the hills? What a smooth, high cadence and a
relaxed upper body. He also won this year's Mt. Washington hill
climb.

Did you notice Chris Walker, sporting the stars and stripes of his
elite national champion jersey? Not bad for a 42-year old. He caught
and passed us on Sunday's Everest Challenge stage, about 4 hours
into the ride, breathing hard but looking comfortable. He was the
first one to go by, but he ultimately finished third, 7 minutes
behind the winner.

What surprised me was that of the top 25 male finishers in this years Mt.
Washington climb, the largest group (8) were riders in their 40's.

I enjoyed watching the program, but it was the first I have ever heard of this
race. When is it held?

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:06:43 GMT, Mike Euritt
wrote:

I enjoyed watching the program, but it was the first I have ever heard of this
race. When is it held?


Oops, I might have spelled it wrong in the body of the message, but
it's in June. The link I gave was correct:

http://www.tourdenez.com/events/

From the site:
"The 12th Annual Tour de Nez is just around the corner! This three-day
celebration of cycling will be held the 25th-27th of June and will
include mountain bike races and road races in addition to the Classic
Criterium and festival atmosphere of years past."

-B