21
There is no correct answer. Do what works or is most comfortable for you.
Bear in mind that if you train yourself to sit and spin at a higher cadence you’ll get better at that. If you train yourself to stand up and pedal slower you’ll get better at doing that.
19
Answer Stay in the saddle for steady state climbing, if you can. Get out of the saddle for extra short term power, getting over a steep bit, or for punching through a short climb. Or if you need a change of position.
Are you Tall? I have long legs, so my saddle is high, and at some grade my saddle ends up "behind" my rear axle. So there's a ...
18
For someone who hasn't been riding much, this climb will be brutal. But you'll be surprised at how quickly you'll make progress. Even though you might fail the first time you go up, this ride seems like a great challenge.
Last year I coaxed a friend to start riding again. After a half dozen easier rides, we attempted a mountain climb similar to the ride you'...
17
I have seen this effect with several different optical based wrist HRM's. Your HR is not 90, but likely closer to 180. Optical HRM's generally have a longer lag to track changes in the heart rate and sudden jumps can be interpreted by the software as drops rather than increases.
I've found that for long sustained efforts, the HRM eventually tracks back to ...
17
Is it best to attack the flat before a hill?
NO
On flat ground, power is proportional to speed cubed because drag from air dominates. If you want to go twice as fast on flat ground, you need to expend eight times the power. So if you're going 20 mph/30 kph and double your power, you'll wind up going all of 25 mph/38 kph - and you'll blow yourself up ...
13
Unfortunately, there is a fairly straight forward reason why you actually need to ride hills in order to get faster at them: crank inertial load.
We have two main types of skeletal muscles. (Skeletal muscles are responsible for our locomotion and movements, cardiac and smooth muscles make up the other muscle types in our the body). The two main skeletal ...
12
The spokes and gears are likely unrelated issues.
You have done 2000km on the bike - have you replaced the chain and rear cluster yet? At you weight and those hill climbs, I would not be surprised if they are just worn out. It is also possible that at your weight and that distance the spokes have come out of adjustment, and/or now have fatiguied to the ...
12
For grades beyond 10% having a gear that you can spin at the rate you can climb makes a big difference.
Only you can know exactly what gear that should be. If you can find a gear ratio tool that displays speeds for a given gear, wheel size and rpm. This one seems pretty good.
http://www.bikecalc.com/cadence_at_speed
Then think about your typical speeds ...
12
Generally, being light weight you probably have more of a deficit on the flats, which would point to an aero bike. That is your frontal area per watt per kg will be higher than a larger rider who is heavier, can turn out more watts and has a bigger frontal area but also has a a relatively lower frontal area per watt per kg. As such, an aero bike would ...
11
As you’ve noted, drag increases non-linearly with speed. So to e.g. double your speed on a flat (drag dominated) section you’ll have to more than double your power output.
Slow uphill sections contribute much more to your overall time (and therefore also average speed) since you spend much more time there and gravity is constant.
So if you wanted to achieve ...
10
Move your weight further forward to keep the front wheel weighted. Shuffle forwards on your seat and bring your chest closer to the bars. Standing can help for the steepest parts, but can cause your rear wheel to slip on loose surfaces.
The front wheel is lifting as when your bike is on a slope the wheelbase is effectively shortened, bringing your weight ...
10
The difficulty of any climb will depend on its length, steepness, wind speed and wind direction, the total weight of you and your bike, and, of course, your fitness and your intended speed.
Stephen Touset has thoughtfully provided a link that shows the elevation profile for the climb. The grade appears to be relatively even rather than a series of steeper ...
10
Honestly, as an amateur cyclist I would suggest focusing on learning how to pace a climb first over more finer details such as cadence. Many amateur typically go out too fast on a climb, go anaerobic, accumulate a lactate debt, then find themselves suffering terribly the remainder of the climb. This gives most the idea the climbs are harder than they could ...
9
As you have guessed, it is better to work harder on the uphill and rest on the downhill. And as others have mentioned, whatever works for you on the uphill in terms of balancing high cadence and mashing is best. However, there are a few guidelines that you can follow to approach each situation in the most efficient manner possible.
Downhill: Since wind ...
9
Mountain bikers regularly run these low cadences for very short periods, often at much higher power output. The issue with causing damage to knees is more about the duration of the climb and how strong your stabiliser muscles are. (Too much time mushing causes chronic overuse problems, while weak stabiliser muscles can allow injury to happen), however they ...
9
If Sheldon Brown is any authority for you (and if you don't have your own opinion/experience, he should be, IMO), he advises to stay in the saddle as a general case.
The idea is that standing up is a needless strain on both you and your bicycle, and you should prefer to use a lower gear (and correct posture).
That said, there is no harm standing occasionally ...
8
Basically whatever works.
If you're trying to conserve energy it's foolish to push yourself going downhill, since energy lost per mile to wind resistance increases with the square of speed -- just take advantage of the "free ride" on a reasonably steep hill.
Going uphill depends a lot on your physical condition and how steep the hill. You first need to ...
7
There are various web sites that might help.
I use one called http://ridewithgps.com. You need to register on it but you can get quite a lot from a free account.
Does your GPS device output GPX files? If so, I think Ride With GPS can suck them in. If not you might have to put your route into the site manually (but this is easy enough).
But what you do get ...
7
I prefer the cycling lore that it was decided by which gear of a Citroen 2CV you needed to be in to drive up the hill/mountain. For HC climbs you had to go up them in reverse.
Scientific? Not so much. Perceived Gallic? Mais oui!
7
Understand that the concern is not generally things like a muscle or tendon tear that can occur with, eg, extreme weightlifting -- off-road bikers might be susceptible to that sort of injury, but not a road biker.
Rather, the concern is the injury that may be done to joint surfaces and structures due to repeated force, above some "tolerable" level, applied ...
7
Get the biggest.
The down side is some bigger spacings.
If money is an issue consider used.
You have the option to not use a gear you do have.
But you can't use a gear you don't have.
Cassettes wear out. If you find yourself rarely using the 34 and/or 32 then get tighter for the next. Start with the biggest for a data point. If that is not ...
7
Every rider has a different optimal cadence. You need to find yours. This will depend to some extent how you are feeling on the day ('Ohh that hurts' vs 'pain, what pain').
Most novice riders pedal too slowly, as they are not trained it feels 'wrong' and are not efficient at high cadence. If this is you, you optimal cadence may be faster than your most ...
6
You can work on a pedal stroke that applies pressure for a larger portion of the rotation of the pedals. That will reduce the peak force that is causing the wheel to lift.
6
I would suggest that your bike is not set up correctly and your centre of gravity is too far back.
The first thing to consider is what is the predominant terrain you are riding?
If its mostly flat consider using a technique such as alex has
suggested in his answer to cover pinch climbs and small hills.
If your doing a lot of climbing (sitting on the front ...
6
For Strava climbs there is an objective categorization that is length in meters times grade in percent, with this categories:
score = length(m) * grade(%)
Cat 3: score > 16000
Cat 2: score > 32000
Cat 1: score > 64000
Cat HC: score > 80000
For example Alpe d'Huez has a length of 13800m and average gradient of 8.1% (according to Wikipedia), giving a score ...
6
One thing that may help a lot is shifting some load weight forwards. In other situations I've found that a surprisingly small amount of weight shifted from behind the back axle to the front forks improves handling a lot. For example rather than mounting a D lock behind a child seat, I put it on the front forks. That's something like 1% of the total weight, ...
6
Basically the only real way to get better at going up hills is to get fitter - which you can do by repeatedly riding the hill :-)
Some tips:
Stay sitting down
Use low gears and a fairly high pedaling cadence
Use good gear management, shift down progressively as you start the hill and keep pedaling cadence up.
The main point is you want to avoid using ...
6
I'm going to be contrary, with some caveats.
Yes, it may be worth attacking the flat just before a climb. If you can build momentum on the flat and carry that into the first part of a climb, it will put you further up the road than someone who just rides into it at a set power.
The downside is that you're pushing hard to get that momentum and to keep it up ...
5
I ride a SS fixed gear 3 times a week. My advice when the hill is hard and steep is to do what feels natural.
Stand up.
Move as much of your weight forward as possible. I notice a huge difference when I take weight off the back wheel. The hill is already putting your weight more back. Counter this by putting your weight more on the front.
Pull up on the ...
5
With regard to the shifting, you do need to understand proper shifting procedure.
First off, with any derailleur-style bike the chain and sprockets need to be moving when you shift. (You're no doubt aware of this, but it bears mentioning.)
Prior to the advent of "indexed" shifters, it was not possible to shift "under load" at all. To shift you had to ...
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