Hill Climbing Made Easy (sort of)

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post yesterday...
The benefits of adding hills to your ride....and tips on how to make those hills a teensy bit easier.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...id=smartliving

Thanks for the post.

FINALLY, a good route mapper that gives elevations

http://www.veloroutes.org

read about it in the article. Now you can see for yourself just how steep everyone else's rides are!

Okay.... I should be in bed now, but I got obsessed with tracking our Wednesday night ride here...
Does this mean that we're only climbing 1600 or so ft??
http://veloroutes.org/bikemaps/?route=14895

When I was mapping it, it said max grade was 18%.. What?? Really? Wow...

I just finished this year's Bike Virginia, which was in southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee...hills.

For the rollers, I found that riding in my big ring (yes, big ring) small cog combo at the crest would bring me pretty far up the next hill. Then I'd switch to the larger cogs, but only 3 or 4 (but still in the big ring). Usually that got me up the next roller in good form. If not, then I'd shift to the middle ring.

Staying in these larger gears resulted in faster speed, and I felt really good and strong. I had been making a common mistake of going in a too-easy gear too soon, losing power and momentum going up hills.

Of course, there were a few climbs (three) that required the granny gear. Too much granny gear when I don't need it, though, gets me nowhere and hurts my knee.

I haven't been very successful with Veloroutes. They have cool features, but, at least for Vancouver, the elevation data is often inaccurate, leading to wildly exaggerated "climbs." It might not help that most of my rides are along the water and go over bridges. But even where it's unambiguously on land, the results are weird...

The undo feature doesn't work too well either. (Or is it me?)

But it's an otherwise cool site! I like the "stick to the road" feature (although it doesn't always work for my routes either). If they can fix the undo, I'll be using it more...

No, undo feature doesn't work for me, and either does the elevation. Everything's at sea level according to the site, zero elevation for everything. Mapmyride is a lot easier to use, their undo works just fine. And although their total elevation feature doesn't work either, at least it gives you a visual profile. Unfortunately they both rely on Google maps which in my area are about two years out of date.