do you ever bother checking the grade of your climb?

[smilingcat]

I'm almost fit enough to start riding the "tough hill". Yesterday tried, and had to stop about 5 or 6 times gasping for air. I was also having some HR problems. Today, felt much better and my HR was more or less where it should be. Tried the hill again today. Still had to stop to catch my breath and get my HR back down. And I was trying to pace myself up the hill.

On the way back, I stopped at TriAthlon Labs in Redondo Beach. Guru reps were there and you could try out their bikes. I passed since I'm not planning on buying any new bikes. Besides, I can't afford it. So there I was, talking to one of the owners of the shop. Asked me why I wouldn't try a guru. I said I'm spent on the "tough hill" (for those in LA area its Hawthorn blvd up Palos Verdes). He told me it was steady 10-12% grade for solid two miles. OH!

Maybe I need to start paying a little more attention to my hill routes. Okay so its nothing compared to Velobomina, jobob, Fredwina, Brandy...


easy come but not easy going up,
Smilingcat

[crazycanuck]

Nope..I see a long hill, I treat it like a long hill. I don't care about the % as my main objective is to get to the top!

I dunno why people are obsessed with % of the a hill climb? Can we not just say we conquered a BIGGGG hill or VERY BIG MOUNTAIN? I'm impressed if you bike up mountains!!!!

Sorry..rant over..i'll climb back under my desk..

[kelownagirl]

LOL CC - I am obsessed with the grade. I always feel a little bit better when I struggle up and hill and find out it's over 10%.....

[Zen]

I'm with Crazy on this one but have you seen the Sky-mount Inclinometer?

[Starfish]

I am also obsessed with grade. But, I keep a spreadsheet, and tend to obsess over everything! Strangely, it relaxes me to obsess. I like to use the gradient function on the cyclometer for a variety of reasons.

When I glance down and see that I am managing to sit and pedal up a 15% grade (however short!!), I feel good about myself.

When I am struggling and struggling up what looks like a gentle hill, I understand it more when I see that it is actually a sort of false gentle, and more like 10%.

When I am feeling sorry for myself on a hill, and feeling tired, when I look down and it is only 5%, I realize I can just buck up and keep going, because I know I can do that grade for a long time.

When I am doing unknown rides, and a hill is intimidating me, when I see that it is the same percentage as a hill at home, I feel like I know how to pace myself or deal with it.

Believe it or not, when the view is pretty, I do look at it rather than the computer.

[OakLeaf]

Not during the climb. If it's steep enough to worry about, it's too steep to look at the dang computer

I do love the downloaded data. But I'm not sure how accurate it is. I keep looking at that bubble level thing you linked to, Zen, but how do you download from that?

[Thorn]

I'm with Starfish...obsessing on the grade is relaxing. When I first got my Garmin, I really played with the grade. Not so much for my climbing, but I was starting to put together what people were talking about in bike races. I had grades that matched (although, around here, they're rather shorter in distance).

Now, at home I play grade for the fun of it. I keep track of max grade and feet climbed per mile of a route. I can tell you where my local steepest hill is at 21% and that my training hill is around 8%.

On vacation, it is more fun. Although you cannot use the instantaneous grade read out when you're riding (e.g., that spike to 30% was just an anomoly), like Starfish said, it helps. The GPS will tell me if I'm climbing a false flat, but, more important is the mapping to a "oh, this is an easy hill"-hill.

I had the GPS on my Italy trip and it was relatively new. It was the first time I'd rode somewhere with sustained climbs. The leader laughed at me (ok, with me) as the hill perception changed throughout the trip. First it was, "Hey, I can recover on a 4% grade!" and by the end of the trip it was "Oh, blessed 9%. I'm so glad to see you and say goodbye to 12%".

Oh, yeah, I obsess. No question.

[mimitabby]

I'm with Crazy on this one but have you seen the Sky-mount Inclinometer?

I've got one of these, and i have a fancy bike computer that also measures the grade.
The analog one, the sky mount, is a lot more gratifying because it gives instant results.
The fancy computer is calculating, so it's always playing catch up and you're only sure at the end when you look at highest grade in the ride and see 15% or whatever.

Smiling cat. YES

[indysteel]

I worry about grade to some extent because during my first few months of riding, I tried to tackle some grades that more or less tackled me. See, we don't have many long climbs around here. Instead, we have these really short hills with grades that approach and sometimes exceed 20%. I went into hilly rides wanting to know what kind of grades I was going to encounter. I've learned that knowing the exact grades can be a blessing and a curse. They have helped me figure out whether I wanted to do a particular ride, but they've also led to extreme anticipatory anxiety.

[7rider]

I don't pay attention to % grade while I'm riding (I had the display once on my Garmin, but got rid of it, as the screen was far too busy and I felt there were other, more important things to have on the screen). I have my "hilly" routes and my "flat" routes, and if I hit something new, I might go back and look at the % after I download the file onto my p.c. But I don't sweat whether it's an 8% grade or a 12% grade or something worse or better. I just want to be able to get up it without dying or falling off the back of my group completely.

[SouthernBelle]

I don't check grade on the G while riding, but after a new hill I often check. Esp if I didn't finish it.

[Geonz]

All the grades around here are about a B+.

Oh, we're on the prairie It would be kinda silly to even check!

[sundial]

I'm too busy looking for my defibrillator to check my grade.

[shootingstar]

Pscyhologically I prefer to find out the grade....AFTER I've made it to the top and over.

And usually that's the way it is.

A long, steep hill doesn't seem so long and winds abit when there are interesting things along the sides..even though one is barely looking except ahead.. A steep, long climb seems much longer when many cars roar blithely ahead. I prefer to do this in peace.

[Melalvai]

I'm too busy looking for my defibrillator to check my grade.

I'm only posting so I could repeat that line.
(where's the lol smilie??)