Quote Originally Posted by Thorn View Post
Mashing, pushing bigger gears with a low cadence, will place more stress on your knees, and, as I've discovered, your achilles tendon. Like Torrilin, I will often ride a bigger gear than I should on small inclines to give the illusion of a steeper hill, but whenever I do, I am constantly paying attention to form and ready to drop gears if the stress gets too much.
Thorn, I'm curious about this, because I've started to have problems with one of my achilles tendons. I thought it was brought on by running, since it only started to hurt about a week after I started running intervals again; however, reading your post makes me wonder if it could have been brought on by the bike as well. I've been using the big ring more on the bike in the past 3-4 months...I still wouldn't call myself a masher, but I've been going for 70-80 rpm in the big ring lately v. 80-90 in the middle. I generally drop to the middle ring on any kind of incline. Since I started running around the same time I started using the big ring (and maybe too high of a gear, in retrospect), now I'm wondering if that was just too much stress all at once. Especially since running has never aggravated my achilles before (though I was 20 lbs lighter the last time I tried running )

Anyway, what aspects of form do you pay attention to, to keep stress off your achilles?