Ride yesterday: clipless victory, and Hill question

[emily_in_nc]

Amy ~ I didn't get faster on hills until I changed from riding a hybrid and heavy recumbent bike to a much lighter road bike. Rotating weight, namely wheels, makes more of a difference than the weight of components that are simply carried on the bike, and hybrids tend to have very heavy wheels. All that said, even though I am a lightweight, petite gal and switched to a lightweight carbon road bike when I was doing lots of road riding, I was still not that strong on hills. I improved a great deal, but I still considered hills by weakest skill area. Hill climbing is all about power-weight ratio, and even though I had an advantage in the weight area, I didn't have a lot of power, so often got whipped on climbs by heavier, bigger boned, and more muscular gals. So even though you're heavy, that doesn't mean you can't improve greatly on hills if you get STRONG. As Mimi said, practice, practice, practice. There is no magic bullet.

Mimi ~ You just have to give clipless a try! You're a good cyclist and would be much better with clipless. I honestly don't think you're going to have a difficult adjustment since you're already comfortable on a road bike, so it's only one new thing to think about vs. several for some new riders who are trying to learn clipless at the same time as how to ride a road bike. My mountain biking buddy had never, ever used clipless either this summer, but after talking to me about it, she finally decided to go for them. It only took her two rides to get the hang of it, and she did great! And this was on rooty trails with switchbacks. I was SO impressed with how quickly she picked it up. I predict you'd have the same degree of success.

~Emily

[mimitabby]

A

Mimi ~ You just have to give clipless a try! You're a good cyclist and would be much better with clipless. I honestly don't think you're going to have a difficult adjustment since you're already comfortable on a road bike, so it's only one new thing to think about vs. several for some new riders who are trying to learn clipless at the same time as how to ride a road bike. My mountain biking buddy had never, ever used clipless either this summer, but after talking to me about it, she finally decided to go for them. It only took her two rides to get the hang of it, and she did great! And this was on rooty trails with switchbacks. I was SO impressed with how quickly she picked it up. I predict you'd have the same degree of success.

~Emily

Emily, I will. When the weather gets to above 40 and stays there. People
say to try it out on grass. Well, all the grass is mud right now and it's just too cold.. This spring, i promise.

[emily_in_nc]

Emily, I will. When the weather gets to above 40 and stays there. People say to try it out on grass. Well, all the grass is mud right now and it's just too cold.. This spring, i promise.

Okay, I'll hold you to that! The other good way to try clipless is on a trainer, just to get used to the motion of clipping in and out repeatedly. If you have a trainer, you could put one of your older bikes on it with clipless pedals and give that a try ahead of time...just a thought. You'll do great!

Emily

[ace]

No magic bullet...darn.

I think the only thing that's going to help me in the long run is losing a bunch of weight. I actual am probably about as strong as I'm going to get...I have really strong legs and glutes- hey, I have to be, to get 240 pounds of woman and a 25 lb bike up the hills!

I am really, really curious to see what difference a road bike will make, though.

[RoadRaven]

I am really, really curious to see what difference a road bike will make, though.

The biggest difference a road bike makes is the weight and road/tyre resistence

I have a compact crank set on my EMC2 as I didn't want "granny gears" and that gives me all the benefits of the low gears without having three chain rings.

[li10up]

I am by no means a hill expert. I still get left behind but I am better than I was a year ago. I used to down shift and spin but by doing that I never saw any improvment. So I started trying to go up the hill in one gear higher for as long as I could. As someone said, you don't want to damage your knees. But you need to tax your muscles if you want them to get stronger.

My strength has gone up, now if I could just get the weight part down of the strength-to-weight ratio then I might have a chance...

[Geonz]

I got a **lot** better on hills by working on my pedaling technique, and all I did was focus on going "round and round, not up and down" and trying to sort of be perpendicular to the pedal all the way around, following the circle. SHould be easier to do in clipless than with my toe clips (if you don't already do it). I found that on hills it made me work harder but I went significantly faster and felt it in my muscles more.