Quote Originally Posted by schnitzle View Post
I don't have a cadence har har! Ok obviously not true, but I need a cyclometer because I'm usually too distracted to count and too busy just keeping going. That's awesome that you're getting up hills in your middle chain ring Darcy!! When you said that the guys dropped their chains, do you mean they fell off because of the way the were shifting or?? Man that must feel good to pass those guys
Some male cyclists tend to cycle all of the time in the biggest chain ring on the front because they are mashers with a low spin. They use their strong leg muscles to power their way up hills, and some take immense pride that they bike only in their very highest gear and never shift at all, whether flats, rollers or hills. Then ... they go up a hill with a grade steeper than normal for them, like 13% to 18%, they go oops, they try to shift down in front, but there isn't enough slack in their chain, and the chain comes off. They put the chain back on, but there they are, on a grade that is too steep for them to get started back on the bike, and they are walking up the hill. They look like newbies, but nope, they are experienced cyclists, just ones with a different pedaling technique who got caught in too high of a gear on a grade steeper than they expected. Or when I pass them and they are still pedaling, it is because they are still in their highest chain ring in front and trying real hard not to tip over, afraid that if they shift down a chain ring they will drop a chain.

Schnitzle, you are still in the stage where you are gaining fitness and muscle power. Don't worry about cadence and all of that right now. Just get into your lowest gear at the bottom of a hill and go up until you reach the top. The grades in the Northwest can get real steep, so if you have to get off and walk, it is no biggie, just blame it on how they build roads around here. You burn calories walking your bike up a hill too. The underpass you described, where you go under a road, so down and then up, shift up like you mentioned and accelerate down the road and continue to accelerate up the next side coming out of the underpass, and don't start to shift down until you feel yourself losing speed. For an overpass, in the Northwest the grades of an overpass typically range from 4% to 8%, with 4% being mild and 8% being the steepest. When you encounter a hill that is steeper than the steepest of the overpasses, then you know the grade of the hill is over 8%.