Why are the flats so hard?

ThatBikeGuy

Pretty sure i am about the same 5"10, 58-60 kg. I always look forward to climbs because i know i can steamroll up them without much problems.
On the flats i just get into the "zone", concentrating on my cadence keeping it around 90 and holding 20 mph. Quite easy to maintain if you get aero and down on the drops.

neilo23

Another thing that confuses me is that it is often suggested that people do time trial kind of efforts when they are training for, for example, a cycling holiday in the mountains. However, pure climbers are notoriously bad time trialists. I'm get more and more confused by the minute ;-)

jame58rown

^ Ditto
Part of me thinks it's a mental thing, but that pain in my legs on the flats and my speedo tell a different story

joeyhalloran

aj, i disagree with you about the point of rpm, I would say most people lower there rpm when they hit a high, not increase it.

SteveR_100Milers

Blimey, 58kgs! Man I can dream......you can always tweak your position to get your power to CdA improved, there are plenty of small fast testers, but few fast large heavy climbers. FWIW I can hold around 25 mph on the flat on a calm day on a road bike, but I get blown out of the back of every RR I enter when it goes uphill.

cyco2

jibberjim wrote:

cyco2 wrote:

If you can climb ok then what you need to do is train for the flat, right. You don't have enough flats to train on. So, the nearest you are going to get to that state is a Turbo.

The problem with the turbo is that it's a low inertia situation, much similar to a hill than racing along on the flat.

You are right, but inertia is unnecessary when its yourself that is putting in the effort to gain the experience to power along a flat road. The only way I found the discipline to keep my head down and keep a constant effort going without any other distractions was on a Turbo. Not possible on the road because of rise and fall, traffic, wind, surface etc.. In time I was able to translate that Turbo training to the road. The highest speed I attained on the flat was 38mph twice in one TT. At that speed and effort due to the wind pressure on me there wasn't very much inertia. It was very similar to a Turbo or climbing a hill. So, yes it was a problem but so it was for the others I beat.

ajmitchell

JoeyHalloran wrote:

aj, i disagree with you about the point of rpm, I would say most people lower there rpm when they hit a high, not increase it.

Most people slow down to a crawl, so you may be right. I was referring to trained cyclists. Have a look at the SRM data online eg

http://www.srm.de/images/stories/eventb ... en%201.gif


However its somewhat individual.

brettjmcc

Omar Little wrote:

When you are climbing the biggest resistance you face is your weight - on the flat then it is more about aerodynamics and what position your body is on the bike is going to have proportionally a bigger impact than when climbing

Me and friend where trying to work this out last week... He was pulling away from me on the flats and I was leaving him dead on the hills.

The problem with that is we are the same height, but I am over 30lbs heavier.

(Then again it may have had something to do with the fact that due to work and family commitments the only time I had been on the bike in 3 weeks was one 10 TT and I was blowing a bit at high speeds and not in a great position)