Hills and riding Help

High Explosive

Hi all,

Well i have been riding off and on for a year now, i have just spent last week riding, my fitness is starting to build from a bad back so on my way, and i have stopped smoking 7 month ago. I rode last week for 4 days (Mon-Thu) including some steep hills over dartmoore and covered 325KM my lower front ring is on a 39 cog and 11-28 rear. The question is do i just grit my teeth or swap for a compact, but that is costly or just wait and see my fitness build. I am planning on riding a lot more now but the hills do take it out of me, short hill are ok but the long steep 1.5km climb is hard to the fact i want to get off and push as the legs can not do it.

Any advice welcome, regards Chris

declan1

Stick at it. I did, and I don't regret it. After a few weeks you will really notice the difference with the hills. Huge hills that you couldn't even cycle up will eventually become little mounds of earth.

pipipi

Well done on quitting smoking!

I think that if you have managed to get up the hills already then stick with what you have got. Your fitness will gradually improve.

And although it's great to explode up a short sharp hill and just about make it, for the longer hills you are better off changing down to an easier gear very early on, find your rhythm, and stick to it. As the fitness slowly builds you will find that you don't have to change down as early or change down to te bottom gear.

More gears will always help. But keep going on the fitness. An 'easier' gear means you'll push yourself even harder, so it will still feel like hard work.

Someone said that hills never get easier, you just get faster at doing them.

High Explosive

Thanks for the advice, i am sure it will get better, but unsure if i need to change to a compact or not..

declan1

High Explosive wrote:

Thanks for the advice, i am sure it will get better, but unsure if i need to change to a compact or not..

My bike isn't a compact and it has 14-28 rear cogs, so it's not exactly a good hill-climber, and I was tempted to change to a more hill-suited gearset, but I just kept climbing the same hill, and now a month later it's easy!