Quick on the hills, slow on the flat.....HELP!!!

Mogsy23

Guys,

Somebody please help me with my little conundrum. I go out each week with my local club and each week it's a running joke that I leave them for dead as soon as we hit a hill, yet once things flatten out i really struggle to hang on to them!

I'm 5ft 9in tall and weigh 69 kilos, so the obvious thing would be that I'm lighter than my buddies but less powerful. Sounds simple, but there are some of them who are similar weight to me, some even lighter, yet still i leave them on a hill and can't hang on on the flat when they up the pace. It's doing my head in, especially when the weekly time trial comes round and I'm floundering at the bottom of the field.

markhewitt1978

You're a climber and not a sprinter or a time trailist.. Revel the glory of beating them up every hill.

jgsi

Go on.. try an 'undulating' race .. see if it still works for you, that going uphill fast bit

jibberjim

Your aerodynamics is likely rubbish?

sloppyschleckonds

Pedal harder

GGBiker

It's likely psychological, if you are a good climber at 69kg then chances are you have a good power output which if applied on the flat would see you go fast.

What is your definition of climbing? If you mean short hills lasting 1-5 mins then the problem might be endurance, ie you can't maintain a high output for long enough to keep up with group on the flat.

If you can climb for 30 mins at a good pace with high power output then you should be able to TT reasonably well. A specialist pro climber could probably still skin most amateurs in a TT despite being poor compared to a pro TT specialist.

Another possibility is that your colleagues are very powerful but have poor power to weight ratios due to high weight. Power to weight is important on hills, power to cda (ie wind resistance) is important on the flat as has been mentioned above.