Bicycling Level II: How To Conquer Hills

Now that you’ve bought a quality bike and have logged 500 to a 1000 miles on it, congratulations!

Your bike riding skills, physical condition, and coordination put you beyond the newbie level when you first purchased that shiny new bike.

It probably has a few scratches on it, and the chain is wearing in nicely.

You’re now a bike warrior.

Fearless and street wise, your balance and reflexes have sharpened noticeably.

But, there comes a time in every biker’s life, when you are faced with your biggest challenge; climbing hills.

It’s something every biker tries to avoid, but sooner or later, you will have to face it head on.

I’m not motivated by hill climbing either, but it makes you a much stronger biker.

If you practice the strategies I’ll be covering, you will be able to conquer formidable hills, even those over long distances.

My bike ride ends with a brutal 2.5 mile hill climb, that gets progressively steeper at the end.

Your friends will think you’re an animal, and you’ll become their secret hero.

Every hill climb comes with a reward once you reach the peak; a high speed, downhill rush that can’t be described in words.

The strategies are the same whether you’re riding a road bike or a mountain bike, but there are subtle differences.

These differences have more to do with bike setup than riding technique.

Let’s start with setting up your road bike.

A little secret some semi-pro road bike racers taught me is setting up your gearing.

Most road bikes come setup with two chain rings attached to the crank.

The high gear is usually a 52-53 tooth, and the low gear a 42-46 tooth.

The key here is to replace the low gear with a 36-38 tooth chain ring.

Unless you have legs like Arnold Schwarzenegger, turning a 42-46 tooth chain ring will tire you out quickly.

Using the 36-38 tooth chain ring will give you a wider gear ratio range for all riding conditions, and keep you from burning out.

Before I go on, let me explain some terminology which I’m going to be using a lot throughout this article.

Chain rings are the large gears attached to the crank, shifted by the front derailleur.

There will be two or three chain rings on the crank depending on your type of bike.

Cogs are the smaller gears on the rear wheel, shifted by the rear derailleur.

There are anywhere from five to eleven cogs on the rear wheel depending on your type of bike.

The large chain ring on the crank is used 10-15% of the time or less.

This chain ring is designed when you’re hammering on flat land with a tail wind, or going downhill.

It’s extremely hard to ride in this chain ring for most of your ride.

It’s designed for high speed running, which probably lasts for only minutes at a time.

If you try to push the large chain ring for most of your ride, blown out knees are a high possibility.

Close to 90% of your ride will be spent using the small chain ring on a road bike, and the middle chain ring on a mountain bike.

If you look at my mountain bike’s chain rings, you’ll see a lot of wear on the middle chain ring, and hardly any wear on the large and smallest chain ring.

If you have a mountain bike, you probably don’t need to change the chain rings, as you have three of them, giving you a much wider range of gear ratios.

My Shimano XTR crank has 44-32-22 chain rings which is a pretty wide ratio.

Think of the mountain bike as an off road SUV and a road bike as a street prepped BMW.

Now it’s time to be honest.

Most people who buy a mountain bike never take it off road.

Off roading in a mountain bike requires a lot of strength and endurance.

Most will try it once, and stick to on road riding.

If you’re like most people, and ride on road, get rid of the knobby tires.

On road, they are plain dangerous.

They are designed for off road riding, and have sticky, soft knobs that dig in to loose surfaces like gravel, grass, and dirt.

Riding them on the road at high speed in turns is asking for a crash.

The tires will feel like riding in a bowl of jello at high speeds, and can slide out unpredictably.

They are also heavy, and have a lot of drag that will wear you out quickly.

Switch to some road type tires, like the GeaX Revolution, Kenda Small Block 8, or Serfas Drifter.

These tires are designed for road riding.

They are fast rolling with no friction, and handle high speed turns securely on hard surfaces like asphalt and concrete.

My current favorite is the Small Block 8.

Be careful with the Serfas Drifter.

They have two types, one with a built in tire liner, and one without.

The one with the liner is so heavy, it will feel like you’re riding on stone tires like the Flintstones.

I don’t recommend them.

After riding for half an hour, you’ll be walking your bike.

So, two different strategies depending on your bike.

For road bikes, gearing is everything.

For mountain bikes, choosing the right tires is essential.

Lastly, make sure your front and rear derailleurs and shifters are working perfectly.

If you have loose or worn out cables, or derailleurs that are sloppy and shifting poorly, replace the cables and adjust your shifters before going any further.

You risk serious injury if you’re standing up and putting in power strokes to the pedals and your derailleur misses a shift, and slams you down on to your saddle, top tube, or worse.

Your risk an injury or a serious crash that will end your hill climb.

Shifting on a hill climb is unforgiving if you miss a shift due to poor maintenance.

Once you’re ready, find a hill that you want to conquer, and drive through it a few times slowly in your car.

Get a feel for the slope, the distance, and areas that flatten out, which can be your emergency stopping spots when you’re too worn out.

Now that we’re setup properly, let’s go after some hills.

The key with any hill climb is to pace yourself.

You don’t sprint in a marathon, or you’ll never finish.

The same goes with hill climbing.

Start in the middle chain ring on your mountain bike or the small chain ring on your road bike.

If you have a full suspension mountain bike, lockout the fork and the rear shock.

This will prevent power robbing bobbing up and down when you really have to put the power down on the pedals.

The strategy is to push the highest gear ratio you can without over exerting yourself.

Try to turn the smallest cog that you can on the rear wheel while maintaining a steady pace.

If the hill gets progressively steeper, downshift a cog at a time, but resist the temptation to shift to the largest cog on the rear wheel and spin the crank wildly.

This will actually fatigue you faster, as you’re spinning the cranks at too high a cadence, and people can walk by you faster than you’re moving forward.

You might as well get off your bike and join them, you’ll use less energy.

Cadence is the revolutions per minute, commonly known as rpm, that you produce with each complete revolution of your crank.

As the hill gets progressively steeper, there are two methods to proceed.

The first method is to stand up, shift to a smaller rear cog again, and to take full strokes with your legs.

Keep the cadence low, and fully extend your legs as much as possible with each stroke.

The idea is to find the right balance of pushing the smallest rear cog that you can without using your full strength through your legs.

When standing, you will have much more power than sitting, and you can use a smaller cog on the rear wheel than you would sitting.

Use about 50-75% of your leg strength, and keep the RPMS low.

Shift to a larger rear cog if you feel yourself exceeding 75% of your strength.

Standing uses up more energy, but you will cover more ground than sitting.

If you find yourself out of breath, and your legs giving out, sit down, and downshift to a lower gear and give your legs a rest.

When you feel your strength return, stand up and shift to a smaller rear cog again.

The second method is to remain seated during the entire climb.

It’s slower, but conserves energy.

Tilt your pelvis upwards to take pressure off the prostate area, and for women, off the sensitive tissue in the same area.

Sit as upright as possible to give your diaphragm and lungs freedom to expand and contract fully.

Oxygen is your friend when doing hill climbs.

With your pelvis tilted upwards, stroke your legs forward and downward, not just up and down like you would on flat land.

If you’ve ever seen a recumbent bike rider, they pedal with this exact same motion; forward and downwards.

This gives you much more power with every stroke, and will propel you forward much more efficiently.

Slide back in the saddle if you need more power, as this will increase your leg’s stroke length, and help prevent cramping and fatigue.

As you start climbing hills, you’ll find that you’re either a stand up climber or a seated climber.

Both work, and you’ll find you prefer one method or the other.

When I was a lot younger, I was a stand up climber the entire way up a hill.

Now that I’m a lot older, I remain seated, and only stand when there’s a potential to gain a lot of ground by standing for a short distance.

On my hill climb, as I near the end, there’s a steep downhill drop, followed by an extremely steep uphill climb.

It’s like dropping into a bowl, hitting the bottom, and climbing up the other side.

I sprint in the large chain ring and smallest rear cog on the downhill section to gain momentum, then progressively shift to a larger cog on the rear wheel.

When I can no longer push the large chain ring, I downshift to the middle chain ring, and stand up and do medium power strokes.

I’m in the second to the smallest cog in the rear while doing this.

When I can no longer push the middle chain ring, I shift to the smallest chain ring on the crank, and shift to progressively larger cogs on the rear wheel.

I sit down, and spin the pedals at a much easier to turn gear ratio to let my legs recover.

As soon as I feel the blood returning to my legs, and the lactic acid burn subsiding,

I shift to the smallest cog on the rear wheel that I can turn.

The idea with hill climbing is not to spin your legs like crazy, but to cover as much distance as possible without burning yourself out, and maintain a steady pace.

If you feel like you just can’t go on, look for an area that flattens out to take a rest and stop.

Scan ahead and look for these areas, so you can stop and rest if you need to.

Giving up and stopping on the steepest part of your climb is the worst thing to do.

When you’re ready to get started again, mounting your bike and getting positioned will be extremely difficult as you’re going uphill.

You will also use a tremendous amount of energy to get going, tiring yourself out quickly.

Starting on an area that is less steep, or has a flat step to it, like an intersection, will give you a chance to get on your bike, gain a little momentum, and start climbing again.

Truckers have a general rule on steep hills that allow only one truck to pass at a time.

The truck that is traveling uphill always has the right of way.

There have been many tragic stories of truckers that had to stop on a steep hill.

When they tried to get started pulling a big load, the tires would slip and spin.

The truck would desperately try to get traction, but slide backwards.

Some slid completely off the hill, resulting in a tragic crash.

As you can tell, hill climbing takes practice and conditioning.

Don’t feel bad if you fail miserably the first few times.

Each hill climb has it’s own distinctive signature, no two hills are alike.

Keep practicing the strategies I’ve covered, and within one to two months, you’ll become a hill climbing fiend.

Remember to keep hydrated, as hill climbing takes up a lot of energy, and you can over heat yourself.

Hill climbing will make you a much stronger biker, and it’s a skill that will make you a more well rounded rider.

It’s great for strength and endurance training, and will keep you in great shape and good health.

I’ve never gotten used to riding hills, but I have never tackled a hill where I gave up and had to stop and call it a day.

These tips and strategies that I’ve learned over the years have always helped me conquer hills.

The sweetest reward in conquering a hill, is coasting down the other side at high speed with the wind in your face, and the widest grin of accomplishment knowing you did it.

It’s one thing to say you rode down a hill, but it’s a totally different thing to say you conquered that same hill.

https://youtu.be/41Iu3Zwruq8