Another favorite quote

“A woman is like a tea bag – you never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Hill Climbing Technique Tips

Recently, I posted my favorite training tip from Josh Horowitz for working towards better hill climbing. In the same article, 7 Tips for Climbing to the Top, he also gives this excellent tip:
Positioning - Start the climb near the front. If you start near the back, not only will you have to keep the pace of the lead riders, you will have to make the additional effort of accelerating around dropped riders. A strong climber might be able to bridge one or two gaps, but if it is a long climb and a big pack, eventually they will burn their last match and go off the back, even if their power-to-weight ratio is higher than that of the leaders.


I saw this during my recent 2 day event, The Ride to Conquer Cancer. While many cyclists there were much better riders than myself, they just don’t have the experience we take for granted when cycling along the PCH out of Malibu. There were minor hills early on where people were walking in herds. I simply do not have the cycling strength to over come that loss of momentum and had to walk as well until I caught on that this was going to keep happening unless I got ahead of the pack. So I peddaled up as best I could after the hill. Victory! I was back in the saddle for a much better event. We’ll see what happens next month with the Marin Century ride. I imagine that is going to be much more climb.