Originally Posted by
billnuke1
Breath out! Breath out! Don’t start too soon! I hate that! You only have to last 3 seconds longer than your closest guy! Easier for you to stay ahead than for them to catch up! Learn to spin out! Then kick it up one gear at a time as you figure it out!
+1 The huge gift from my swim instructor when I returned to college in my early 30s and decided to take basic swim to learn real freestyle. She emphasized that exhale was key and inhale barely mattered. In fact to much inhale usually hurt performance. She pointed out our lungs' best oxygen receptors are at the bottom of our lungs. If we do not inhale completly, we leave those receptors blanked with CO2 so our next breath does not bring them fresh air. If we instead get a full exhale, our lungs are primed to fully utilize whatever we can inhale. So even just a 1/4 breath after full exhale (remember - freestyle - we might have just gotten a wave in our face) is much better than a 3/4 exhale and inhale.
Your (the OP's) RPM going up but not your power - if that is what is actually going on, you might want to look at that. We each your our best RPMs for power and that varies quite a bit. I have never been a spinner uphill. In my racing days I made it a point to be higher geared than my competitors. That approach worked very well for me. (And that hasn't changed a lot over the years except I have been getting progressively slower. Damn this aging stuff!. But my logo photo was taken 6 years ago on the 14% stretch of a 2 mile hill riding a 42 X 17 with an RPM of what 25? Nobody passed me. Yes, I should have flipped the wheel! (I had a 23 on the other side) but moving to a cog like 36 or 42 as the fans of high RPMs would suggest would have been, again, for me, slower.
Edit: Weight - I'm a long, skinny 6'-1/2" (Well I used to be. Still long and skinny but am an inch shorter now.). I raced at 145 pounds with nothing to spare. I could make a lot of riders pay up long hills who could make my life miserable on the flat. I as an extreme hill climber and have been all my life. Drafting was the only reason I could even be there at the start of hills. In cycling, we all have to find our niche, the place that works for our build (and mindset). I found that lower RPM climbing worked really well. That doesn't work for all. OP, try different approaches and observe what works best for you.