rousseau

I love'em when I do solo rides, but when I ride with other people I have to huff and puff my way up just to keep them in eyesight, and then (a further injustice) at the top have to fight through the exhaustion to catch up with the lightweights who didn't have to redline it to get up the hill in the first place. So they're fresh as bleedin' daisies and wanting to do some hamer droping now that we're on flat terrain again, while I'm about to blow a gasket just to fargin' catch up to them.

No, seriously, though...I do love hills. They're great. But the other day a 67-year-old lifelong squash aficionado who just recently took up cycling beat me up the ascents, one after the other, and when I chuckled that I wished I could go faster uphill he smiled and said, well, you just need to do more of them.

A truism I've heard before. But is it really true? Wouldn't dropping a bunch of weight make the hill-climbing easier regardless of how much "practice" I got? If I practiced hills a lot but stayed fat, I wouldn't really get any faster, would I? One obstacle to practicing on the hills is that we usually get our winds from the northwest, and since the group and solo rides tend to adhere to the headwind-out-tailwind-back rule, we go northwest a lot. The hills are all to the east and south of us, so they're not commonly on our routes.

As I consider this issue, I'm getting the strong impression that the answer to my whinge is probably Rule #5.

pallen

Riding more hills will make you faster up the hills regardless of weight. Riding more hills AND losing weight will make you even faster.

cvall91

I've learned that everything in this sport just takes time and practice. If you give a bike to a skinny friend who never rides, he'd be in much worse shape than you. I don't climb hills (thank you Florida) but riding on flats, I've learned never to underestimate anyone. No matter what shape or size they are, experience plays a huge factor in how they can ride.

gregf83 

yep.

You would get faster but if you're 20lbs overweight and you can drop from, say 175 to 155 you would be 12% faster. Increasing your FTP by 10% is not easy if you've been riding for a while.

surgeonstone

If you have to ask then you probably are.

Gorden Gekko

I didn't read your post...but I will say yes

Myosmith

Unless you are like 8% bodyfat, the answer is "yes". Well sort of . . . kind of . . . maybe . . . not really. A high wattage to mass ratio makes hill climbing easier so increasing wattage output through training and decreasing mass through losing excess fat will both improve your climbing. Training on hills will also teach you skills like when to shift, when to stand or sit, and how to pace the climb so you don't burn out before the summit. You are never too fat for hills, but you might be too fat to climb hills fast.

fstshrk

How do you train? Doing high power interval training is IMHO better than doing slow hill climbs. You need to increase your FTP.

BeSelfPropelled

Your story hits home for me. I got tired of bringing up the rear on climbs and spent 6 months moving to the front of the pack. Three factors were important: 1. Weight loss - gravity is a fact of life 2. Strength and 3. Aerobic conditioning. The bottom line is that your power to weight ratio determines how fast you're going to climb. So climbing more hills will build strength and improve your conditioning but you could also do it over the winter and really shock the people you ride with in the spring which is what I did. I recently did a blog post on climbing faster including a little physics background and how you can improve your speed Secrets to Climbing Faster Up Hills. I hope you find it useful. Be Self Propelled!

rdtompki

If you're both equally "fit" and their power to weight is greater, they will likely be faster uphill if your both putting out the effort. My son is 185-190 lbs, 6' Cat2 and very fit. He's very competitive in crits, but to be competitive in road races with more climbing he'd have to weight 170. I'm a few lbs heavier, same build as my son and I would be a much stronger climber at 185lbs.

Velo Dog

When I started cycling seriously, I was a decent average distance runner at 6'4" and 240 pounds. It took awhile to develop the muscles and techniques for riding, but i don't think my fitness level changed much. Pretty soon I was a decent average cyclist, but no better than that.
Then I lost 30 pounds. With no other changes, no extra work, no nothing, my time on my familiar local routes dropped by about 10 percent. I rode many hills a full chainring higher.

jsutkeepspining

? a watt is a watt. If i ride up a hill at 300 watts its the same (or just about the same if the cadence is similar) as riding at 300 watts on a flat road, or on a descent.

qqy

Just think of it as weightlifting. Your extra weight is only making you stronger on the flats. Also, southern ontario doesn't really have any serious hills (tho the escarpment is short but nasty), so you have no idea how much worse it could be. Regardless keep it up, train for hill repeats and suddenly your riding buddies will look back in horror as you hang on the climbs. Then you blow them away on the descents.

bigbadwullf

I dropped 20. Made a big difference. Got a Tarmac, equal improvement. Now I can keep up

fstshrk

That's not the point. Did you read the Joe Friel book?

AdelaaR

You ask whether or not you're too fat to climb ... but nowhere in your post does it state your actual weight.
Don't you think that information is quite relevant?

Davinci..

The hardest part about doing hills isn't going up them fast enough.. Its going up them slow enough(that you dont blow yourself up).

If your not used to hills, there is an immediate temptation to try and maintain a perceived speed you think/feel you should be going up the hill at, and a tendency overcook yourself as a result! and once you've blown yourself up, you end up crawling up the hill "huffing and puffing".. Which in its self is a sign you've gone to hard.

You're gonna need to get in the habit of slowing WAY down to a speed you can comfortably climb the hill at, and maintain that steady pace! And as a flat-lander is harder to judge that speed.
300 watts is 300 watts, but 300 watts up a 5% grade is a LOT slower then people realize, you're just not gonna be able to maintain your flat-landing speeds. And on top of that, there really isnt anything you can do about people that weigh substantially less then you. They will fly up those hills, and you will blow yourself up trying to match them. There is just no getting around the math/physics of it.

Here is a REALLY great and basic tool you can use to gauge what speeds/power/grades. You can plug numbers in and get some awesome data out.
Here's a couple numbers you should consider. That will give you an idea of how much power different riders will need to scale grades at specific speeds.
https://www.analyticcycling.com/ForcesPower_Page.html

A 150lbs rider(plus 20lbs of bike), requires 250 watts to climb a 5% grade at a reasonable 20km/h
A 190lbs rider(plus 20lbs of bike), requires 300 watts for the exact same effort! 5% grade @ 20km/h

So if that 190lbs rider wants to keep up with the lightweights, he better have an extra 50 watts on hand.. If not, and he only has 250 sustainable watts, he better be prepared to slow down to 16.7km/h, or risk over doing himself. God forbid you're trying to hammer up that hill at 25km/h, you need some 405 watts! While the little guys needs only 338. You better hope that hell ends before you blow up

jsutkeepspining

yes, but no where in there does it say that doing hill repeats isareless beneficial than doing high speed intervals. It's basically all the same if ur hitting the same type of wattage in the same form (short snappy-ness vs. consistent output are two completely different things).

WhyFi

IOW, if your cadence is 90 and your output is 400, what difference does it make if you're going 10 mph up a hill or 30 mph on level ground? None.

justin_nj

Fat is 1 thing, being in shape is another.

If you take someone who bikes and works out often, even though that person may be overweight, they will peform much better than someone who might be thin as a rail but doesn't work out.

Besides BMI, muscle mass, weight, etc, your other muscles, such as your heart and lungs ability to transfer O2 into your bloodstream make a big difference on your ability to climb the hills.

rousseau

Thanks for the heartening feedback. I guess I'll just keep going up the hills and try to avoid donuts as much as I can at the same time!

neneboricua

That's true, whether on flat ground or up a hill, x-watts is x-watts. However, it could be easier/harder to produce those same watts depending on whether you're on flat ground or an incline.

When you're on an incline, your body is in a bit of a different position where you make use of slightly different muscles. On a good incline, you're in a position to recruit your glutes more, which can add power to your effort. This is why for some people their FTP on flat ground is different than their FTP on a climb. The climbing FTP can be a little higher. By training on an incline, you're also putting more training into those glute muscles that don't get worked as hard on flat ground. So when you go to the big mountains, the glutes will be used to the workload and won't burn up as easily.

Drew Eckhardt 

Yes and no.

Hill climbing is purely about power to weight ratio where there are limits to both.

If you've been following a structured training plan and are limited by power output and not premature fatigue due you won't get appreciably faster without loosing a lot of weight.

With weight it's a percentage thing. With the same legs, I'd be 31% faster at my 140 pound racing weight than a middle-aged 190 (atop a 20 pound bike). Dropping just five pounds off me or the bike would only net 2.3% which is not interesting except as a step in the right direction.

OTOH, if you do not have a structured training plan there's a lot of room to make more power. The power increase can come from training on any terrain.

You may also be limited by fatigue due to gearing (get lower gears) or muscle recruitment standing (ride hills).


Yes.

You'd get faster or ride at the same more rapid pace for longer.

gregf83 

You'll have to explain it to us as I missed your point as well and I read Friel's book.

David Bierbaum

My quads are burning just from reading this thread! Keep on climbing the road to fitness!