This should not be *this* hard
 

There are about 2 or 3 places that i can think of where i ride and it suddenly gets real hard. all involve climbing. one particular place is a little 1-2% grade that lasts for about a 150' about 6 miles into my morning commute. before that little climb i already climbed a bunch. another spot is maybe 2-3% for about a 1/4 mile where i have already done 5-6% climbs for way way longer. these little climbs just seem to get me and i don't really know why. i find it comical, have anything like that on your rides?

Hills make you stronger. Headwinds just make you mad.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two little... I hesitate to call them "climbs," so we'll call them inclines... that look like they should be barely above the threshold of noticing, yet they're always more tiring than they should be, by all appearances. Kind of like false flats, but it's more like false gentle inclines.

I just got back from touring Vermont for a week, including some mileage on dirt. ‘Nuff said.

My commute home has three small climbs, like 5-6% and probably around 1/4 mile or less. All depends on how tired I am at the end of the day. Sometimes when feeling strong I'll attack it. Others when I've had a hard day at work it's like, ugh! Just get into the lowest gear, put my head down and spin it up.:/

I hate hills that start with inclines where I already lose any momentum I had before the actual climb starts. Even worse when there is a headwind (approaching 100% of the time) to make the incline speed drop more pronounced.

My area has lots of these. Incline - steep hill - slightly less steep top of the hill. Then you get to pedal down the other side of the hill because the headwind gets worse over the crest.

You'd think I hate cycling... but for some reason I keep doing it.

lol

For me, it's more that one day I'll be ripping up this 2% gradient at 18 mph, and the next, feeling like I'm working just as hard, going 15.

The annoyance of trying to keep riding at some arbitrarily chosen speed up hills and into the wind: that's why I stopped using a bike computer with a speed readout and started using only a pulsemeter. Maintaining a target pulse range keeps me from worrying about how fast I think I should be going.

The only thing I can relate to, is when I have a left shifter issue. More specifically a left hand/right brain problem where I don’t want to shift to a smaller chainring for a short section.

Sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth the effort to get to the best gearing only to go right back again.

John

If it passes through a rich community, there may be elite reptilians or illuminaties draining your life force as you go that route.

How I cope with such routes that strangely, doesn't make sense? Slow down a bit but also hunch down in an aero position while you move forward on the saddle a little bit as well.

I have cursed aloud at some stiff headwinds in my days! 🚴‍♂️🌬

Yep... It is quite humbling when ya know you should be able to get over that hill easy peasy...

I spend more time in my 34T bail out gear then I would like to admit...

Or over in Galveston Texas where you start your ride with the wind in your face, then when ya turn around to ride back,

Its in your face again... Rats!!!

False flats like long 1-2% sections that suck the life out of my legs do it for me.
I do not monitor rise, so after I map the ride and see I was actually climbing it all makes perfect sense.
On the bike, I query whether I have a slow flat.

Every road from my house has annoying hills within half a mile on the way back. Made me a stronger rider tho and I don't hate them nearly as much now. Goals of biking up sugarloaf mtn this year.

I ride on one of those on one of my regular loops. It's probably 50% the climb, and 50% mental block. Always a relief when I get past it.

Since it's a loop, I should try riding it in the opposite direction. But there's a much steeper climb going the other way!

My commute home was uphill over 9 miles. I don't know the grades, but two of the routes took me along old railroad lines and they were very subtle rises...practically unnoticeable. So when I would then encounter an additional slight increase in rise, it was really more than it seemed.

Some years ago I lived in Prescott AZ in a hillside community, at the top of the steepest paved road in the city, a 300' climb at a 15% grade. Some cycling neighbors called it "Effing Hill," some saw it as a training opportunity. There were lots of climbs in the area, in the Bradshaw Mts, but most were the typical Western grades not exceeding 6%.

I liked the view there, but will never live at the top of such a hill ever again.

I think how I perceive the difficulty of a hill is very dependent on what I've been doing leading up to that hill. That 1-2% ascent might seem a lot bigger if I've been pushing myself harder while approaching it than I was leading to the 5-6% ascent. If I know the 5-6% ascent is coming, I've probably paced myself accordingly.

And wind, Some stretches always seem to be in a headwind.

There used to be a route near me called the Three Sisters, consisting of three short, but steep hills. The third one, about 1/4 as long and 1/4 as steep as the other 2, was always the hardest.....

My personal adage on this subject is that to climb well, first I must climb poorly. Well for me is feeling on top of the gear and my breath, then looking down and noticing I'm in a gear a cog or two higher.

I nixxed a house on our search because all the roads leading up to it required some pretty steep climbs. I told my wife I couldn't imagine going out for a ride and then having to finish by climbing up to the house.

WTF is that even supposed to mean ???.

I’ll be at the Vermont Gran Fondo next week.

What’s the route?

I got it.