Originally Posted by
livedarklions
Normal folk who don't know anything about bicycling.
Maybe you need this explained to you, you're obviously very confused. The issue on a 13% grade is that the minimum effort needed to keep enough forward momentum to keep the bike balanced is at the edge of your capabilities, in other words you are very close to the max effort you can make just to keep the bike moving. Obviously, on the flat, the minimum effort requirement is much, much smaller. What you don't seem to get is that there is actually nothing to stop you from making that same very hard effort on the flat that you do on the 13% grade other than your own unwillingness to do so.
No one said anything about a tornado, riding into a 20 mph headwind is no more outlandish than riding up a 13% grade. I rode about 25 miles into a 14 mph headwind on all sorts of grades during a 76 mile ride on Saturday. Between the climbing and the headwind, my speed was low, and I was pretty damn exhausted.
You might be using your muscles differently producing the 250 watts on the climb than the 250 watts on the flat, but the level of effort is still the same.
I don't do high intensity interval training (HIIT), but many people do so on the flat. If you were right, they couldn't.
In terms of trying to roughly duplicate the effort of a 13% climb, but doing it on the flats, there is another issue. Assume that a 'mere mortal' biker intends to do that 13% climb at 175 watts. He gets on his 52/34 chainring 32/11 bike and goes 3.4 mph (he can probably stay upright here) and 40 rpm (NOT a good place to be, but that is the circumstances). That same 175 watts will get him over 18 mph on the flats, but the closest that he can come to mimicing his 13% climb will be in his 52/11 at 50 rpm. That is a huge difference at those very low rpm's. You need either wider gearing or more power (in this case). And there are a huge number of cyclists who won't even have this wide a set of gearing choices.
dave