Originally Posted by
DaveLeeNC
It depends on how you ride both and the combination of your fitness and your gearing in some cases will matter a great deal.
Several years ago I rode a very hilly century (11K' of climbing) and my training where I live (constant up/down with no long flats or climbs or descents) did not prepare me well for 45+ minutes of constant/hard effort (or you could take the view that I rode the ups too hard). I had some serious cramping issues and was at around the 65-70 mile point when I realized that (1) I was in survival mode and (2) was not cramping on the flats (where I was doing kind of recovery riding at no more than 200W). So I just decided that I would not go up at any more than 200 watts. I did not exceed that (not much for long anyway) and I had no more cramps.
But we had passed the steepest of the climbs (above 12%). Had I encountered any of those grades from that point foward, it might have been a different story as 200W would have forced me down to a such a low cadence that the required pedal force might have created different issues for me. I honestly do not know and there are no long 12+% grades where I live to try out.
So it depends. The fitter you are and lower your gears, the wider the range of hills that you can 'ride like the flats'. And there does remain another variable - if occasional 'backing off a bunch' is a necessary part of your riding the flats, then long climbs will present a bigger challenge. Again - it depends.
For me I just ride the ups harder because that is what I do. I don't have to, but that is what I do (and what most do).
dave
I think you're right that psychologically, a person may drive themselves to max out their effort on a hill, I find that happens to me especially on a long ride when I'm itching to get the damn thing over with and the hill comes late in the ride. I think there's also a number of factors that make the perceived effort on the hill seem much higher than on the flat. For one thing, on the flat you can coast for very short amounts of time while largely maintaining the speed and I find these little tiny "breaks" just make my muscles feel like they just reset in a way I can't feel on a hill. More importantly, I think it cannot be overemphasized how much more efficient your body is going to be at radiating excess heat and evaporating sweat at high speed than at climbing speed. I really became acutely aware of this riding a few hilly 100+ mile rides during the heat wave of the past several weeks--I'm sure I was riding the flats as hard as I was the hills, but because I wasn't a soggy, overheated, panting mess on the flats, it felt a lot easier than the climbs.